Taking Attendance: Better Get Indoors 1/28/2013
Here’s the first look this season at attendance figures from the Major Indoor Soccer League, now in its second season under the United Soccer Leagues’ umbrella.
| Team | G | Total | Average | Median | High | Low |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rochester | *9 | 55,747 | 6,194 | 5,365 | 10,320 | 4,191 |
| Baltimore | 10 | 52,321 | 5,232 | 5,540 | 6,711 | 3,038 |
| Milwaukee | 9 | 40,380 | 4,487 | 4,307 | 5,543 | 3,733 |
| Missouri | 8 | 35,015 | 4,377 | 4,548 | 5,481 | 3,026 |
| Syracuse | 10 | 34,662 | 3,466 | 3,394 | 4,567 | 2,617 |
| Wichita | 11 | 30,175 | 2,743 | 2,500 | 4,200 | 2,200 |
| Chicago | #4 | 9,671 | 2,418 | 2,256 | 3,488 | 1,671 |
| MISL TOTAL | 61 | 257,971 | 4,229 | 3,967 | 10,320 | 1,671 |
*Missing one game.
#Missing four games.
Right away, you’ll notice that the Baltimore Blast is in danger of not leading its league in average announced attendance for the first time since 2003-2004. With Rochester drawing a league-high 10,320 on Sunday against Missouri (the biggest indoor crowd in more than five years), the Lancers put a bit more space between themselves and the second-place Blast. How much space is up for debate, as Rochester’s January 1 game against Baltimore still doesn’t have an official attendance figure attached to it.
The Blast is down just under three percent in average announced attendance compared to the same number of home games as a year ago, but they and the Wichita Wings (whose Hartman Arena is pictured above) are the only clubs looking at a decline year-over-year. The Wings, who used to pack the Kansas Coliseum back in the original MISL days, struggle to get fans to come to their cozy, modern arena (they’re down 26 percent over the same number of home games as a year ago), but when they do come, they usually come in nice, round numbers. The Wings have announced crowds of 2,600, 2,500, 2,200, 4,200, 2,500, 2,800, 3,000, 3,100, 2,300, 2,475 and 2,500. Believe them at your own risk.
But that’s nothing compared to the latest group to try to make a go of it in Chicago, where the Soul is surprisingly winning games (they’re 8-12 with six games to play, even after Sunday’s loss in Milwaukee), but not surprisingly not drawing fans. Despite their owner’s prediction that they’d have three 4,000+ crowds in January, the Soul has stopped announcing crowd figures and by the looks of things, that’s just as well. The four games they have announced crowds for have averaged 2,418, a league low, and the actual numbers are surely south of that. (Though they’d be doing great if the people who estimate their goalkeeper’s saves estimated their crowds.)
Everybody else is up in average attendance year-over-year. Syracuse is up 17 percent, Missouri is up 19 percent and Milwaukee is up 20 percent and riding what is now the longest winning streak in the indoor game at 14. (In case you’re wondering, the longest winning streak by an indoor team actually playing against full-time professionals is 19 by the 1980-81 New York Arrows. The Wave can beat that on February 24 in Rochester if they keep winning.)
If nothing else, the MISL seems to have stabilized, which is a key to at least getting the indoor game some traction. Rochester looks like a great find as a market. Baltimore and Milwaukee are the only clubs that have been around for more than three seasons, but Missouri seems solid, Syracuse is improving and if they can figure out what’s going wrong in Wichita and reverse that trend, they’d have a good base. With St. Louis rumored (as they have been for years) to be potentially getting a new team, perhaps there’s hope.
Tags: attendance, indoor soccer, MISL, soccer, stuff only I care about
January 28th, 2013 at 5:08 pm
I can tell you that I have been to the last three or so games and the Chicago Soul has had maybe 500 people per game. Not sure how this team will survive past year one with such low attendance. For some reason, when you look at the boxscores on the MISL website, the attendance for Chicago games are zero. Are they embarassed to list the actual attendance numbers?
January 28th, 2013 at 6:35 pm
How is that possible? THE OWNER SCOFFED AT US AND PROMISED.
January 28th, 2013 at 7:04 pm
I can email you a picture from their game on 1/18. Pretty miserable. I love soccer, but just not sure how this team can survive with 500 people.
January 28th, 2013 at 8:27 pm
Love to see it. spam@kenn.com
January 29th, 2013 at 7:25 am
Any idea why Wichita’s attendance is down? The arena looks like a great place to watch a game. What would it take to increase attendance?
January 29th, 2013 at 9:29 am
No idea.
It does look like the type of arena this sport needs at this time. I haven’t been there, don’t know if it’s nice and small or just small.
My default position is that if someone struggles to sell tickets, it’s a front office failure. But I don’t know that for certain.
By the way, how funny is this?
January 29th, 2013 at 9:30 am
Also, if this is all the staff they have, that might explain some of it.
January 29th, 2013 at 11:19 am
Is it not time to post a story about your votes for the USSHoF and unbelievable excuses for not voting for the greatest midfielder to have trod the pitch in MLS?
January 29th, 2013 at 11:21 am
Efforting. Just received the ballot last night.
January 29th, 2013 at 5:43 pm
Wow! What a staff. I wonder how many of them are full-time employees, part-time, or interns.
It’s a shame about the website also. The 2 guys would have probably done it for free.
February 2nd, 2013 at 12:03 pm
“Right away, you’ll notice that the Baltimore Blast is in danger of not leading its league in average announced attendance for the first time since 2003-2004.”
Actually, the first thing I noticed was, “Hey, they’re still playing indoor soccer!”
I liked indoor soccer a lot back in the 80s, but in retrospect it really hurt the outdoor game, didn’t it? Had Division 1 soccer not died in this country between 1985-95 it would probably be at a much higher level now. Oh, well.
February 2nd, 2013 at 3:21 pm
The “indoor issue” was divisive in the NASL and surely didn’t help keep them on a good path (though it probably wasn’t in the top five reasons for its eventual demise).
Had the NASL somehow found another few teams to play in 1985 and eventually grown and been able to stabilize, I don’t know that we’d be farther along now than we are. Sometimes you have to burn a forest down to get fresh growth. MLS made a lot of mistakes (in hindsight) at launch, but it was consciously trying to avoid the ones that were the top contributors to the end of outdoor soccer the first time around. That was necessary, and might not have happened had the NASL never folded. We’ll never know. But it’s a decent enough theory.
The return of outdoor certainly hurt indoor in a major way, there’s no question about that. Skilled players migrated back outdoors. The things that made indoor popular were first copied by the NBA and other sports and then poached by MLS and the other outdoor leagues.
There is probably not a player playing indoor soccer today who is as talented as the 10th best indoor player from 1987. Maybe deeper than that.
February 12th, 2013 at 12:47 pm
Chicago has now gone back and stuck in wildly inflated figures for their January games (the ones that were certainly going to draw 4k or more) in hopes no one will notice.
I notice. I always notice.
Added to the other things I have been hearing about Chicago, they have all the looks of a one-and-done.
February 12th, 2013 at 12:50 pm
Updated averages:
Rochester – 6,194 (still missing one)
Baltimore – 5,331
Milwaukee – 4,664
Missouri – 4,331
Syracuse – 3,424
Wichita – 2,871
Chicago – 2,262 (still missing two)