Part I. The Early-Season Attendance Freak-Out People here were freaking out over reports about how the Houston Rockets being among the very bottom teams in home attendance. Here's are a couple of thread about it, made in January 2012: http://bbs.clutchfans.com/showthread.php?t=213800&highlight=attendance http://bbs.clutchfans.com/showthread.php?t=214487&highlight=attendance During the discussions, some here were arguing that this is a sign that fans have rejected Les Alexander and Morey's plan to stay competitive rather than rebuilding through tanking. Some argued the fans lacked interest in an mediocre team with no exciting young players. Other blamed Houston fans for being fair-weather fans. The Rockets home attendance was ranked 29th among 30 teams at that time according to one of the posts. Here's a Jonathan Feigen article on attendance in mid February 2012, when the Rockets attendance were ranked 28th out of 30 teams (average 14,141). http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterocke...in-west-but-theyre-near-bottom-in-attendance/ The article cited as a factor the fact that the teams that had visited Houston up to that point had been poor road draws. Also, the lockout-shortened schedule cost Rockets home games against some of the better drawing teams (no home games vs. Bulls, Heat, Celtic, only 1 home game vs. Lakers, Clippers, Mavs). II. The Updated Numbers Given that attendance continues to be cited by some as a reason why the "not tanking" strategy has been rejected by fans(see, e.g., http://bbs.clutchfans.com/showpost.php?p=6764025&postcount=41), I thought we should take another look at the attendance. As of today, the Rockets are now ranked 23rd overall in average home attendance at 15,088, they are 21st overall in % of seats filled in 28 home games. Given that, as the time of Feigen's February 16th article, there were 14 home games, my calculation shows that in the 14 home games between February 16th and now, the average attendance should have been 16,035. Not sure exactly what contributed to the rise in attendance... maybe fans are coming out of hibernation for the spring. Maybe we have some better-drawing opponents in town. Maybe the team continued competitive play since rebounding from a bad 3-7 start finally sparked some fan interest. In any case, those are the numbers. The attendance rank is still down from last year's numbers overall (20th in average, 16th in % of capacity filled, 16,191 fans), but nowhere as bad as it was during the first 7 weeks of the season. Interesting enough, on the road, thee are ranked 9th overall (I personally contributed by attending their game in NJ. ) in average attendance (17,431) and 10th in capacity filled. In fact, their road attendance rankings are slightly higher than what it was back in 2008-2009, back when Yao, Artest and McGrady were on the roster (11th in average, 11th in % of capacity filled, 17,900 fans). My guess it that the main reason for this is that, on the flip side of losing some good drawing teams at home, a higher % of their road games have come against the same good drawing teams (the math can be done, but will take a while). Otherwise, maybe non-Houston fans appreciate the Rockets more than Houston fans do?
i don't see any rhyme or reason behind the rise in attendance. they have only started playing really well these last few games on the road.
Warmly welcome fans [back] to [the] Toyota Center, warmly welcome! Why do ____ care so much about attendance?
Rocketgirl00 is right, the Rockets need to pimp the hell out of Chandler to draw pre-teen girls to the arena. They should also pimp Courtney Lee to the local cougar population (and I don't mean U of H grads).
I do wish we could stop calling the 3-7 start bad, remember how difficult it was, I was worried we could have gone 0-10. Not that we were an 0-10 team it was just that hard of a start.
Team is a lot more exciting with Dragic starting, he really is fun to watch and he is making everyone else he plays with do well too. Parsons is over 33% from 3s now, Scola has gotten it going....more fun to watch...more butts in the seats. DD
Simplest explanation is that fans apparently do want to see a competitive team. The Rockets compete night in and night out. After their horrible start against tough competition, they've basically been in most games even against the best. Rarely did we see one-sided affairs. There's something to be said about fans wanting to at least see the team perform well, rather than going in knowing it'd be a blowout. That said, this may mean Les is never going to ever try to tank.
Anyone who believes the Rockets mediocre play over the last few seasons hasn't effected attendance is foolishly naive. It didn't start this year but it certainly reached a pinnacle earlier this season and contributed to worse attendance numbers this year. I will say the play of Dragic, the play of Camby and the great wins against LA, OKC, etc. have also changed the mood with the fans and contributed to an increase in attendance. It certainly changed my desire to keep our draft pick and instead win now.
Good post Carl. A lot of people bemoaned the coaching hire (myself included) and the direction the team was going. Then people whined that we let Jeremy Lin go. Turns out they were wrong. This team is fun to watch, although I was into the team the first half of the season too.
You're still PMSing over Lowry beating out Brooks aren't you? The Rockets were winning with Lowry too and had a winning record when he went down.
The data does not support the idea that the PG change increased attendance. The Rockets home attendance already got higher during the string of home games between mid February and early March. http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/HOU/2012_games.html
The Rockets are in the playoff picture now. Also, wins against Lakers, Bulls, Thunder help get the Rocket some attention nationally, which in turn gets the casual fans interested. I wouldn't be surprised if they moved up in attendance when the regular season ends. I think if you look at attendance averages, you would find that it trends upwards towards the end of the season. If I had time I would look into it but with the end of the NFL and College Basketball, I would assume that would be the case.
Maybe the marketing for the home teams when where on the road is really good. "Two foot hotdogs for a dollar", local hero night, price cuts on tickets or maybe just maybe people want to see a soild team basketball (where the sum is better than the parts). AND get a 2ft hotdog signed by a 1978 all-star for $10 on the night the Rockets just happen to be in town.
These two posts don't match. If people think the Rockets "spinning on the wheels of mediocrity" sucks and are trying to send a message by their wallets then they wouldn't watch the Rox this season since we didn't have a blackbuster trade at the deadline. Unless you somehow think getting Camby made people think this team a contender? Saying Dragic is the reason is totally nonsensical, record-wise the team isn't any different from the time when Lowry was pg, if you weren't watching the rox regularly you wouldn't know the difference. IMHO the loss in fans were due to losing Yao (YOFs are gone) as well as the Texans grabbing most of the Houston attention. If you had money to blow you'd probably spend it on Texans first rather than the Rox tickets. Now that the Texans season is over the Rox are the only decent team left, and the fact that they're playoff bound certainly helps the interest level. Bottom line is, all the people saying the common fans are complaining because of the mediocrity treadmill don't know $hit and were just blowing things out of their ass. I believe the main reason why we don't tank is because of $$$, and I think Les Alexander should know what people want to see (and hence make more $$$) more than the posters of this bbs.
