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.