2017 Attendance Thread

[mgarbowski]

I decided to move past the eyeball test and play with the actual numbers, and while dropping the biggest event games from the averages does bring things closer, even with the most favorable such adjustment I tried, 2017 is notably lower.
All numbers below are in thousands, for 2015 - 2016 - 2017 in order:

Raw Average
29.0 27.2 22.3
Drop Highest 3 Each Year, Plus Hartford
26.3 25.4 21.8
Drop Any Game More than 20% Above That Year's Average, Plus Hartford
26.8 25.4 22.3
Drop Highest 9 Games Regardless of Which Year, Plus Hartford
26.3 24.6 22.3
Drop Just Hartford and Citi Field
29.0 27.2 23.3

2017 has only one of the top 10 attendance levels all time (Red bull derby). 2015 has 4 and 2016 has 5.
Finally, exclude Hartford and even Citi Field. 2017 has 8 of the lowest attendance levels all time. 2015 has 2 and 2016 has none.

There's no getting around that the floor was notably lower this year than in prior years. 2016 was also more front loaded in early cold weather, with 3 Home games each in March and April. 2017 had 2 plus 2.

 

[Jon]

I decided to move past the eyeball test and lay with the actual numbers, and while dropping the biggest event games from the averages does bring things closer, even with the most favorable such adjustment I tried, 2017 is notably lower.
All numbers below are in thousands, for 2015 - 2016 - 2017 in order:

Raw Average
29.0 27.2 22.3
Drop Highest 3 Each Year, Plus Hartford
26.3 25.4 21.8
Drop Any Game More than 20% Above That Year's Average, Plus Hartford
26.8 25.4 22.3
Drop Highest 9 Games Regardless of Which Year, Plus Hartford
26.3 24.6 22.3
Drop Just Hartford and Citi Field
29.0 27.2 23.3

2017 has only one of the top 10 attendance levels all time (Red bull derby). 2015 has 4 and 2016 has 5.
Finally, exclude Hartford and even Citi Field. 2017 has 8 of the lowest attendance levels all time. 2015 has 2 and 2016 has none.

There's no getting around that the floor was notably lower this year than in prior years. 2016 was also more front loaded in early cold weather, with 3 Home games each in March and April. 2017 had 2 plus 2.

It's definitely a noticeable drop in attendance. In my conversation with Patricof over the summer, it sounded like NYCFC wasn't even able to attribute the drop to any one thing in particular.

 

[Gotham Gator]

Looking at the graph, it seems the to be mostly a matter of decreased attendance for event games. In 2015 the First Historic Home Opener and First Historic Red Bull Derby really skewed the average up, and nothing in 2016 or 2017 come close. Note that only 5 games in 2015 were at or above average for the year. Those 2, Pirlo's first game, the last game, and a seeming random game against Columbus in late August.
In 2016 the home opener was no longer historic, the 2 derbies drew well, as did the Galaxy game when a bunch of people came out for Gerrard, but they were much less less than the big games in 2015. Meanwhile the average attendance of all the other games -- just by eyeballing it -- seems pretty much the same as 2015. Now in 2017, the big event games were fewer: just one derby, a ho-hum home opener, and no special events of other kinds. Then the fiasco of 10k in Hartford and a 20k in Citi that I think was very impressive, but drags behind prior season closers. Adjust for that, and again my eyeball test says the rest of the games are pretty close.

I think the story is that for mundane games there has not been a dropoff, but there has been less buzz and attendance for the buzz games. I also think that's less of a problem. It would be much worse if the opposite were true.

There is a lot of truth to this. One thing to add about 2015, however, is that our attendance rose steadily as the season wore on. Throw out the two big games, and you see a solid upward trend. This includes 3 games at or over 30,000 over the last 7. There was a ton of positive momentum around the Club as that season ended, and that’s despite a pretty bad team. That’s since been lost, and I am not really sure why.

 

[mgarbowski]

There is a lot of truth to this. One thing to add about 2015, however, is that our attendance rose steadily as the season wore on. Throw out the two big games, and you see a solid upward trend. This includes 3 games at or over 30,000 over the last 7. There was a ton of positive momentum around the Club as that season ended, and that’s despite a pretty bad team. That’s since been lost, and I am not really sure why.

The club worked hard to build the ST base in 2015 and it worked. As the year went on they kept announcing 7k, 10k, 12k, 15k and in the end they hit the target of 20k. That's why the base attendance kept going up. In the second half of 2015, they did not have a total lower than 25k.
In 2016, I think they lived off the STs they sold in 2015. The numbers never went below 22k. Then in 2017 they went below 22k 3 times in the first 6 games. That has to be a drop in ST renewals. Why is anyone's guess. No stadium news? Replacing Lampard with a non-superstar? Flaming out against TFC despite a solid season? Prices? Secondary market woes?

 

[LionNYC]

The club worked hard to build the ST base in 2015 and it worked. As the year went on they kept announcing 7k, 10k, 12k, 15k and in the end they hit the target of 20k. That's why the base attendance kept going up. In the second half of 2015, they did not have a total lower than 25k.
In 2016, I think they lived off the STs they sold in 2015. The numbers never went below 22k. Then in 2017 they went below 22k 3 times in the first 6 games. That has to be a drop in ST renewals. Why is anyone's guess. No stadium news? Replacing Lampard with a non-superstar? Flaming out against TFC despite a solid season? Prices? Secondary market woes?

Stadium - Probably
Lampard - Likely
Flaming out against TFC - No, since renewals happened prior to playoffs
Prices - Unlikely, still relatively good value
Secondary Market - YES, there's a huge secondary market for tickets below face value and it's hard to sell the games you aren't going to. If people don't see the benefits of being a STH, then they can just pick the games they want to go see at below market prices.

 

[Ulrich]

Stadium - Probably
Lampard - Likely
Flaming out against TFC - No, since renewals happened prior to playoffs
Prices - Unlikely, still relatively good value
Secondary Market - YES, there's a huge secondary market for tickets below face value and it's hard to sell the games you aren't going to. If people don't see the benefits of being a STH, then they can just pick the games they want to go see at below market prices.

NYCFC needs to proactively curb the supply of available tickets by capping the max for every normal game and only increasing for big tix matches like RB of LAFC. Block the sections behind home plate. Kill that upper party tier that they’ve opened for some companies’ outings, etc. that standing room area with the bar is also a bad idea.

 

[Kjbert]

NYCFC needs to proactively curb the supply of available tickets by capping the max for every normal game and only increasing for big tix matches like RB of LAFC. Block the sections behind home plate. Kill that upper party tier that they’ve opened for some companies’ outings, etc. that standing room area with the bar is also a bad idea.

This is in the works

 

[adam]

NYCFC needs to proactively curb the supply of available tickets by capping the max for every normal game and only increasing for big tix matches like RB of LAFC. Block the sections behind home plate. Kill that upper party tier that they’ve opened for some companies’ outings, etc. that standing room area with the bar is also a bad idea.

You can solve a lot of that by moving to Citi.