Guess The Attendance 2017 - NYCFC vs. Montreal (March 18)
- Thread starter LionNYC
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My understanding is that there are approximately 17,000 season ticket holders for NYC - this is from a Grant Wahl tweet that showed some data supporting his MLS Ambition rankings.
Based on this game and the prior game, it appears that the Club is starting to count actual attendance and not tickets sold. Based on the number of primary tickets for sale on Ticketmaster, it did look like the Club sold most of the non-season tickets, which would have put us over 25K. The opener was very close to a sell out too, and those numbers came in low.
I expect we will see lower numbers across the board this year if they continue to count like this.
Based on this game and the prior game, it appears that the Club is starting to count actual attendance and not tickets sold. Based on the number of primary tickets for sale on Ticketmaster, it did look like the Club sold most of the non-season tickets, which would have put us over 25K. The opener was very close to a sell out too, and those numbers came in low.
I expect we will see lower numbers across the board this year if they continue to count like this.
I don't doubt your analysis but your conclusion, while warranted, just seems so unlikely. Almost all sports venues measure attendance based on tickets sold and it would be weird for NYCFC to handicap themselves and make their attendance look worse. Will this be an MLS change? Could get interesting at RBA.
Mgarbowski beat me to it - I wondered the same thing after the first two games - the argument is even stronger for the opener, in my opinion - but it just seems so bizarre to voluntarily handicap themselves in this way.
I don't think we were even close to 18.5k in the stadium. It was a pretty poor showing from fans. I would think the attendance reflected # of tickets sold not actual butts in seats.
Bigger question to me is: Is this just a product of bad weather or has the shine of a new team worn off and we're now seeing that reflected in lower attendance?
Bigger question to me is: Is this just a product of bad weather or has the shine of a new team worn off and we're now seeing that reflected in lower attendance?
Right. I doubt whether there were really 18,000 there Saturday too. And I expected attendance to continue to fall this year - though I was only expecting a 1-2% drop.
So I think counting gate receipts is unlikely.
But something has changed. Like some others here, I based my attendance guesses on looking at availability on Ticketmaster - so at a certain point I had some kind of feel for "if Ticketmaster looks like x, tickets sold are probably y" - and that changed from 2015-2016, and appears to have changed again from 2016-2017. I realize that is not the most rigorous argument but I feel pretty sure about it. I think our most avid seat counter was Gene, so maybe he can chime in if he is still around.
My guess is that it is a combination of a) making fewer seats available on Ticketmaster in the first place and b) perhaps some other changes like no longer counting unsold resale tickets towards the attendance numbers.
I would bet that the numbers are lowered based on people trading tickets in for a later game - since that allows NYCFC to sell the seat (again) its technically got to be removed from previous sale numbers.
Also, I doubt I'm the only one to scan in my unused seats at the gate to get my (nearly useless) Citizen Points. So while it may have looked like there were less than 18k there, there probably were 18k sold and "used".
I also don't think the luster has worn off the team. I think we've been totally screwed by worse than bad weather, and people will show up in healthy,glowing numbers oncethe forecast doesn't call for freezing temps, sleet, and no sun. My wife told me not to ask her to attend any games until I could promise her she wouldn't be miserable.
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It was the weather!
They said snow and rain ( most people stayed in and avoid the commute and cold. I was debating it, but bundled up and went)
They said snow and rain ( most people stayed in and avoid the commute and cold. I was debating it, but bundled up and went)
Here's my take: Terrible weather is clearly the #1 culprit. But I think there are a few other things that may be contributing to it. I think the stadium experience is just awful. Yankee stadium is not conducive to watching soccer. The field is embarrassing and makes us look like a minor league team. The other missing piece to this is local coverage. Is there a single paper that covers this team on a daily basis? Do the local news stations devote any time to covering this team? I don't think so. Because of this I still think people don't even know this team exists. The team needs to make more of an effort to make people aware of the team.
This team is far better than last year but no one would know unless they were a die hard fan like people on this forum.
Anyway, my rant is over for the time being.
This. The weather has been beyond awful...I looked back at a picture of the season opener last year and my daughter was in a light jacket with her jersey over it.
This year: my wife took one look at the weather report and said "uh-uh" and my daughter gave me a crazy look when I said I was going. It's been that bad.
I think your rant is correct. I have season tickets since the first season and Yankee stadium is not great for soccer as a temporary venue its okay but going on 3 seasons and with no hope of having a stadium built it's becoming an issue.
As far as local coverage for NYC and soccer it does not exist, NYC gets no free publicity like the local MLB, NFL, NBA teams, most sports fans in NY know very little or nothing about soccer and are not made aware the NYC plays in NY or even at Yankee stadium.
NYC is going to have to spend more in advertising and do a better job at getting players and games in front of the main street NY media.
The low attendance was all about the weather.
I also think there were more people in house than many would think. A lot of people stayed up high in the concourses and under cover in order to stay warm and dry.
I am sticking with my belief that we sold a lot more than 18K tickets for that match.
I also think there were more people in house than many would think. A lot of people stayed up high in the concourses and under cover in order to stay warm and dry.
I am sticking with my belief that we sold a lot more than 18K tickets for that match.
You seem to be missing the way MLS has positioned itself as a sport in the US. Right now soccer is a cheap and accessible way to fulfill the need for a person to go to a generic sporting event. This is especially important for millennials, since they by in large aren't really making money yet. Do remember that the people on this forum would be considered hardcore fans by any measure, we almost all go to multiple games a year and spend time discussing the team on an online forum. Our perspectives and desires, while important, do not drive the profitability of the team.
MLS's ability to capture marginal soccer/sports fans drives the sport forward.
Media coverage comes as part and parcel of actually becoming a popular sport, it was literally last year that MLS soccer became equal to generic programming in terms of fox sports viewership. When there is a basketball game lead in to a MLS game people turn off their TV's or change the channel.
Why as a journalist would you waste valuable column inches on something that is not very popular? The only possible reason is that you either cover the sport as part of a niche media platform, i.e. empireofsoccer, or you want an in with a rapidly growing sport. The latter can be accomplished with about an article every month or two, which is roughly what the NY Post does.
The only way to get more coverage in the media is to straight up pay them for it, which MLS has definitely done in the past.
Also, from personal anecdote, NYCFC does a rather good job of advertising in subways. Its not omnipresent, but they are definitely spending money on advertising.
WRT to the stadium, I knew we weren't going to have one for awhile the moment Bloomberg left office and the stadium wasn't done. To Deblasio we are owned by a famously wealthy oil Sheikh, one of the richest men in the world, why should the city have to budge in order to build a stadium? To the Sheikh NYCFC is an investment opportunity, why would you spend stupid money to build a stadium if doing so significantly impacts your future ROI?
Bloomberg, an incredibly wealthy man himself, was able to look as NYCFC and see it for what it is, an investment.
It has been done before, but I can't recall the specific teams. Many contracts are tied to announced attendance, so when they have a big discrepancy, they may choose to announce a lower number to cut costs. Some contracts that may be tied to attendance are vendors, security, police details, fee's to the stadium, fee's to the City/State etc.
Not saying NYCFC contracts are built this way, but it would give an answer as to why they would do this.
While i'm not sure I agree that this was a turnstile number, as that may seem generous, but I agree that this number was not developed in the same way as previous seasons attendance numbers were announced.
Did anyone who traded in their seats happen to notice if they put your seats up for sale afterwards or if they didn't bother/get around to it? If they did not put them up, then I could get behind the argument that several thousand STH's, seeing the awful weather, traded in their seats. Sadly, I forgot all about that option and got stuck with unsold tickets.
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