MLS attendances boosted, falsified

[Daniel]

Thread: http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=415933

Original article: http://www.signonsandiego.com/sports...z1s27goal.html

"In one early-season FC Dallas match against Colorado, 1,259 tickets were sold and 7,347 were comps."


From BS:

-On average 22% of regular-season match tickets last season was complimentary

-The average paid attendance for the 2005 season was 10,746 per match, or 29 percent less than the 15,108 “official attendance” reported by the league.

-Average paid attendance with international doubleheaders taken out was less than 10,000 for 2005 season.

-Galaxy leads in paid attendance by a lot: 19,940. Second is RSL with 12,689. FC Dallas is last with 6,634. Half of the teams are below 10,000.

-League-wide paid attendance for midweek matches is 6,477.

-Often, announced attendance is higher than even the total tickets distributed number. Columbus had a conspicuous difference of exactly 1000 people between announced attendance and distributed tickets for 9 games in a row last season. Columbus spokesman said the difference is due to vouchers and credentialed personnel.

-2006 media guide claims that 2.9 million fans attended MLS regular season games in 2005. The Game Attendance Summary reports only 2.65 million total tickets were distributed, and of those just over 2 million were paid tickets.

[Richard]

Your point being?

[DoyleG]

MLS padding attendance to gain new sponsors.

[RJB]

This doesn't concern me.

With many pro-clubs in Europe playing with similarly low attendance numbers, particularly in the SPL, and EPL, I don't see this as a big concern for MLS.

[Richard]

Sponsors and others are concerned with the number of seats occupied, not whether or not the tickets for them were bought or complimentary.

[Daniel]

Seeing a team like Dallas only selling 1,259 tickets for a game or a team having 1.5x more comp tickets than sold means that these teams are not healthy enterprises.

[Calgary Boomer]

And the USL doesn't do the exact same thing? Have you been to a Lynx game? Same with Charleston.

[DoyleG]

quote:Originally posted by Calgary Boomer

And the USL doesn't do the exact same thing? Have you been to a Lynx game? Same with Charleston.

But MLS is a professional league with professional conduct. They shouldn't have to be resorting to such things.

[Daniel]

Yeah, I'll hold MLS to a different standard than the Lynx...

[amacpher]

quote:Originally posted by RJB

This doesn't concern me.

With many pro-clubs in Europe playing with similarly low attendance numbers, particularly in the SPL, and EPL, I don't see this as a big concern for MLS.

EPL? Really?

Nonsense.