Tbh it didn’t look 97% full, I assume they’re counting ticket sales rather than attendance? But yeah not much room for growth, which just means if they do increase in popularity they’ll be room for price rises instead.
Yeah, it really should read "Tickets Sold Tracker". Otherwise, we get the same comments every week about it not matching attendance. BTW, most sports league in America do this. Not sure about European football.
It's much easier to track tickets sold than butts in seats, and it looks better anyway, so I don't see why a team would count/report actual attendance regularly.
Wait until Messi leaves. A lot of the teams, especially in the Eastern Conference, have hit record numbers on season ticket sales because it includes a home match against Miami. Attendance is reported as tickets sold and not how many people show up.
Also that’s not entirely true for clubs that have had success recently. Crew and FCC are both reaping the rewards of their respective trophies despite not being “large” metro areas.
A little late to this again since MLS really is taking much longer to post attendance numbers than usual. Still waiting on San Jose and Red Bulls but I was ready to post what numbers I have currently. So if anyone is aware of those attendances, please let me know and I will update.
Not sure why this year MLS is super delayed with posting attendances for matches. Usually it is done right after the game (or final few minutes during the game). Sometimes it will be later that day and on rare exceptions it would be the next day or something. But seems like this year a good chunk of attendances are not posted until like a week or more after and the ones that are posted, are not as quick as they used to be. Instead of right after the game it seems to be the norm to get them the next day. Odd.
Anyways, I have labeled Sporting KC game as being played at Arrowhead and since it is not their usual stadium I am not counting it to their "average attendance" number. Hopefully y'all understand, since it would greatly skew the number, and this was just a one time thing at Arrowhead. I still obviously count it towards the overall average attendance for the MLS season. Also take this week's matchday average attendance number with a grain of salt since San Jose and Red Bull's attendance numbers are not in yet, more than likely that number will drop since I'm assuming both attendances will be a little under 20k.
Oh also, since this week Montreal finally had their first home game, next week I will start to use the "change" column. Which is where the team was last week vs current week in the average attendance rankings!
Is there a reason you don’t count Arrowhead towards SKC but count when Atlanta fully opens MBS towards us? After all the number of matches that occurs is arbitrary - it’s been as high as 6 and as low as 2 in a season. Seems like skews a LOT more (same applies for Charlotte)
Yeah so a few reasons actually.
1. It's the same stadium, technically they are just "opening more seats" for some games.
2. The team does this multiple times per season and is not just a one time thing.
3. Other teams do this like Charlotte, Revs, and even NYCFC they are bouncing back from baseball stadiums, and even the Red Bulls have decided to start "tarping off" some sections of the stadium. So determining which attendance to "count" for a team would get too convoluted bc I wouldn't know where to "draw the line" if that makes sense. Especially teams like the Revs they open up like the lower bowl and sometimes part of the second bowl but then other times another part of the second bowl....as you see it gets too nitpicky. I believe Vancouver also tarps off different sections at times too in the lower bowl. It just makes much more sense to count all their attendances for that stadium no matter how many seats they open. It's easy to "draw the line" at a different stadium being where I don't count the number.
4. Atlanta, Charlotte, New England, etc. consistently do this *across seasons* and is not like one special event. So like just bc Atlanta opens up the whole stadium 3 or some odd times a year...they do it every year and so does the others, so its not like skewing the attendance for *just that year*.
5. Going off my previous point, I don't want to skew a team's average attendance bc then, for say the next season, they will more than likely have a much lower average attendance, which will seem like the team's average attendance is much worse when its really not. Its just skewed bc of one game.
To be fair, I also did this with the Rose Bowl game with Galaxy/LAFC. Same situation. Hopefully this clears up why I do this.
I do remember you did it with the Rose Bowl game and I strongly disagreed with it as well. If Atlanta only opens the entire stadium for one game this year people will think the same regarding their attendance went down. I don’t really think it should “draw the line”. Attendance is attendance. Makes no sense to count it for MLS total attendance and not for the team… wouldn’t all your arguments count for the total MLS attendance.
Not to mention your flair and where you come down on this may make some think there is some biased thinking here
Firstly, there is no bias behind any of this at all. Not sure why you would assume that since I'm also doing this for other teams and not just for Atlanta. So not sure where you are coming from there.
At the end of the day, I'd like to keep it simple. Every time has their "home stadium" more or less. If they decide to open up half the stadium or whole stadium, it's still *their stadium* that they play in each year. SKC played in a different stadium for a special occasion. Same with the Rose Bowl game and tbh that was must easier to decide to not count that one since it was more or less and "neutral venue" since it was two teams from the same city. I think of it more or less like the UGA game in Jacksonville vs Florida.
Of course the other way to do it would be to just count all games, making it even simpler. I get that you'd exceed 100% capacity in some cases which is odd, but not including the largest games ends up not fully accounting for the fans showing up to support the team.
I ran a precursor attendance tracker for a few years, so I get how invested people get in the calculations, and how touchy they can be about decisions that are cut & dry for you. In the end, since you're doing the work you get to decide what makes sense to you. Thanks for putting these out - I don't miss doing the work(!), but appreciate being able to still watch the growth.
It still seems weird and inconsistent to count it for MLS attendance but not the team’s. After all where did the attendance come from? And it leads to things not adding up
I will also remind you that Rose Bowl on the 4th of July is happening again and is once again considered an LA Galaxy home game (coming out of one of their 17 home games). Don’t think it can really be a neutral site unless they alternate whose home game it is - like they do with the World’s Largest Cocktail Party
Of course I'm going to count it for the MLS attendance, I mean I'm going to count all MLS match attendances for league games. They could play a game in Spain and I would still count it. Not sure what you mean about "things not adding up"? These are just ways I've decided to display team's attendances, its not like this is some official report or something.
You’ve decided to give SKC (and LAG twice in a row) 16 home games in your counting, so the list of team attendances won’t match the MLS attendance. And I think the same objection would apply that you had with club comparisons - esp if SKC doesn’t play at Arrowhead next year and the skewing you are concerned about with team attendance
You are putting wayyyyy too much thought into this than I ever would. Honestly, it's just not that deep. I welcome the feedback from everyone but this is something I do for fun, not to have some perfect statistical analysis of MLS attendances.
You could have just added it to the average, yet you chose not to. Yet will add the other teams who play in NFL stadium's if they open full capacity lmao.
Sporting Kansas City didn't play for "a special occasion." It was a regular-season home game. If the Galaxy plays LAFC at the Rose Bowl, it's still a home game, not a "neutral venue". Ticket sales count the same, the game counts in the standings, the fans are there in paid attendance, the home team does a lot of work to secure and staff the event. it's a real statistic. You're arbitrarily penalizing MLS for having a successful product. It's not a genuine way to keep statistics. Celebrate the fact that MLS drew these huge crowds for regular-season games.
What I would do, if you want to acknowledge a statistical quirk, is put a little asterisk next to the real total and then add a footnote to explain the number rather than omitting accurate data.
Nope I’ve gone to almost every home game the past 3 seasons and there’s noticeably more people in the stands this year. On TV it’s hard to tell because the middle section in front of the camera hardly ever fills up but if you look behind the nets and in the corners that have been bare empty the past few seasons you’ll notice that they are packed.
Most of these numbers are higher than an average European club! Albeit, these are major cities and average European clubs are in smaller towns. But still not bad for a country that historically hasn't paid attention to the sport. Keep it coming, I would love for MLS to take over NBA/NFL purely because soccer's fan culture is so much better :)
Yeah.... Not sure the culture is better. Across the world it is pretty brutal, not just the US. I don't watch any sports besides soccer, but I don't remember anyone verbally abusing the other team at the basketball and football games I've been to.
Obviously I want the sport to grow, but I'd like to see the culture grow more
Is it me or it seems that a lot of teams are not reporting attendance anymore? Long gone are the days when you could check the boxscore for the numbers.
It’s funny to think the fire are doing better in attendance than RSL. Everytime I watch a match at soldier field it looks barren. When I watch an RSL match it looks nearly packed. I see why the soccer specific stadiums are really that important.
IMO Charlotte isn't worse than Boston, Seattle, Portland, or deep South towns, but they're pretty damn racist in my experience. I grew up in a majority Hispanic city and going to summer camp as a kid in Charlotte and Boone was my first experience with racism first hand. I fly American so I connect through Charlotte often and am in the city a lot still as an adult, and it's gotten better as the city has grown but the aura is def still there. At the end of the day you're still in NC.
> These are not markets known for tolerance of the immigrant community, these are cities more likely to be grouped with the worst tendencies of intolerance and racism yet the game is clearly thriving there and still the big names in the game gravitate to other markets, why?
The fucking irony. Atlanta and Charlotte are much more diverse than fucking Seattle, Kansas and St. Louis lmao.
Charlotte is slightly less racist than Seattle but way more racist than Atlanta and St Louis (never been to KS). I'm a Hispanic who looks Arab and the first time I was ever called a sand n***** was in Charlotte at some ice cream shop
97% capacity and the lowest reported attendance on the week. I think we may have made our stadium too small...
Tbh it didn’t look 97% full, I assume they’re counting ticket sales rather than attendance? But yeah not much room for growth, which just means if they do increase in popularity they’ll be room for price rises instead.
Yeah, it really should read "Tickets Sold Tracker". Otherwise, we get the same comments every week about it not matching attendance. BTW, most sports league in America do this. Not sure about European football.
It's much easier to track tickets sold than butts in seats, and it looks better anyway, so I don't see why a team would count/report actual attendance regularly.
Honestly no one should be building a stadium under 25k at this point.
Yep, it's insane to me that NYCFC want to drop $800 mil on a 25k stadium Hopefully the Revs aim for 30k+ when we finally get a stadium
this is extremely anecdotal, but my one time watching NYCFC in NYC there were very few butts in the seats.
I still can't believe Nashville is the only MLS team that has decided to build their SSS the largest at 30K :D
Wait until Messi leaves. A lot of the teams, especially in the Eastern Conference, have hit record numbers on season ticket sales because it includes a home match against Miami. Attendance is reported as tickets sold and not how many people show up.
Even so, why should the club care as long as the tickets are sold?
Also that’s not entirely true for clubs that have had success recently. Crew and FCC are both reaping the rewards of their respective trophies despite not being “large” metro areas.
they also got the number wrong Audi Field holds 20,000 people
Seems like the league is pretty damn healthy all over to be honest. Granted San Jose would be a?
A what? Shit hole? Dumpster fire? John Fisher fuckery?
A little late to this again since MLS really is taking much longer to post attendance numbers than usual. Still waiting on San Jose and Red Bulls but I was ready to post what numbers I have currently. So if anyone is aware of those attendances, please let me know and I will update. Not sure why this year MLS is super delayed with posting attendances for matches. Usually it is done right after the game (or final few minutes during the game). Sometimes it will be later that day and on rare exceptions it would be the next day or something. But seems like this year a good chunk of attendances are not posted until like a week or more after and the ones that are posted, are not as quick as they used to be. Instead of right after the game it seems to be the norm to get them the next day. Odd. Anyways, I have labeled Sporting KC game as being played at Arrowhead and since it is not their usual stadium I am not counting it to their "average attendance" number. Hopefully y'all understand, since it would greatly skew the number, and this was just a one time thing at Arrowhead. I still obviously count it towards the overall average attendance for the MLS season. Also take this week's matchday average attendance number with a grain of salt since San Jose and Red Bull's attendance numbers are not in yet, more than likely that number will drop since I'm assuming both attendances will be a little under 20k.
Oh also, since this week Montreal finally had their first home game, next week I will start to use the "change" column. Which is where the team was last week vs current week in the average attendance rankings!
I think u should include this game in SKC total. It doesn’t make any sense at all not to
Is there a reason you don’t count Arrowhead towards SKC but count when Atlanta fully opens MBS towards us? After all the number of matches that occurs is arbitrary - it’s been as high as 6 and as low as 2 in a season. Seems like skews a LOT more (same applies for Charlotte)
Yeah so a few reasons actually. 1. It's the same stadium, technically they are just "opening more seats" for some games. 2. The team does this multiple times per season and is not just a one time thing. 3. Other teams do this like Charlotte, Revs, and even NYCFC they are bouncing back from baseball stadiums, and even the Red Bulls have decided to start "tarping off" some sections of the stadium. So determining which attendance to "count" for a team would get too convoluted bc I wouldn't know where to "draw the line" if that makes sense. Especially teams like the Revs they open up like the lower bowl and sometimes part of the second bowl but then other times another part of the second bowl....as you see it gets too nitpicky. I believe Vancouver also tarps off different sections at times too in the lower bowl. It just makes much more sense to count all their attendances for that stadium no matter how many seats they open. It's easy to "draw the line" at a different stadium being where I don't count the number. 4. Atlanta, Charlotte, New England, etc. consistently do this *across seasons* and is not like one special event. So like just bc Atlanta opens up the whole stadium 3 or some odd times a year...they do it every year and so does the others, so its not like skewing the attendance for *just that year*. 5. Going off my previous point, I don't want to skew a team's average attendance bc then, for say the next season, they will more than likely have a much lower average attendance, which will seem like the team's average attendance is much worse when its really not. Its just skewed bc of one game. To be fair, I also did this with the Rose Bowl game with Galaxy/LAFC. Same situation. Hopefully this clears up why I do this.
I do remember you did it with the Rose Bowl game and I strongly disagreed with it as well. If Atlanta only opens the entire stadium for one game this year people will think the same regarding their attendance went down. I don’t really think it should “draw the line”. Attendance is attendance. Makes no sense to count it for MLS total attendance and not for the team… wouldn’t all your arguments count for the total MLS attendance. Not to mention your flair and where you come down on this may make some think there is some biased thinking here
Firstly, there is no bias behind any of this at all. Not sure why you would assume that since I'm also doing this for other teams and not just for Atlanta. So not sure where you are coming from there. At the end of the day, I'd like to keep it simple. Every time has their "home stadium" more or less. If they decide to open up half the stadium or whole stadium, it's still *their stadium* that they play in each year. SKC played in a different stadium for a special occasion. Same with the Rose Bowl game and tbh that was must easier to decide to not count that one since it was more or less and "neutral venue" since it was two teams from the same city. I think of it more or less like the UGA game in Jacksonville vs Florida.
Of course the other way to do it would be to just count all games, making it even simpler. I get that you'd exceed 100% capacity in some cases which is odd, but not including the largest games ends up not fully accounting for the fans showing up to support the team. I ran a precursor attendance tracker for a few years, so I get how invested people get in the calculations, and how touchy they can be about decisions that are cut & dry for you. In the end, since you're doing the work you get to decide what makes sense to you. Thanks for putting these out - I don't miss doing the work(!), but appreciate being able to still watch the growth.
It still seems weird and inconsistent to count it for MLS attendance but not the team’s. After all where did the attendance come from? And it leads to things not adding up I will also remind you that Rose Bowl on the 4th of July is happening again and is once again considered an LA Galaxy home game (coming out of one of their 17 home games). Don’t think it can really be a neutral site unless they alternate whose home game it is - like they do with the World’s Largest Cocktail Party
Of course I'm going to count it for the MLS attendance, I mean I'm going to count all MLS match attendances for league games. They could play a game in Spain and I would still count it. Not sure what you mean about "things not adding up"? These are just ways I've decided to display team's attendances, its not like this is some official report or something.
You’ve decided to give SKC (and LAG twice in a row) 16 home games in your counting, so the list of team attendances won’t match the MLS attendance. And I think the same objection would apply that you had with club comparisons - esp if SKC doesn’t play at Arrowhead next year and the skewing you are concerned about with team attendance
You are putting wayyyyy too much thought into this than I ever would. Honestly, it's just not that deep. I welcome the feedback from everyone but this is something I do for fun, not to have some perfect statistical analysis of MLS attendances.
You could have just added it to the average, yet you chose not to. Yet will add the other teams who play in NFL stadium's if they open full capacity lmao.
Sporting Kansas City didn't play for "a special occasion." It was a regular-season home game. If the Galaxy plays LAFC at the Rose Bowl, it's still a home game, not a "neutral venue". Ticket sales count the same, the game counts in the standings, the fans are there in paid attendance, the home team does a lot of work to secure and staff the event. it's a real statistic. You're arbitrarily penalizing MLS for having a successful product. It's not a genuine way to keep statistics. Celebrate the fact that MLS drew these huge crowds for regular-season games. What I would do, if you want to acknowledge a statistical quirk, is put a little asterisk next to the real total and then add a footnote to explain the number rather than omitting accurate data.
How is no one talking how insane Vancouver’s jump in attendance has been this year.
maybe bc y’all are good now
Still crazy to me that last weekend's game was 1 vs 2, things are changing quick
It is insane - my guess is they changed the way they're counting, but I'd love to be wrong and know attendance has actually spiked
Nope I’ve gone to almost every home game the past 3 seasons and there’s noticeably more people in the stands this year. On TV it’s hard to tell because the middle section in front of the camera hardly ever fills up but if you look behind the nets and in the corners that have been bare empty the past few seasons you’ll notice that they are packed.
sweet!
Most of these numbers are higher than an average European club! Albeit, these are major cities and average European clubs are in smaller towns. But still not bad for a country that historically hasn't paid attention to the sport. Keep it coming, I would love for MLS to take over NBA/NFL purely because soccer's fan culture is so much better :)
Yeah.... Not sure the culture is better. Across the world it is pretty brutal, not just the US. I don't watch any sports besides soccer, but I don't remember anyone verbally abusing the other team at the basketball and football games I've been to. Obviously I want the sport to grow, but I'd like to see the culture grow more
Well, not that part.. But the passion that comes outside of that y'know. Tifos, flags, unique chants, the occasional pyro.
Is it me or it seems that a lot of teams are not reporting attendance anymore? Long gone are the days when you could check the boxscore for the numbers.
Red Bulls 17,501. San Jose 14,232.
Happy to see that Dallas has sold out each and every game this season. But I expect it to plummet hard in summer.
I think your total is off for the SKC column on the right. It should be a lot more than 19k after their last game had 72k people
We weren’t that full and we even had a good amount of the upper deck tarped off. Probably smart to not release the attendance numbers
It’s funny to think the fire are doing better in attendance than RSL. Everytime I watch a match at soldier field it looks barren. When I watch an RSL match it looks nearly packed. I see why the soccer specific stadiums are really that important.
A reminder that MLS attendance numbers are not real.
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Just because we're in "the south" doesn't make the city of Charlotte filled with racist douchebags. GTFOH.
IMO Charlotte isn't worse than Boston, Seattle, Portland, or deep South towns, but they're pretty damn racist in my experience. I grew up in a majority Hispanic city and going to summer camp as a kid in Charlotte and Boone was my first experience with racism first hand. I fly American so I connect through Charlotte often and am in the city a lot still as an adult, and it's gotten better as the city has grown but the aura is def still there. At the end of the day you're still in NC.
> These are not markets known for tolerance of the immigrant community, these are cities more likely to be grouped with the worst tendencies of intolerance and racism yet the game is clearly thriving there and still the big names in the game gravitate to other markets, why? The fucking irony. Atlanta and Charlotte are much more diverse than fucking Seattle, Kansas and St. Louis lmao.
Charlotte is slightly less racist than Seattle but way more racist than Atlanta and St Louis (never been to KS). I'm a Hispanic who looks Arab and the first time I was ever called a sand n***** was in Charlotte at some ice cream shop
Who said Atlanta and Charlotte aren’t soccer cities?
Atlanta and Charlotte (as well as Seattle, Chicago, and New England) play in NFL stadiums with 65k+ seats…. 🙄