Everything you said before the last paragraph was relevant and then you had to write foolish. Of course winning and losing effects attendance. Yes there are a lot more factors like the hope of winning because you drafted an all star, trading for an all star, having a player like Lin or Dragic break out. Just as those things increase attendance the lack of those decrease attendance. If you continue to be mediocre and show no signs of real improvement after a while people will grow tired. That's what the Rockets looked like before the trade deadline. We were losing to Golden State and Cleveland. But since the deadline Camby has showed how much he will help. ANd Dragic is shining now. And we look like we can actually win a first round series. This winning road trip has me more excited about the team and makes me want to see them play live. And continue on to the playoffs and would bet I am not alone. If you disagree fine. Goodbye All things being equal winning is better for attendance than losing.
Our away attendance is high because we're good enough to make it a competitive fun game to watch your team play against but bad enough to know you're not gonna watch your team lose
Hard to tell. It could just be that the opposing team is just stronger and has a pretty loyal fanbase and regardless of who they play they draw in big crowds. Not only that, I'm sure the elite teams of the league (Heat, Bulls, Lakers, Thunder, Celtics, etc) kind of skew the average because they will sell out regardless of opponent pulling the average away attendance for Rockets games and offsetting poor attendance for games against teams like the Hornets, Bobcats, Nets, etc. I was watching a game against the Hornets and I had not seen an arena so barren in a long time. If a team really stinks, they better have a player that is worth paying to see or it's a long climb out of the rabbit hole.
This is true of every team, then. There are some scheduling differences of course, generally highlighted by differences among st Eastern/Western teams schedules, so the Rockets will have less away games against the Heat, Knicks, Bulls, Celtics than teams in the east will have against those games, and vice-versa. And this year there has been even more variability. And you always have factors like maybe the Rockets played the Lakers on Saturday nights whereas the Hornets played them on a Wednesday... but as you point out, the Lakers likely draw well regardless of day of week and opponent. I think the Rockets draw decently on the road for the as already mentioned reason - solid team, fun game, home team likely to win. Les probably isn't as concerned about the attendance drop as the numbers make it out. He's likely still selling a much larger portion of the tickets, and he can afford being only 85% full, with under 17k/game attendance cause of the larger market and tv deal.... HOWEVER, those numbers aren't good or encouraging and need to be turned around. I would not be surprised to see management changes after next year, or him quietly starting to gauge value for a sale, again after next year and the all-star game. just some thoughts.
Definitely, this logic would apply for all teams. One thing to remember about other teams in the league is that, some, if not ALL teams use variable pricing on tickets which is highly correlated with how competitive and how popular a team is and it could just be that tickets to Rockets games are cheaper which makes it more affordable for families to attend these games. The second half increase in attendance can be easily explained by the fact that the team was performing well and in the middle of the playoff race and as the season draws to an end and the playoffs take over, people are more willing to shell out money to see a competitive team play. With that being said, 23rd in the league in attendance is nothing to cheer about. Yao Ming only retired last year and the attendance has plummeted since his departure. The Rockets desperately need a superstar-caliber player on the roster if not to WIN games, then to SELL some tickets.
The funny thing is I see the attendance going south next year as well. Unless my boy Morey can finally attain some high caliber talent i think in general rockets fans are fed up with this mediocrity.
