For me, the ticket prices are keeping me away. To take a family of 4, it is just too expensive. They don’t seem to understand that for families, the competition is not Cowboys and Mavericks; it’s Roughriders and Cinemark. I can even get Rangers tickets for much less than FCD tickets. The pizza family deal is not attractive because my family doesn’t like the pizzas. Price the tickets competitively (e.g., $5 for endline, $15 for east), or give me something like the Roughriders’ all-you-can-eat deals for <$20, and we’re there. And don’t blame this on the economy. We had almost the worst attendance in the league last year, and management’s action is to RAISE prices???? How could they think that would work? And please don’t claim that the prices are competitive with other major league sports, because as I said before, the competition is not the Cowboys and the Mavericks.

One other thought: Aggressively improve the stadium atmosphere by SPONSORING supporters’ groups. Dallas Stars did this last year by giving FREE tickets (I think they were subsidized by a sponsor) to an entire section (small, but still…). When we have a large supporters’ section (one that actually outnumbers the players), the atmosphere will dramatically improve, and this will draw more fans than billboards or newspaper ads.

Kind of hard to tell whether marketing would help since FCD/Dallas Burn have never gotten any. Approach is what is wrong. Try and attract kids so they can become fans for life and as soon as they grow up a bit and become rowdy the FO doesn’t want them until they have kids.

Buzz, I think you are missing something very important here and that is that the club use to at least attempt to advertise through a variety of channels, and since they moved to Frisco, it seems they buy a billboard and pray. I agree winning would be a help, but actually making people aware of your product would do wonders for the club. I am a huge fan, and even I don’t know which games are home and which are away, that tells you plenty. Until they decide to make this a first class organization and put effort into treating customers, players and staff right, and actually market the club, they will remain a laughing stock.

The raising prices move was the big one in my book. They could have seen that perhaps the economy wasn’t going to do so great at the time the season tickets were released – there was already enough data and time to put the brakes on. I argued with my rep for about a month before I bought mine.

With that said, last year I sat in a room of STH’s that basically said they were not renewing if the FO lowered the street value of ticket prices too far below ST value. What are they supposed to do when club/suite owners say something like that?

Side note: I read an article a while back which suggested that MLS is operating like a casino in a lot of cities – mainly, that the “whale” is bringing in far more money than the “minnow”; that filling the clubhouse is a better looking road to break-even than filling the stands. I wonder if FCD looks at things the same way.

You can also look at it like this:

Pre HSG, attendance from 1997 to 2002 went up 36%.

Then HSG took over, moved the team to Southlake, and went back to the Cotton Bowl for a couple of years. So let’s put those debacle years aside.

2006 was the first full year at PHP. The equivalent of 1996, the first year of the team. Curiousity, excitement, etc drove attendance.

Then from 07 to the present, under HSG, attendance has dropped 42%.

So in a nutshell, after the initial first year of excitement either because of the start of the franchise or of a new facility, the following happened:
Non HSG: 36% INCREASE in attendance year over year.
HSG: 42% DECLINE in attendance year over year.

No matter how the numbers are crunched, we get the same results. The franchise, at least in the stands, was on its way up, until HSG took over, took the train off the tracks, and set it on a course to mediocrity.

As a father of four, I totally agree with Scooter. My kids don’t view going to see FCD anywhere in the same league as seeing the Mavs, Boys, or Rangers.

The comparison of Roughriders or Cinemark being the other option for most families is right on the money.

I know a lot of FCD fans say that they don’t want the soccer moms and all their kids at the games, but some of those families have soccer moms and dads that would love to go, but we are not going to spend almost 3 figures getting the family in the gate.

the ticket prices are too high. the cheapest ticket is 20 bucks. Rangers upper deck tickets are 7 bucks.

I don’t want to pay 20 bucks per person, drive way up to frisco, and watch Saragosa suck in the middle of the field.

I’m more likely to go see a game if they keep playing the young guys…brek/wallace/avila/mccarty.

As a STH paying top dollar, I would MUCH rather see a stadium FULL of people, and I could care less how little they paid for the seats, as long as the ushers do their job and keep squatters away from the expensive seats, which they are finally doing this year. I think $5.00 and $10.00 tickets for end line and deep sidelines would be awesome, and so would $15.00 for the middle three sections of the east sideline.

Just a few more thousand per game a $5/$10/$15 is quite a bit of money, and big draws are contagious to the fans, creating a lot of energy. It is important that we are able to create a great atmosphere, especially for people showing up for the first time. We cannot expect them to get “hooked” on the experience when there are only 4,000 bums in seats.

Wake Up FO!

Two words: Ticket Prices.
Yes, there are many other factors, but that’s the largest by far.

FCD lost me when they crashed out of the playoffs in 2006 and did not play in the MLS Cup in their own stadium. Win the Cup that year and the whole thing is different.

I just keep up with 3rd degree because of the quality insight from Buzz, stories just like this.

The only thing holding Dynamo back is a stadium. The only thing keeping FCD afloat is the stadium.

This attitude of not support the team for any reason sucks. This franchise will be MOVED if it’s not supported. FCD is an blight to the league and when TV games show about 100 fans (I know it’s the sunnny side and people don’t like to sit there) it’s the beginning of the end. USSF will take over the grounds and stadium will just be used for speciall events.
It came down the Dallas and Miami for elimination last time and it looks like they made a bad call.

I believe that going to an FCD game at PHP should be a positive, dynamic experience. For me, 98% of that experience is watching and getting excited about the home team on the field as they work hard and win. I’m not saying the players don’t work hard but, quite frankly, I haven’t seen consistent winning going on here in the past two seasons and the team will not make the playoffs again this year, either.

Fans want to identify themselves with a winner. The name on the jersey says Dallas , thus they are representing us to the rest of the league and we want to be represented as winners. If the ownership wants to win its fans back and create new ones, they need to recognize this. Something isn’t working and needs to be fixed. Is it the coach? Is it certain players? Whatever it is, we as fans are paying our hard earned money for the on-field product. If the fans don’t like the product, the fans won’t show up.

Dallas has been offering ticket specials for games – below $20 per, so you need to watch for those. Also, FCD prices are right in line or below what other teams charge. The local Frisco community needs to start going to games rather than driving past the place. The team on the field sucks, which needs to be fixed as well. The coach blows imo too.

No amount of marketing will bring out the educated soccer fan population of the metroplex. They know that the situation is hopeless, and will continue to be so until changes are made at the top of the organization. The president must go. The GM must go. The incoming regime will know what to do with the coach.

The people looking for an event that the current marketing strategy will attract to the stadium will all be one and done attendees to FC Dallas games because they obviously are not the “event” that they were promised in the ad.

I had season tickets for the first 3 years at PHP along with 2 other dads on our kids soccer team and we would take our 3 boys to the games and we all had a total blast until they started raising ticket prices and charging too much for a stinking beer. I would take my turn to get the beers and come back $25 bucks lighter for a round of 3…it is that simple…professional sports does not have pricing power now. The fans do…now I might go to a couple of games a year but may not go at all if they keep on trotting all these minor league players onto the best field in professional sports. Any player that has any speed or scoring ability is shipped out and they expect us to keep coming? I want this venture to succeed more than any in my life. I have been waiting for this since the Tornados played at Hillcrest High School. get it right, please!

Allow me to go all stat nerd on you here. I did a regression analysis, and while I agree that there aren’t enough data points to give much confidence, I came up with a formula that explains attendance within 500 for 6 of the 12 years between 1997 and 2009.

First, calculate the team’s “success%”, which I define as % of total possible points. For example, in 2009, FCD’s 2 wins and 4 draws out of 12 total games is 10 points out of a possible 36, so their success% is 28 percent.

So now use this formula:

This year’s success% x 16,477 +
last year’s success% x 8,285 +
1,930 for years at PHP.

Example using 2006:
0.5417 x 16,477 + 0.5000 x 8,285 + 1,930 = 14,998. That’s very close to the actual result of 14,892.

The biggest miss this model makes is in 1997, when attendance comes in almost 1,700 under the prediction. That was the second year at the Cotton Bowl.

Interestingly, there are two years where the actual results are significantly better than the model’s prediction. In 2001 and 2002 the results were better than predicted by 1,211 and 970. Both years were GM’d by Swift. Hmm.

Again, there’s so few data points, it’s a little risky to make conclusions. And if I lost everyone–sorry! But this is my idea of fun.

[...] Attendance Depths post and Not So Fast analysis of last week drew some interesting responses from people, several of whom are much better [...]