You missed a big one: WIN! As everyone here is aware, Rockets have a history of lack of playoff success, since the 2 championships with Dream. That has a HUGE impact on attendance. The way this season started certainly added to that. There is! See above (well, you can debate whether that is 'easy' or not).
It also doesn't help that tickets from first round cheaps seats started at 60 bucks and to Game 5 39 bucks to second round 140. **** that. They showed up late for Game 5 but they ended up being a pretty good crowd besides the second quarter.
The games are sold out. The design of Toyota Center, with the lounges at the top of the bowl, causes people to stay out of their seats and watch the games in the Lounges.
I'll throw my two cents into this discussion: I agree with others that price is a consideration for casual fans. I've been lucky enough to sit in some of the corporate seats a few times and the face value of the tickets is something well beyond the means of the average fan. Sure, a few fans may splurge on playoff games, but the cost to get into your run-of-the-mill January game against the Hornets should not be something that breaks the bank. If you have a family, a mortgage, car payment, etc., how can you justify spending $500 on two hours of entertainment? The design of Toyota Center itself encourages the apathy. As others have said, the exclusivity of the lounges that block off the lower bowl courtside sections from the main concourses encourages people to avoid their actual seats. This design, and vigilant ushers, also prevent people from moving into some seats that are clearly unoccupied for the entire game. The Warriors effect: I hate to say this, but I think there is a general malaise around the NBA in general for 29 fan bases that have had to face this buzzsaw. We've been lucky to be one of the few teams to go toe-to-toe with them, but for a lot of other teams, there is a notion that there's no reason to compete so long as this Monstars roster exists. If the end result is a foregone conclusion, why get as invested as years past? Obviously I'm not talking about those of us posting on a dedicated Rockets BBS, but this sentiment does exist among more casual fans. Or Tilman could hire seat fillers, a la Kramer at the Tony Awards, who sit in sold corporate seats until the rightful ticket holders show up (if they do at all). Maybe even bump some fans up from the upper decks if it's clear that the tickets haven't even been scanned into the system by the end of the first quarter.
Idk about city infrastructure... The Mavs are downtownish and sprawls just as bad as Houston. I don’t see the same problem with their attendance. Game 5 was mostly packed.... by the middle of the second quarter and again middle of 3rd quarter.
Aren't we supposed to compare rich fans to rich fans though? Other towns' rich fans are just better than our rich fans. (I'm grunching this thread but will read the OP later, sorry) I also think @heypartner had a really good theory about this years ago where iirc, he wrote about how the Toyota Center opened and changed their ticket policies and compared it to the Texans ticket policies. Supposedly, the Texans and other franchises focus their corporate marketing efforts to selling their suite packages, and limit corporate season tickets in the lower bowl to groups of 2 or 4. After moving into the Toyota Center, the Rockets sold huge lower bowl season ticket blocks to corporations, and so they've had a lack of suite demand since then. These corporate seats are rarely filled with hardcore fans. Personally, 90% of the time that I sit in the lower bowl is because of a friend or friend's boss or friend of a friend and they're company seats that weren't used that day. So while the lower bowl money came in, it was at the expense of the quality level of fan.
Easy fix. For those seats that are empty in the lower bowl at the beginning of the game (especially those seats facing the camera), the team just needs to put office staff or Landry's office staff in those seats until the paying customers arrive. Then they can go hang out in a suite or in the concourse for the rest of the game. At least then there are butts in the seats for playoff games when the games are on national TV.
I don’t buy the infrastructure. I never had a problem getting to games coming from south Houston or when I came from west Houston. You just leave earlier. It’s not difficult. Problem is season ticket holders in the lower bowl don’t care abt tip off. And the service bars are way too slow outside of the club area.
I think this is the key - games always started at 7:30 before- gave more time for people to beat the traffic. Whoever decided to start the games earlier at 7, completely destroyed something good. 7:00 just does not feel right. Plus, the new gym is in downtown now, whereas before it was not. A lot tougher to beat traffic AND find a parking spot and walk to the gym in downtown.
Not to bring up the Mavericks and Cuban, but I am in the same boat here (transplanted Rockets fan...arrived in Dallas the same year Nowitski did, with Dirk, Finley, and Nash, it was hard not to follow them). I make fairly good money, but am amazed what people will pay to see a game...I have better things to do with hundreds of dollars. BUT Cuban has a nice program, which also helps him maintain his sellout streak. When they open the doors (2 hours before game time), they also open up single seats at vastly discounted prices. It was $5 for upper level and $25 for lower level (think it might be 10/30 now). At those prices, I do go see a few games a year. I would take my daughter, or a friend. You can't get tickets together, but they would always try to get them as close as they could. This allows 'average' fans to see the games occassionally...which I think is important. The problem with corporate seats, or with only the wealthy getting any good seats...is that those people are seldom avid fans. They just go see the games because they can. The NBA needs to pay attention to what happened to baseball, after the last strike. Fans will take it, and take it, and take...but once they decide they've taken it enough, they leave in huge droves. Baseball never did recover. They were up in the Big Three of sports in the US. Now they are usually listed below NASCAR, and more in line with the NHL.
How many of those seats did Alexander buy? Owners do this around the league...they buy up unsold seats to maintain the sellout streak.
What if they lower the ticket price of the side of the stadium that's gonna be shown on TV? So that side gets more filled up, at least they won't look as empty on TV.
Those tickets are sold. The problem is not lack of sales, it's that corporate seat fans in general don't show up until close to halftime and are less noisy than rich fans from other cities. I kind of get it - you don't want to be acting a fool in front of your boss. They really should change their corporate seat policy to only groups of 2 and always have regular season tickets in between corporate seats (if then cared about creating a rowdy environment, but they don't).
