MLS Attendance

I was shocked when it was announced attendance was down 2% after adding us.  Down 9% without us though?  wow.  That is nuts.  We just gotta keep going and sell-out every game for a long time to come so we know we did our part.

If you take out the Away Boys, the drop would be even bigger!

JT is right.  Seattle has a good road following, which pumped up other teams’ home attendance.  It’s not just home games.

I also think this goes to show that we need to not only be Sounders supporters, but MLS ambassadors.  It does us no good if we sell out every game but the league goes bankrupt.

We should get the FO to reserve tickets every game for out-of-state tourists.  That way tourists can go back to their home state with a vision of what football can look like in their hometown.

Like Keller said in a recent SI article, “Just come to Seattle, jump into the crowd — if you can get a ticket — and you’ll be a fan for life.”

LJ Reply:
October 28th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Completely agree. Besides that, the FO needs be mindful of this when considering most decisions. We can’t be playing footy all by ourselves… and I really don’t want to imagine having to live through two failed leagues (NASL and MLS) in my lifetime!

Diminishing returns from the Feckham experiment was bound to have this effect on the rest of league attendance.

With the Supporters Summit here in Seattle as part of the MLS Cup experience, we need to make sure that this is communicated and coordinated.  Just got to make sure the Timbers don’t get that memo…

with philly, portland, vancouver, and eventually montreal coming into the league within the next couple years, the attendance won’t be down for long. that’s 5 teams (including us and toronto) that will be selling out consistently. 6 when montreal gets a team. plus, when the economy turns and people actually have jobs, attendance will jump up as well.

A quick Beckham Factor analysis paints a picture. LA dropped about 6K on average from ’08 to ’09. Couple that w/ the difference LA’s aways matches made: In ‘o8 we saw 40K in SJ, 36K in DC, 47K in NY, 30K in Houston and…get this, 26K in KC in a season where they averaged just over 10K. These single match numbers may as well be two or three matches worth of average attendance rolled in to one in each case. LA’s entire season bolstered league attendance.

It’s the Beckham factor. A 9% drop in ’09 not including the Sounders should hardly come as a surprise.

And the Sounders could have sold 40,000 a game but for some reason they don’t want the money.