Attendance Numbers

One of the most popular pieces that I’ve posted on BIR is my compilation and analysis of Detroit City’s attendance numbers for its first two seasons. Now, with year three in the books, it’s time for an update.

Sources are as follows:

Detroit City FC attendance numbers are announced at games and posted to the club’s official Twitter account.

Numbers for other leagues and teams are gathered from Doherty Soccer and kenn.com.

—–

To recap:

And now for this year:

Notes:

• Including friendly, regular season, and playoff games, Detroit City played 10 times at home in 2013 and 8 times in 2014. Despite this, total attendance rose by 7108 this year, a jump of 45%.
• This year’s regular season average of 2857 nearly doubled last year’s average of 1484 (an increase of 92.5%).
• 2012’s single game record of 1743 was topped 4 times in 2013. 2013’s single game record of 2634 was topped 6 times in 2014, with a high of 3398.
• This year’s lowest attendance, 2147, was still higher than every single friendly and regular season game in both 2012 and 2013.
• Over the course of three years and 26 home games, City has drawn a total of 48884
  fans.

Would you like a graph showing game-by-game attendance over a three-year period? Of course you would.

How do we measure up?

If Detroit City FC competed in the following leagues, their 2014 regular season average attendance of 2857 would put them:

2^nd (out of 65) in the PDL

6^th (out of 15) in USL Pro

10^th (out of 11) in NASL, going by the spring season numbers.

What does it all mean?

Based solely on attendance, Detroit City is operating at a third division level while playing in the fourth. If you took the club and plopped it down into USL Pro without making any other changes, it would immediately outdraw more than half the teams in the league.

Before this season started, I made what I thought were some reasonable predictions: an average attendance of 1750, and at least one crowd of over 3000. These turned out to be far too conservative as the increases from 2013 to 2014 easily outpaced the growth from 2012 to 2013.

The good news is that the club’s popularity is growing exponentially; the bad news is that we’ve effectively outgrown Cass Tech.

At this year’s final regular season game, 400 people were reportedly turned away since the stadium was at capacity. At $10 per ticket, that’s $4000 lost due to lack of seating. If DCFC remains at Cass in 2015, using simple extrapolation, the club would stand to lose nearly $30,000, if not more. Luckily, I’m not the only one who’s aware of this problem.

If Cass can somehow be temporarily expanded, or if a larger appropriate venue can be found, I have little doubt that next year’s attendance could creep up into the 3500-4000 range. I won’t make any predictions just yet since the stadium situation is in flux, but it’s clear that support for the club is only accelerating and we haven’t even come close to touching our ceiling.

When attempting to gauge the success of American soccer clubs, particularly those in the leagues below MLS, the best metric is probably stadium attendance. Unlike the major professional sports leagues in this country, on-field success in the NASL/USL/NPSL/PDL does not necessarily result in increased popularity and financial stability. Just as an example, 5 of the 11 clubs that have won an NPSL title are now defunct.

When winning is combined with large attendance numbers, however, you can get success stories like Orlando City SC. OCSC came into being in 2011, the same year that their league, USL Pro, began play. They won the championship that year and won their second this September 7^th before a league-record crowd of nearly 21,000. They’ve also led the league in attendance each year, averaging over 8000 per game this season. With that level of support, it’s easy to see why they will be joining MLS in a year or two. (It’s also easy to see why people are upset at the idea of putting an MLS expansion franchise in Miami, a city with a long track record of apathy towards its sports teams, including a former MLS club that folded!)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I did a little research and found some excellent resources with attendance numbers for NASL, USL Pro, and PDL, but next to nothing for NPSL. (Shocking that a Mickey Mouse league that makes things up as it goes would have no way for tracking the ONE THING that can be used to judge its overall health).

http://www.kenn.com/the_blog/

http://dohertysoccer.com/

Cutting to the chase, here are Detroit City FC’s attendance numbers, followed by a bit of analysis. The numbers are listed in the match results section of DCFC’s Wikipedia pages (2012 Season, 2013 Season – this page was deleted two days ago for some reason) and are taken from the team’s Twitter feed and/or what was announced at the stadium.

2012

* Denotes Friendly Match

——————–

2013

* Denotes Friendly Match

** Denotes Playoff Match

Notes:

• Over two full seasons, DCFC has drawn at least 1000 people to every single game – regular season, playoffs, and friendlies.
• In Year 1, the average attendance hovered around 1000 for the first half of the regular season but rose to 1567 in the second half.
• The Year 1 record for single-game attendance (1743) was topped four times in Year 2, and the current record (2634) represents a 51% jump from that first year record.
• From Year 1 to Year 2, DCFC’s regular season average attendance rose by a healthy 14.6%. If playoff games are included, that number rises to an outstanding 32.4%.

Comparison to other leagues:

• DCFC’s regular season average of 1484 would’ve ranked 6^th (out of 61) in the PDL, 8^th (out of 12) in USL Pro, and… Dead Last in NASL (more on this below)

I won’t bore you with charts and tables of NASL attendance statistics, but I will say that the growth is impressive (2012 numbers, 2013 numbers). San Antonio has actually taken a bit of a dip from 2012, but every other team has seen their numbers increase significantly. Prime example: Minnesota United averaged 2796 fans per game in 2012. In the 2013 spring season, that rose to 5225!, an 87% jump.

The NY Cosmos are drawing over 7500 a game and with the addition of Indy and four other clubs over the next two years, the NASL is well on its way to becoming a strong and viable alternative to MLS for American soccer fans who live in those cities.

——————–

There are those who believe that soccer will never “take off” in this country. They are too shortsighted to realize that it already has. MLS TV ratings remain modest, but there is a groundswell of support for teams in the lower leagues; Detroit City foremost in our minds. For year 3, I’d like to see us average 1700 per game and break the 3000 mark.

We’ve had a nice start, but now it’s time to take it to the next level.

[Editor’s Note: I am legally obligated by the NPSL and Detroit Public Schools to remind you that crystal meth is NOT permitted on Cass Technical High School grounds.]