The Dream and its Increasing (?) Attendance

Pierce W. Huff writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the Dream's...increasing attendance?

It's all in a marketing day's work. As they have season, the Dream last Thursday continued with their all-out promotional blitz, using team appearances, community functions and ticket giveaways to make themselves better known to the local community. The goal: increase ticket sales, even if it means personally meeting every Atlantan to do so.

The hard work is already paying dividends.

With average attendance up to 5,784, the Dream are drawing 1,300 more fans per game than last year. Attendance has increased in each of its past three home dates. The Dream plays Tulsa at noon Wednesday, the unusual start time due to the WNBA's annual Kids Day.

“There had been a very low awareness of this brand and this organization,” said Toby Wyman, the Dream’s president and chief operating officer.

Really? I thought attendance was down. Of course, it could be that the 4,284 number from last year - 5,784 minus the 1,300 more we're supposed to be drawing this year - is the real, secret number of fannies in seats from last year. (The number that only the DFO and Donna Orender knows about.) In which case, stand back for Wednesday because they're going to blow right past 5,784 in actual attendance during Kids Day.

Attendance for Atlanta-Chicago Game

According to WomensBasketballOnline.com, the attendance was 2,515 for the Atlanta-Chicago game. That's not only the lowest attendance for any Atlanta Dream game at Philips Arena, but it's the lowest attendance of any game in the WNBA since June 16, 2009 when the Connecticut Sun visited the Chicago Sky at the UIC Pavilion and only 2,396 fans showed up...and the Sky had an excuse because their previous home only seated about 6,000 people.

Part of the Dream's attendance woes - they're only averaging about 4700 fans this year - come from the fact that the changeover in ownership and management came so late in the previous year that it really hurt the Dream's season-ticket sales. That and the fact that the Dream have had few home games this season.

Look, we all know there are forces out there in Atlanta (looks warily at the sportswriters of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that would love to see the Dream fold up and die. But frankly, if you don't show up to these games - and this game on Sunday - the Dream might not be here in 2011. In the end, if you don't show up, the only conclusion they can draw is that you weren't interested enough.

Wikipedia and WNBA Player Popularity

For those of you who don't know much about the internet, Wikipedia is a user-defined encyclopedia with several million entries. Users can edit encylopedia entries and accept that their own work will be edited. Just about every WNBA player has an article - those articles might not be up to date, but the articles exist.

One interesting fact about Wikipedia is that there is a statistics page where a user can enter an article name and determine how many hits the article gets. Wikipedia hits appear to measure popularity of articles both familiarity as well as intensity - an article which is being continually edited or read by the same subgroup of people will get lots of hits. Both depth and intensity of popularity can be measured in the same number.

Given that, I looked up how many hits each Wikipedia article devoted to an individual member of the Atlanta Dream received in the month of December 2009. All eleven current players of the Dream currently have articles; I duly entered each person's (article) name and counted the hits.

Wikipedia Hits for Dream Players in December 2009


Chamique Holdsclaw: 2090
Ivory Latta: 744
Angel McCoughtry: 707
Michelle Snow: 707
Coco Miller: 394
Iziane Castro Marques: 266
Armintie Price: 249
Erika de Souza: 225
Sancho Lyttle: 224
Jennifer Lacy: 186
Shalee Lehning: 146

The numbers all seem to pass the "smell test". Holdsclaw, having a decade-long history in the WNBA, having been the #1 Draft Pick and considered the future of women's basketball should be getting a lot of hits in a month.

As for the players of foreign nationality - Castro Marques, de Souza, and Lyttle - they don't get a lot of hits. In the case of the Brazilians it's because they didn't have college careers in the United States.

Some placements are real head scratchers. Michelle Snow might get hits because she dunked in a college game and because she's a Tennessee alumna. And why does Shalee Lehning have the fewest hits of all? At least it gives an idea of why it was so surprising that Marynell Meadors would let Ivory Latta (#2 in hits) go for a relative unknown.

However, there are WNBA players out there who make the Atlanta Dream's total number of Wikipedia hits seem paltry. Becky Hammon's 2266 total hits exceed Chamique Holdsclaw's. Sue Bird's 4621 hits make her Wikipedia article more popular than the articles of the six leading players in article hits among the Atlanta Dream.

Diana Taurasi's 6336 hits make her - by herself - more popular than the entire Atlanta Dream! As for Candace Parker's 21,547 hits, it makes Candace Parker a force to be reckoned with.

Can we do this for teams as well as players? Why not?

Wikipedia Hits for WNBA Teams in December 2009

WNBA: 5797

Los Angeles Sparks: 5308
WNBA Tulsa: 3450
New York Liberty: 2600
Phoenix Mercury: 2306
Seattle Storm: 2267
Chicago Sky: 2047
Atlanta Dream: 2042
Connecticut Sun: 1974
San Antonio Silver Stars: 1895
Washington Mystics: 1793
Minnesota Lynx: 1733

Do these numbers mesh with official attendance statistics? No, they don't. However, it makes sense that the Sparks and the Liberty would be the two most popular teams. Maybe going to Wikipedia can make sense out of the attendance numbers supplied by the WNBA. If Wikipedia is a better indicator of team popularity than announced attendance, it might give us a better idea of which teams have the most solid fan support.

Is Race the Reason for a Drop in UConn Attendance?

Mike DiMauro of TheDay.com thinks so:

I'm going to get in trouble for this. But then, no more trouble than a few years ago when I wrote it the first time. The single biggest reason this state has lost its passion for the UConn women is because the team isn't as white as it used to be. UConn fans, who are generally whiter than most country club members, preferred the days when Sue, Shea, Svet, Jen, Rebecca, Diana and Kara were vanquishing the heathens.

This doesn't say they didn't love Asjha, Nykesha and Renee.

Just not as much.

Ow. I don't know what to think about that. The argument was that the downturn in the economy couldn't be blamed, since fans seemed to find the money to attend "...the Yankees, Red Sox, Celtics, Cavaliers, Giants, Patriots, Kentucky basketball, Florida football, Texas football, Kansas basketball and on and on and on," according to DiMauro.

However, sports attendance has really taken a hit across the board in the United States . Baseball, basketball, hockey, NASCAR are all suffering. The Courant.com has their own set of comments about the issue. Most of the commenters expressed dissatisfaction with the increasing cost of attending games, the level of competition that Connecticut plays in the off-season, and the university's indifference to its long-time ticket holders.

I'm not saying that race might not be a part of it. I just don't see it as driving the engine.

WNBA Dream Faces Challenges in 2010

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Still, Betty has some tough financial obstacles to overcome, which is why she’s looking for other investors to join her. She would not disclose the troubling financial numbers, but I’m told the Dream lost about $3 million last season.

Attendance dropped to 7,500 per game last season, from 8,500 during the Dream’s inaugural season. That means the team enjoyed a very short honeymoon period, even though there was a dramatic improvement on the court — not a good sign.

Just to break even, the team will need to average about 8,500 paying fans per game. That will not be easy. Veteran sports reporters and editors I talked with doubted that it could be done, given all the competition from the major sports.

I'm assuming that that $3 million is a net loss, because I figure it has to cost between $3 million and $5 million just to run the dream. Those numbers aren't good, because my understanding of net losses for the WNBA are somewhere between $1.5 million-$2.5 million a year.

Someone (I don't remember who) posited that attendance never reflects the current season, but the previous season. In which case, the big drop in attendance might have been due to the 4-30 record in 2008. However, there is also the sophomore slump associated with the team no longer being a novelty.

All I know is, I'm going to be shortening that gap this year every way that I know how.

P. S.: Aaron's, hmm? Uniform sponsorship?

Do Increases in Attendance Mean That Much?

If you read about the WNBA Finals - both on message boards and in the regular press - there's a lot of hype as to how well attended these finals are. The Indiana Fever have been drawing crowds - real crowds, not just giveaway seats - in excess of 15,000. This is seen as a good sign for the WNBA.

And yet, Malcolm Wells over at Swish Appeal points out that well attended finals matches rarely translate into long-term success:

Indeed, attendance has been flat across the league since 2004 at an average of 8000 fans per game, down from the early highs of 10,000 at the WNBA's early peaks. Winning a title in this league doesn't even guarantee greater turnouts. Whereas the Phoenix Mercury have seen a 10% attendance boost since winning their title in 2007, the Detriot Shock have lost 20% of its per game attendance this season despite winning titles in 2006 and 2008. Even a sellout crowd of the magnitude that has shown up for Game 3 need not mean that the WNBA is approaching primetime - Sunday's game is only the fifth largest sellout in the five year history of the WNBA Finals. Those other four sellouts have not translated into sizable attendance gains.

I'm sure that I can get from someone a list of the best-attended WNBA games. It would interesting to draw a chart to see if there's a correlation between high single-game attendance and an increase in overall attendance - but I'm going to agree with Wells that there probably isn't one. We had 10,000 + fans at Philips Arena attend the Dream/Sparks game - many of them bused to Philips from Tennessee courtesy of one Pat Summitt. However, that uptick in attendance didn't translate in the long run to fannies in seats.

Wells also writes about the increase in demographics from ESPN2, which can be found at WNBA.com:

WNBA on TV:

The WNBA regular season on ESPN2 concluded with an average of 269,000 viewers, up 8% versus last season (248,000 viewers).
Regular season games on ESPN2 saw increases in key demographics including men 18-34 (+9%), men 18-49 (+14%), men 23-54 (+23%).
.

As Wells writes, without the base numbers, it doesn't mean much of anything but we do know that overall numbers are up eight percent. However, WNBA.com didn't report similiar increases among women. This leaves the possibility that if the WNBA breaks through and becomes a thriving league, it might be carried on the backs of male viewers. This would be a paradoxical development as the WNBA was predicated to being not just a women's sport, but a sport for women, a sport that would bridge women who had never traditionally been interested in sports into becoming active, enthusiastic sports fans. (And who would hopefully become NBA fans - Stern is one smart puppy.)

It makes one wonder how coverage of the sport - and how the issues of sport and gender - would change if a greater percentage of the WNBA fanbase was made up of male fans.

Take This As You Will

From the Sports Business Daily website:

The WNBA regular season ended on Sunday with the league seeing an average of 8,000 fans per game, up slightly from '08, and the third consecutive year with an average attendance increase. The Mystics led the league with 11,338 fans per game at Verizon Center, a jump of 24.6% from last season. Three...

Hmmm.

Attendance as a Predictive Metric

Ethan over at Actionless Activity does an attendance analysis of the 2009 WNBA Regular Season.

His idea: look at attendance numbers and see if they indicate anything about the team: he sets a mark that if a team claims an average of 7,000 fans per game, it should be profitable and if it claims an average of 10,000 fans per game it is probably a "legitimate" franchise with a long term future in the WNBA.

However, given the average attendance figures for the year, you would have to conclude that every team is profitable except for one (*) - the Connecticut Sun - and two teams, the Sparks and Mystics would be "legitimate".

The problem with the analysis is that attendance numbers...really don't say much of anything. First, every league inflates its attendance - they all do it, not just the WNBA. Even football has been known to give away tickets to move crowds which are close to selling out up to official "sellout" status. I've seen "crowds" of 16,000 at pro baseball games that looked like if the crowd rushed the field to attack the players I'd give the players even money on winning the fight.

In some places in the WNBA - like Connecticut - attendance figures are roughly accurate. (Connecticut doesn't have much incentive to lie.) In other places, like Detroit, the attendance figures might as well be drawn up out of hat. Attendance figures can indicate how confident the team is in the product, or...the lack of confidence in the product: "hey, if we blow up these figures to 7,000 maybe someone will take notice!"

Part of the problem with attendance is that there is no official "turnstile attendance" - how many actual fannies are in seats during any one game. If those numbers are kept, we'll never see them. (No league will ever show them - do you really want people to know the difference between claimed attendance and physical attendance?)

Another problem is what do you do about season ticket holders that miss games? The STHs have paid for all of their seats. So why wouldn't you count them in attendance? If someone has paid for a seat but doesn't show up to take it, the franchise has their money and it's almost as good as someone attending. Maybe those people would have attended if something hadn't kept them from coming - or maybe they wanted to support the team without the labor of showing up for games.

One poster at RebKell stated that one should not assume that once attendance reaches a certain point, profitability is implied. (Except if you have 250,000/game.) One must factor in the cost of:

* arena rental: if you also own the arena (Connecticut), you need fewer attendees to remain profitable

* who controls parking rights? concession rights? For example, Atlanta doesn't get any concession rights - if you buy a hotdog at Philips Arena (**) not a single bite of that dog goes to the Atlanta Dream. If teams get a cut from other sources, it lowers the number of tickets you have to sell to remain profitable.

My understanding is that Los Angeles has something called "premium seating" - if you're a ticket holder of a premium seat (for the Lakers, for example), all of that money goes into a pool and each of the arena franchises gets a slice of that cash. The Sparks get only a tiny sliver of Jack Nicholson's money - but that tiny sliver is enough.

My conclusion: looking at attendance is, at best, an imperfect metric. What might be more interesting to look at is change in attendance as a metric. For example, in 2008, the Comets claimed attendance dropped by 1,581. They had moved to a new arena, of course, but their team high in their new digs (7,261) wasn't even as high as their claimed average from the year before (8,166). That should have been a sign of trouble right there.

____


(*) - I stole this joke from a story about the Dallas Cowboys.

Some lout watches the owner of the Connecticut Sun walk down the street. "Hey, dumbass!" he shouts. "I hope you like losing a million a year on a WNBA team!"

The man takes off his hat. "I guess I better do something, then, or I'll be bankrupt in a thousand years."

(**) - I prefer bratwurst, myself.

The State of the W (Including Tulsa)

Bob Corwin over at Full Court Press makes his predictions about the state of the WNBA. First, Tulsa.

Orender has been very low key about the prospects of a Tulsa WNBA franchise in 2010. From several sources, I have concluded the potential ownership group is much further along in its preparations for a participating 2010 franchise than official league statements would lead us to believe. Assuming Tulsa does join the fold, the biggest question for the rest of the league is whether we're looking at an expansion or a franchise ownership transfer.

It looks like Tulsa is a done deal.

Corwin also writes about the link between WNBA Live Access and uniform sponsorship:

So how are these two events linked? The WNBA is counting the Live Access site hits. That data is then used in approaching potential uniform (and lesser level) sponsors.

You can also read his predictions on the state of the Atlanta Dream, and observations regarding other franchises in the W. Check it out. It really is a very good read.

A Tough Ticket

The haters love to mock WNBA attendance, but Clay of the Clay and Robbie Blog found that getting tickets to the Dream/Sparks game wasn't so easy:

I search the ticket office and found there were indeed tickets left. To my thinking, I could wait and grab the $5 off coupon from Sherie and I would be in the door for $5. At 12:04 no tickets were available. OMG I thought. What will I do? How did I left myself pass the opportunity to see Pat Summitt?

...

We parked and headed to the Box Office. OMG at all the Knoxville buses letting fans off. I swear it looked like Tennessee on football game day. I have never seen so much orange. Anyway, we walked on and one of the fans told us that Pat Summitt had bused all the fans down for free that wanted to come and had tickets. Is she not precious? How sweet.

Tulsa: the WNBA and the D-League

If a team arrives in Tulsa, it will be the only city which currently has both a WNBA team and an NBA Development League team. (I don't count Los Angeles, which is so massively big that parts of the metropolitan area should be rightly considered as different cities, and if you look at a Los Angeles D-Fenders box score, the attendance at home games is inexplicably listed at "0".)

For those who have never heard of the D-League (as it is called), the D-League is an attempt by David Stern and the NBA to develop something akin to a minor league development system for men's basketball. Stern hasn't quite turned the D-League into what he wants it to be - there appears to be very little "development" going on in the D-League even though many successful NBA players have passed through the D-League. Most of men's basketball's development takes place the same way it always has - either through the colleges, or in Europe, or in some cases where a player has natural talent, on the NBA court itself. The D-League simply takes the place of formerly independent leagues like the Continental Basketball Association, a place where a NBA team could grab players for a few days if it was desperate.

If you thought the WNBA's development was bumpy...well, you ain't seen nothing yet. From what I've been able to read on line, WNBA attendance might as well be the attendance of Rose Bowl games when it comes to comparisons with the NBA D-League. Write-ups I've read talk about games with real attendance in the hundreds. As for franchise folds and relocations, the D-League has surpassed the WNBA twofold despite being four years younger.

I have nothing against the D-League. The D-League has some handicaps that the WNBA doesn't have. First, it plays pretty much concurrently during the NBA's season and has to compete with college basketball and sometimes even the NBA in both the local community and on TV. Second, the players clearly aren't the best players in the world (NBA) or players who are going to be (college).

What will be interesting is whether the Tulsa 66ers can survive the comparisons - because they're going to come. With a WNBA team in Tulsa and a D-League team, the two will invariably be compared. I'm looking at the 66ers schedule, and I'm seeing attendance of about 2000, and if Tulsa counts its attendance the way a lot of other teams do, I know that a lot of those tix are freebees and giveaways. Finding attendance figures on a per-team basis for D-League teams is almost impossible, but the NBA D-League home attendance is claimed to be 4,000 per game - and I've also read that Tulsa isn't meeting that mark.

Right now, with freebies, etc, the WNBA feels strong enough to claim average attendance of 8,000 per game. (All attendance figures are statements of "how confident do we feel as a league?") Given that the WNBA will be a novelty and not have to compete with D-I basketball in Tulsa, it is very likely that the WNBA team in Tulsa (and I think there will be one) will outdraw the Tulsa 66ers.

The question in my mind is how this will affect the perception of both leagues. Among the gatekeepers of those who define their sports as masculinity and their masculinity as sports, it is taken on faith that anything women do must be inferior - which would put those gatekeepers into the position of having to move a men's basketball team to a position below that of a women's basketball team. The WNBA has, to paraphrase Quentin McCall, been "demeaned and dismissed as some sort of irrelevant sideshow" whereas the D-League has been peacefully ignored - despite the fact that one league is clearly more successful that the other.

If the WNBA Tulsa team outdraws its D-League brothers, will that prove anything to the haters? Probably not. Nothing will prove anything to the haters, their critiques are more matters of faith than reason. However, it might indicate to some that the WNBA has not been as unsuccessful as the haters claim it is.

Why Women Don't Watch Women's Sports

"If the empty seats at sporting arenas could speak, what would they say?" - Annemarie Farrell

If you're really interested in why women don't watch women's sports, a dissertation by Annemarie Farrell at Ohio State University can be read here. (Farrell earned her Ph. D. and now teaches at Ithaca College.)

For those who are willing to slog through all 190-some pages of it, I am going to give it a very high recommendation. Farrell was interested in why women didn't attend women's sports. She focused her study on college basketball, and in particular, focused it on interviewing women who attended men's basketball games - but not women's basketball. The qualitative research, based on in-depth interviews with her participants, is very illuminating.

So why don't women attend women's sports? And maybe, why don't women attend WNBA games in greater numbers? There are Farrell's basic conclusions:

1. They never see women's basketball on television. It's never seen in the media. It's hard to develop a connection with something that you're not aware of.

2. There is an expansive lack of knowledge among potential consumers. This includes what some sports fans would consider to be elementary information:

- where do you buy your tickets?
- how much does it cost to go to the game?
- where do you find schedule information?
- where is the location of the game?
- what are the rules of the game?

3. The payoff might not be worth the effort. The study interviewed women who attended men's college basketball but not women's basketball. They knew the mechanics of how to attend men's games - where to sit, where to park, etc. - but these women were hesitant to learn how to attend women's games when they didn't know if the overall experience would pay off. Furthermore, attending the men's games was difficult enough in terms of time and limitations; for some women it would have to be either one or the other.

4. Women want fast paced basketball with a loud, animated crowd. The current perception is that the women's game is neither - the perception is that the game is slow and the crowd is either less passionate or less numerous. To many women, the crowd experience is very important to their perceived enjoyment.

5. For most women, their gateway to sports was through the men in their lives. The men in their lives don't watch women's sports, and therefore, they don't.

6. Sports is a world which is a production of male supremacy. Women see sports as exclusively a male domain. Women are made by society to feel abnormal for taking interest in a sport. Some men resent women having an interest in sport, and the roles of women in sport are strictly circumscribed by men - to be supporters, helpmates and cheerleaders.

7. Men gain part of their social identity through sports. They need sports so that they can share a common experience with other men. However, women don't need sports to socialize, and there is no social imperative for women to attend sports in order to bond with and socialize with other women.

8. The world of sports coverage is dominated by men - the overwhelming majority of sports editors and sports reporters in the media are men. The men decide what gets covered and what doesn't, and they simply don't hype women's sports the way men's sports are hyped. "Most schools make the men's team like 'the' team and the women's team is just a side team, just to accommodate women, but the men's basketball team is like 'the' basketball team."

9. There is a lack of human interest stories in women's sports. Psychologist Steven Danish suggests that human interest stories are more important to women than to men. Women are much more interested in the back stories of the participants, while men "value clear-cut measurements of ability and achievement".

10. Many women haven't seen a women's basketball game since before 1991. They remember empty arenas, quiet fans, no promotions. Their perception of women's basketball is that of women's basketball as it was 20 years ago.

11. The media frame women's sporting events to undermine women's achievement in sports. Players are called by their first names more than in men's sports. When male players fail when the story of the game is being told, it is because they faced tougher competition, but women's failures in team sports are usually blamed on one team's ineptitude. The women who get the most attention are the ones who are the most attractive. As a result, many women think that women's sports are less exciting, less talented, and less entertaining.

12. All in all, women expect that they will not have a good time at a women's sporting event.

(* * *)

After reading the dissertation, I drew some conclusions of my own, including conclusions regarding how I would cover the WNBA and the Atlanta Dream on this blog. There might be a few changes in the future. Trust me, as a Dream fan I want as many people attending Dream games as possible, and there are ways to promote women's sport and the Atlanta Dream that I had never considered.

P. S.: To add to the Great Dunking Controversy, one participant had this to say: "I think the lack of dunking hurts women's basketball a lot. There is just an excitement about getting that high up over someone and dunking. There's something girls basketball lacks because dunking is a big part of the excitement of the game. When somebody dunks the crowd just goes nuts." If the goal is to make WNBA games more exciting, this is something to think about - even if we're not in agreement with the particpant regarding the role of dunking, pro or con, in basketball.

White Sox Also Struggling: Decreased Attendance = No Trades

From the Huffington Post, and elsewhere:

" White Sox general manager Ken Williams said Tuesday he may not be able to make a big trade this season because of smaller crowds at U.S. Cellular Field."

...

"Well, if I'm being completely honest money is more of the issue now. We expected a little more support than we've gotten," he said. "I think it's a reflection upon the economy of what's kind of happen with regards to attendance and I don't know if we've played consistent enough, or been exciting enough for people to get behind us. We're still hopeful."

If the Sox are struggling, what about the other teams in baseball? Attendance is down 5.5 percent across the board.

As for the WNBA? According to the latest numbers, the WNBA's attendance is holding the same (actually up by 0.7 percent).

Of course, this is a count of tickets sold, not bodies in seats. Just about every sport does the same thing (see: Marlins, Florida) except for maybe football. But if the WNBA's attendance numbers are just lies, then why can't the major sports lie as creatively as we do?

Inverse Correlation

Hits on "WNBA is a failure" on Google: 107,000
Hits on "NBA Development League is a failure"/"NBA D-League is a failure" on Google: 85,500 (*)

Average attendance for WNBA in 2008: 7,931
Average attendance for NBA Development League in 2008-09: 2,713

(*) - combined results of both searches

NBA Attendance Numbers Begin to Sag

There's a story at YaHoo! Sports about how NBA teams are seeing noticable declines in attendance. One commenter proposes the following theory, with which I agree.

1. Yuppie fans are flush with money, can pay high ticket prices and prices for merchandising, which leads to
2. ...an increase in the NBA's operating costs and salaries.
3. The financial crisis hits, and yuppies have better ways to spend their money.
4. However, NBA teams have to generate revenue based on an earlier financial model. They assumed these free-spending yuppies would always be there. In order to raise more revenue, they....
5. ...raise ticket prices.
6. This drives the "financially marginal fans" out. The "financially marginal fans" are the ones most sensitive to ticket prices, which leads to....
7. ...notable decreased attendance at NBA games.

First, yuppies generally don't go to WNBA games. The purpose of a yuppie is not to watch the game, but to be seen by the power elite. Since a NBA (and not a WNBA) franchise is a massive vanity purchase, it's more likely that the power elite would be at an NBA game and not an WNBA game. You're more likely to see a) lesbians, b) ordinary families bringing their daughters and sons, and c) women's basketball fanatics - these groups can overlap by the way - than the elite in the audience at a WNBA game. The disappearance of the yuppie contigent would have less impact on the W than on the NBA.

Second, the salary cap in the WNBA isn't that large. Hell, it's only around $1 million dollars. This is the cost of two replacement NBA players, neither having any NBA experience. I'm sure that most of the money involved in running a WNBA franchise is in operating costs, and not salaries. Unless NBA teams sharing arenas with WNBA teams attempt to charge more in arena operating rents to make up their decreased incomes, that shouldn't change.

Third, WNBA fans don't pay much in ticket prices compared to their NBA counterparts. Rises in ticket prices would hit them more proportionally than the rise in NBA tickets - remember the concept of "utility" in ECON 101?
There are probably more financially marginal fans in the WNBA. It's a game that people without a lot of money (but a lot of heart) can affordably attend.

Either one or two things would happen - either a rise in WNBA tix prices would drive out the marginal fans, or the cost of the rise would be so much smaller (compared to a similar percentage rise of a NBA team's tickets) that the WNBA fan would be more willing to pay the difference. The NBA has basically priced poor and middle class fans out of attending games; WNBA fans that aren't making $100 K a year can actually afford tickets.

Fourth, WNBA fans are probably more...uh...fanatical than NBA fans. There's the joke among WNBA fans that you can't give away WNBA tickets to your friends...because your friends are also season ticket holders. WNBA fandom is a real labor of love, and I think the community there is a bit tighter. The yuppies can take a casual attitude toward game attendance; WNBA fans arrange their whole evening around it.

In the NBA, the price is above the quality of the product. In the WNBA, the price is either at quality or below the product quality - in which case, you get a bang for your buck.

In this recession/depression/deflation, will the WNBA be taking a financial hit? Yes. Everyone will be taking a financial hit, particularly sports like the WNBA. But as a commenter at RebKell put it, "The WNBA will be the first to feel the pain...but the NBA will be doing all of the hemorrhaging."

WNBA Attendance Problems Solved

Ethan Johnson has the second part of his WNBA attendance analysis posted. So get over there and start reading.

Also: go down to the bottom of the comments. Clearly, the New York Liberty are having no problem filling Madison Square Garden.

Attendance and Ratings Looking Up for WNBA

This is the newest media release from the WNBA, courtesy of SPMSportsPage.com.

Attendance in the WNBA from last year is up 2.21 percent...if you believe attendance figures. However,

a) TV ratings on national TV are up 19 percent,
b) the WNBA.com web site set an all-time high in visits and page views,
c) WNBA merchandise sales are up 36 percent, and
d) WNBA jersey sales are up 46 percent.

Not bad. Not bad at all. I'd like more comprehensive data, but I'll take what I can get.

The Dream: Last in Wins, First in Fan Loyalty?

This link is from Dream Diary, the official Atlanta Dream Blog. They mention an AP article which was posted on the ESPN website. Read this:

The Dream rank in the top six in three different key categories: average attendance, full season tickets, and individual game tickets. Not so bad for a that finished with a 1-16 record at home this season.

Atlanta averaged 8,500 tickets sold per game and had three sellouts. The league's last expansion team before Atlanta, the Chicago Sky, averaged 3,642 a game in 2006. The Sky play their home games at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion, which holds 6,958.

You think we'll be there next season? Damn straight. Now if only the media will take notice.

Why the Dream Draw Such Huge Crowds

This article in the Washington Post talks about two teams that are in the top five in (announced) attendance despite the fact that both teams are doing quite poorly on the court.

The first team is the Washington Mystics. (Hey, it's a Washington post article.) The second is the Atlanta Dream.

Which is really amazing, considering a) that we're so poor on the court, and b) the fact that Atlanta hasn't historically supported winning teams, let alone losing teams. Atlanta is just a crappy sports town. So why do we love our Dream so much?

Here are some of my theories:

a) We're an urban team. Philips Arena is located in Downtown Atlanta. It's right off MARTA. This allows the audience to come right off the train and watch the game. Whereas if you want to watch the Atlanta Braves, it's a pain in the ass to take MARTA. You have to get off at Five Points and take some bus.

The fact that the Braves have something called the "Lexus Parking Lot" indicates exactly who they're catering to. It's not the fan who has $10 in his pocket who is looking for something to do. Hell, it costs $10 just to friggin park at a Braves game.

The crowd is mostly black and lesbian, it seems. It's a hip, happening crowd with a particular vibe. You have people dancing in the seats. It's not the sea of white faces you'd find at Turner Field.

b) The venue. I hate to admit it, but Philips Arena is pretty sweet. The staff there are friendly. The upper bowl of Philips is closed off by big black curtains, which give the illusion that the venue is only the smaller bowl. The lighting is warm and intimate. It's almost like you're watching the Dream in your living room.

c) The fans. Without going into the volunteer sales force, and how they've managed to drum up support for the Dream, let me write that the Dream fans are...well, they're frigging maniacs. Atlanta had very high, if not the highest ratings for WNBA games when we didn't have a team. The fans are very dedicated. A friend of mine has offered me some season tickets on nights when she can't use hers. I suspect that the season ticket holders in Atlanta do not show up as empty seats. If you don't show up, a friend takes your tickets.

This gives the impression to casual Dream ticket holders that, "Hey, there are an awful lot of people here tonight. This is a happening place to be. I need to show up here more often."

d) Novelty. Hey, we're a new team. Novelty will fade away.

e) Rap. Every now and then, you'll see a rap star sitting in the crowd. Atlanta has a vibrant rap music scene. We have a rap singer performing the halftime show tonight. Ludacris will be in attendance during this game.

f) Community. Atlanta's management seems to not take the audience for granted. Ivory Latta was at a mall recently drumming up support. Ann Strother and Betty Lennox were at local Krogers. When you're smaller, you're hungrier. The players in Atlanta aren't so "big" that they would disdain promotional projects such as these.

g) The Dirty South. We're the only southern WNBA team, so for long road trips, people from the surrounding states will come to Atlanta to see the Dream. You'd think this would make for a small crowd, but remember that we have powerhouse Tennessee one state away...and those Vol fans have to do something for their fix when the Volunteers aren't playing.

Anyway, those are my theories. What are yours?

Do Attendance Figures Mean Anything?

I'm sure a lot of detractors both on Rebkell (and detractors of the WNBA in general) might think that the title should be "Do WNBA attendance figures mean anything?"

Those people would be wrong.

On the Rebkell message boards, a thread is kept detailing WNBA attendance on a week-per-week basis. Generally, these figures look pretty good. Attendance appears to be up from the year before, based on numbers.

Then, someone chimes in. "Those attendance figures are just wrong! If we had 8,000 in our last game, I sure didn't see them! The WNBA is in severe financial trouble!" Prophesies of imminent doom follow.

In an earlier thread, I had asked whether or not WNBA teams should move to the financial model of community-owned teams, like that of the Green Bay Packers. Experts on the issue informed me that that could never happen in modern sports, because if a WNBA team was community-owned, it would be acting as a corporation and be forced to open its financial books to the community public No other WNBA team would want that to happen. This is why you don't see community-based ownership in Major League Baseball, the NBA, or the NFL. (The exception is Green Bay, which is grandfathered in and is the only exception.) It's actually forbidden in the league constitution.

The point is that if a team doesn't have to open its books to the public, it can claim whatever attendance it wants to. If my hypothesis was true - if WNBA teams were truly cooking the books - I wanted to see if this was just limited to the WNBA, or if other leagues did the same. I remember going to Florida Marlins games a few years ago and hearing attendance figures announced that were -- dubious, to say the least.

I found a few articles detailing the problem, but sadly, they are in cached form. The linked article is from the Los Angeles Times.

It appears that every single league is known to "cook the books" when it comes to attendance. I've even read threads of Major League Soccer teams cooking the books.

What do I mean by "cooking the books"? I mean that teams count season tickets, number of tickets distruted, complementary tickets, and all sorts of categories where a ticket might be sold, but not used. Sometimes luxury suites which sit empty are counted into the measure.

At one time, the National League actually measured attendance by turnstile, but once they gave up their independent league office and both leagues shared the same office, they went by attendance by ticket distributed -- because that's what the American League was doing and because revenue sharing would be contingent on this number.

The example the article gave had at worst 40 percent of attendance to one baseball game be the kind of attendance disguised as empty seats. In my personal opinion, this makes baseball attendance pretty figures pretty much wishful thinking. I remember a virtually empty Marlins-Nationals game last year that had over 10,000 in announced attendance. (I also remember a joke about a horrid Cleveland Indians team in the 1980s - "if the fans in attendance ran out onto the field," said one player, "I give us a good chance of defending ourselves.")

So what is the true attendance at WNBA games? Who knows what it is? I go to Atlanta Dream games and the attendance seems pretty good. I watch Washington Mystics games on TV and see masses of empty seats and figure, "Washington's attendance figures can't be right." Your guess is as good as mine.

Until fans do something like the National Park Service used to do in estimating attendance for Million Man Marches and such - until we actually sit down and count heads - WNBA attendance figures will remain a mystery.

However, they won't be the only league with attendance figures based more on imagination than attendance. So when someone talks about the fact that (insert league name) here is better than the WNBA, and uses attendance figures as a crutch, you can kick the crutches out from beneath him.