Causes of Sagging Attendance
Mike Chen’s has an interesting post about the performance of teams compared to attendance. Instead of raw attendance, he uses capacity percentage.
Mike’s table suggest winning draws fans. The Devils fans in Kyle’s misread rant about the trap suggest it’s convenience and possibly price, and I’m not even sure how much stock you can put into the attendance numbers in the first place.
Sometimes there can be a reason behind high attendance, especially short term. Low attendance rarely has a sole cause. Poor team performance, team mismanagement, lousy arena experience, high prices and so on.
Using just two sets of data, Mike’s table (his numbers look like they’re from espn.com) and Team Marketing Report’s Fan Cost Index (which includes ticket pricing), it’s not hard to justify sagging performance in most markets.
Obviously, there will never be a time where every market is winning, but will the league ever be strong enough to have the other factors overlooked by fans enough to start selling out more buildings?
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