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Your annual look at Detroit City FC’s home attendance numbers.
Links to previous editions: 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Data Sources:
Detroit City FC attendance numbers are announced at matches and posted to the club’s official Twitter account.
USL Championship and League One numbers come via Soccer Stadium Digest.
Previous home attendance averages (competitive matches only):
2012: 1295 CLICK HERE for game-by-game table
2013: 1715 CLICK HERE for game-by-game table
2014: 2857 CLICK HERE for game-by-game table
2015: 3528 CLICK HERE for game-by-game table
2016: 5208 CLICK HERE for game-by-game table
2017: 5925 CLICK HERE for game-by-game table
2018: 5274 CLICK HERE for game-by-game table
Final numbers for 2019:
Graphs:
Notes
(1) Over the course of the 2019 NPSL Classic season, City achieved a regular season average attendance of at least 6000 for the first time in club history.
(2) Total attendance for the Members Cup and its accompanying friendlies (45,177), was greater than each of the four seasons at Cass Tech (2012-2015).
(3) While the 7000 mark was only reached once in 2019 (4 times in ’18), the 6000 mark was reached a record 9 times (5 times in ’18, 6 times in ’17, 4 times in ’16).
(4) Over the course of 8 seasons and 93 total home matches, City has drawn 408,018 fans.
How do we measure up?
If City had competed in the USL Championship in 2019, their competitive match average attendance of 5779 would’ve put them 11th (out of 37 teams), between El Paso (6584) and Tampa Bay (5418).
If City had competed in the USL League One in 2019, they would’ve led the league in average attendance. Forward Madison FC was the actual leader at 4292 per game.
Overview
This was a bit of a quiet year in terms of attendance. Over its first seven seasons, City had set a new single-match record each year, but that streak ended in 2019. And with the average attendance roughly in line with 2018 and 2017, the healthy jumps that occurred from 2012-2017 appear to have leveled off.
What 2019 lacked in new heights, though, was made up for in sheer volume. The addition of the fall season allowed the club to top 100k in yearly attendance for the first time, smashing the previous high (2017) by more than 23,000. By my extremely rough math, that puts ticket revenue for this year somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 million, which will make for a solid financial base as the club turns fully professional for 2020.
Furthermore, though we’ll have to wait for next season to try and break the elusive 8000 single-match mark, the floor appears to be rising. Other than the two Midwest playoff matches (threat of terrible weather) and the Members Cup match against the Stars (on a Tuesday night), every other competitive match had an attendance of well over 5000, with the majority over 6000. Outside of that Stars match, the lowest attended regular season match was the opener against Kalamazoo (5254), which also happened to feature awful weather. Just two years ago, 5254 would’ve made for the fourth-highest attended regular season match, just behind another meeting with Kalamazoo (5345).
In last year’s edition of this post, I predicted 6000+ average attendance for the Classic season (nailed it), and said that 8000 would surely be reached for a single match, with a strong chance at 9000 (did not nail it). I was also under the impression that the last stand renovations would be completed by the beginning of 2019, but they were not actually finished until this fall.
It’s hard to make predictions for 2020 since the schedule and clubs for NISA are still in flux, but I still think an 8000 single match + 6500-7000 regular season average is very achievable. Many casual soccer fans, for whatever reason, have a mental block that prevents them from attending, or sometimes even paying attention to, matches of amateur/semi-pro clubs. DCFC has finally shed this label for good, which I believe will make it easier for them to draw these people in.
Regardless of whether or not this happens, the year-long professional season, coupled with the debut of the women’s team, should ensure that the 111,578 total season attendance record will only stand for a single year.
