IMHO Chicago’s stadium is in a God-awful location. Say what you want but compared to Bridgeview, Frisco is like…..well, much much better. They should have tried to make it work in Naperville if possible – that’s a super nice area that has a very nice mix of hispanics and the very wealthy – plus they weren’t that far from the train station. Perhaps the real estate was just too expensive.

toronto’s pop was about 2.5 million in 2006.

Beckham will also skew attendance in cities visited last year – About 45K and 35K in NY and DC, respectively.

You may want to list a different total population for Real Salt Lake. Since the stadium is located in Sandy (south end of the salt lake valley), and you just got the population of Salt Lake City (north end of the salt lake valley). However, I do wish we could realistically say that nearly 10% of our population attends games. We probably can’t say 10% of our population know the time of the next RSL game.

Can someone PLEASE bring this data to the Town Hall meeting on Saturday? The price of tickets (and the thought of an increase next year), combined with the horrible attendance numbers is really making me nervous.

I wonder if Moose McDowell knows how much farther Naperville is from Chicago than Bridgeview is.

Isn’t the town hall meeting a forum to discuss the on-the-field issues, since its just SH and MH that will be there?

DC has also gotten poured on (rain) at multiple games this year. I am curious to see if there is a positive bounce after the Spring rains end (in some parts of the country) and sunny summer days return. I am guessing that the 2008 attendance numbers reflect the full year and not just up to this point of the season (week 14). I would be curious to compare 2009 numbers now with numbers up to week 14 of 2008. And I agree that the Beckham influence last year has to be considered. Hopefully his return, along with some sun, will be a boost to most clubs. We’ll see…

Awesome to see these ticket price numbers. Very interesting.

If MH is at the meeting and you don’t talk about ticket prices, you are wasting an opportunity. This is not a meeting for on-the-field issues only. Personally, I’m much more worried about the attendance issues than team performance (although there is obviously some direct correlation, there’s not enough, in my opinion).

Markolio,

You can see a YTD comparison of attendance at

http://www.majorleaguesoccerta...t-to-the-ballgame-week-13/4140

If the team were playing better I would go more often regardless of the price. I easily spend $40 for dinner for 2 and would rather see an entertaining game of soccer for the $.

Peter, good breakdown. Thanks for the link.

Thanks, Peter. I hadn’t seen that site before, and it provides some very interesting numbers using an equivalent comparison. It shows Dallas had an average of 13,477 at this time last year compared to the annual average of 13,097. So, less people on average showed up in the second half of 2008. Interesting. Also, that makes the drop in attendance a slightly larger percentage difference between last year at this time versus all of 2008.

I know exactly how far away it is. I’m in Chicago right now writing this message, and I lived there for 7 years.

Naperville is a far better area for the team. I don’t care how close you think you need to be to Hispanic fans – the mix isn’t right.