This week’s nine matches averaged over 14,800, about 1,300 less than last year’s seven matches.
The NBA and NHL playoffs continue. Boston, Dallas, Denver, Houston and LA have teams alive in the NBA, while the NHL still shows Anaheim, Boston, Chicago and DC(well kind of, the Capitols). I’ll leave it to smarter folks than me to decide the impact on Houston, Chicago and DCU, all of whom had home games this week.
Chicago, despite being just 2 points out of the lead in the east with a game in hand drew under 11,300 with decent weather and perennial powerhouse New England in town. The Texas derby was close to the average for previous Houston matchups, drawing just a bit under 17,000. Columbus, celebrating the 10th anniverary of Crew Stadium ran a lot of promotions, including some price rollbacks to 1999, and still pulled in an ‘average’ crowd of 14,271. Seattle gave the week’s numbers a bump with its by now expected crowd of over 29,000.
After Week 8 the numbers look like this…
5 year comparison | ||||||||
WK 8 | 61 GP | YTD after WK 8 | ||||||
Avg | +/- | GP | Avg | +/- | Avg | +/- | GP | |
2005 | 12,740 | 8 | 14,870 | 14,095 | 49 | |||
2006 | 15,331 | 20.34% | 6 | 16,057 | 7.99% | 15,974 | 13.33% | 47 |
2007 | 13,222 | -13.75% | 7 | 15,024 | -6.43% | 15,067 | -5.68% | 53 |
2008 | 16,165 | 22.26% | 7 | 15,587 | 3.75% | 16,072 | 6.67% | 55 |
2009 | 14,874 | -7.99% | 9 | 14,807 | -5.01% | 14,807 | -7.87% | 61 |
Here are the attendance comparisons to 2008’s equal number of home games :
2008 | 2009 | ||||||
MLS Attendance – Equal # of Home Games | |||||||
Att | Cap | Att | Att +/- | GP | Cap | Cap | |
Seattle | 0 | 0.00% | 29,536 | NA | 5 | 106.63% | 27,700 |
Toronto | 20,082 | 91.37% | 20,180 | 0.49% | 5 | 91.82% | 21,978 |
LA Galaxy | 24,457 | 90.58% | 19,761 | -19.20% | 4 | 73.19% | 27,000 |
Houston | 18,097 | 80.43% | 16,297 | -9.95% | 4 | 72.43% | 22,500 |
D.C. United | 18,802 | 83.57% | 14,561 | -22.55% | 5 | 64.72% | 22,500 |
ChivasUSA | 12,882 | 47.71% | 14,555 | 12.99% | 5 | 53.91% | 27,000 |
Real Salt Lake | 17,802 | 76.96% | 13,451 | -24.44% | 4 | 67.23% | 20,008 |
Columbus Crew | 11,574 | 51.31% | 13,263 | 14.59% | 4 | 58.80% | 22,555 |
Colorado Rapids | 15,582 | 86.16% | 11,037 | -29.17% | 3 | 61.02% | 18,086 |
San Jose | 17,958 | 71.41% | 11,028 | -38.59% | 5 | 86.56% | 10,300 |
Chicago | 16,027 | 80.14% | 10,998 | -31.38% | 4 | 54.99% | 20,000 |
NE Revolution | 9,713 | 43.17% | 10,213 | 5.15% | 2 | 45.39% | 22,500 |
N.Y./N.J. Red Bulls | 13,494 | 53.57% | 9,829 | -27.16% | 4 | 39.02% | 25,189 |
FC Dallas | 13,186 | 64.32% | 9,747 | -26.08% | 3 | 47.55% | 20,500 |
KC Wizards | 9,210 | 88.68% | 9,192 | -0.19% | 4 | 88.51% | 10,385 |
YTD – 61 Games | ||||
Average | Median | %<10K | %>20k | |
2008 | 15,587 | 15,024 | 13.11% | 26.23% |
2009 | 14,807 | 14,051 | 18.03% | 16.39% |
A word about the capacity calculations.
For my calculations, I’ve taken the 4 teams playing in football stadiums, DCU in RFK, Houston in Robertson, New England in Foxboro, and RBNY in the Meadowlands and assigned maximum capacities as follows, DCU-22,500, Houston-22,500, New England-22,500 and RBNY-25189(the posted capacity of Red Bull Arena). I took the 22,500 from an approximate average of the soccer specific stadiums in use. Capacities have also been adjusted for the few games that were moved to larger venues, such as San Jose playing twice in Oakland Alameda Colliseum for 2 of it’s 5 matches in ’08.
Seattle has supposedly added to the listed capacity for the balance of the season. When the new capacity is available, the calculations will reflect that.
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Columbus got its first win, while Chicago remains the only undefeated team, with 2 wins and 6 draws. Chivas USA continues to lead the way with 22 points, 3 more than league toppers Columbus and New England after 61 games last year. San Jose and FC Dallas are still struggling with 5 and 4 points respectively.
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Rookies continue to step. Wallace and Pontius of DCU, Zakuani of Seattle, Gonzalez and de la Garza of LA, Mayern of Chivas USA, John at FCD and Barnes and Alston in New England are getting significant playing time.
In case you missed it, Colorado and New England swapped Generation Adidas players with midfielder Nico Colaluca going to the Revs and defender Rob Valentino heading to the Rapids.
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MLS play-ins continue in the US Open Cup. Cup holder DC United will play RBNY on May 20 at RFK and the Sounders host Colorado at the Starfire Sports complex in Tukwila WA on May 26. The two winners will join the rest of the field in the 3rd round that begins on June 30. The top 6 finishers in the 2008 MLS season earned automatic bids to the 3rd round.
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