This is the truth. Aside from Texans fans and Dynamo fans, the other two teams in Houston don't get much support in attendance when they're doing poorly. It's like that in a lot of cities though, there's really only about 3 or 4 cities that I can name that would support their teams through thick and thin for all of their sports. Boston, Chicago and New York... and maybe Philly. Aside from those, I'd say for their name teams the only other ones that probably have great support regardless of if their team is a playoff team or not is Golden State, Utah, and OKC.
Dude. Lin + Harden trade buzz, plus we've only played 5 home games, two of which are sure sellouts (Miami + home opener). That's an extremely skewed sample you're using. If anything, I'm surprised it isn't WAY higher than it is considering how biased the sample is.
True, but so are the observations that attendance is "down". Given the premise of the original post, we have to accept the inherent unreliability of small sample sizes.
This much we know for sure, 40% of the Rockets home games this year have been sellouts. Now, try extrapolating that out over a full season to compare it to last year. You think we're going to sell out 40% of our games this season? Not a chance. That average attendance number you posted is going to drop... significantly.
Short term, yes. However, attendance also skews upward as the Football season winds down, should bump up if the games are back on Television, and should the Rockets stay in the playoff hunt (we're 9th in the West right now), they will skew upward towards the last half of the season further. And honestly, we don't know how the "New Age" buzz will play out once it's being broadcast in a large number of homes. Without a TV contract, for everyone it's pretty much just a guess.
I don't get why Rockets fans hate going to games. If I was living in H-Town i'd be at the game at least once every few weeks.
The Rockets have been consistently in the middle of the pack when it comes to attendance vs. the rest of the league since 2005. I'm sure they'll end up near the same again this year, there's no reason to think why the attendance would go up any higher than that.
Portland - Attendance: 18140 Denver - Attendance: 13372 Detroit - Attendance: 15037 Miami - Attendance: 18041 New Orleans - Attendance: 14535 Based on this, I am going to be absolutely stunned if we end up with a higher attendance average than last year (a year when we had a compelling playoff push). We're barely above last year with 40% of the games counted being sellouts. And this is the start of the year, when fan interest is higher than mid-season.
$10 tickets get you nose-bleed seats. I was looking to buying a ticket and got a "discount" to get an upper deck seat for $75 a pop.
As a Knick Fan its very weird to see a team play the Heat and see so many empty seats, its wasn't untill close to halftime that the arena was filled
I'd bet against 100% of tickets sold being used. Attendance was 18041. Tickets sold was probably more. There's always no-shows.
the arena may have been, for the most part, technically filled. Toyota Center sells its season tickets on the lower levels to corporations for the most part...at that price, that's who is buying. Those folks are using those seats to wine/dine clients. And you walk into most of those seats through a bar. There are bars and places to hang out before ever going to your assigned seats. The criticism has been that it makes the arena look empty when so many people are up by the bar areas....but that's what the Rockets wanted and it's part of the experience they sell.
they report tickets sold for attendance purposes...that number i just gave you was the reported number in the box score.
Even when the Rockets were winning 50+ games, no one showed up. It hasn't been the same since Compaq. I mean people show up for the big games, but they're ALWAYS LATE! I don't think a crowd (outside of playoffs) has ever been on time.
nope...tickets sold. all the major pro sports leagues in america do that. hasn't always been that way, though.
