Astros playoff tickets are hot items every year there in the playoffs. Minute Maid is rocking. I could lineup my clients for tickets and bankrupt myself. Not so at all with the Rockets. There is a different interest level and it saddens me.
Liked the thread because if anything will spur Rockets fans to get there on time it is seeing our main competition making us look bad. Yes TC does eventually fill up but man, seeing all those empty prime seats in the 1st quarter is so shameful. Watching these fairweather "fans" saunter lazily down 5 mins into the game gets me so heated. I can tell you for sure that if I had one of those seats my ass would be firmly planted in it 30mins - 1hr before tipoff.
It was extremely disappointing last night, alot of empty seats at the starts of the game, however, people are starting showing up, by the end of the 1st qt, majority of the seats were filled not all of them though, with 1:30 left for the game people started leaving...like really you kidding me, it's a ****ing playoffs game
I was quite honestly shocked watching the game last night. All season long it was "no one cares, traffic during the week, corporations having tickets etc" But the team has the BEST RECORD IN THE NBA (First time ever) and it was their opening game for the playoffs when everyone was supposed to show up. Its a weekend game that started at 8pm and there was a lot of empty seats in the lower bowl last night. Not to mention a lot of people didn't even bother to wear the black-tshirts. Was the arena louder than normal? Of course it was it was a playoff game after all. I was just shocked at the number of empty seats even half way through the first. Makes me worried that Wednesday night the attendance will be worse since its a weekday game and people will complain about the traffic etc. FWIW - I've gone to random playoff games at staples for the clippers/lakers and those places were packed just before tip-off and staples is in the heart of downtown LA as well and is a cluster**** to get to in traffic, yet people plan and make it. If its truly corporations that purchase the tickets and no one shows up - Tilman should audit attendance and let them know if they do not attend 85% (or whatever reasonable percentage) of regular season games they cannot purchase playoff tickets, I would imagine there are plenty of other companies or people that would go to most games if given a chance to purchase those tickets.
To be clear, I am not arguing that the Astros playoffs may be better attended and at a different level. I'm doubting that overall it is racially motivated. One problem is that the NBA playoffs is a two month affair. Baseball is done in a month. In baseball you get a 7 game series finished in 9 days. Basketball, generally 14 days. Playoff baseball is also very different than regular season baseball. When one run in the first inning can decide a game there is little margin for error. In Houston, people expect the Rockets to make the playoffs and for casual fans it's hard to get excited the first round or two.
I don't think it's ENTIRELY racially motivated, but I think it is definitely an element. Again, I hear "thug ball" used A LOT when describing the NBA. The NBA is also the most socially "woke" of the major sports and their athletes publicly get into disputes with Republican causes. Whether it was bathroom bills or now just Trump in general. That's definitely a part of it as well. The NBA playoffs are brutally long. Also, I think a big issue the NBA has is the (maybe accurate) perception among fans that nothing matters except the final handful of minutes. In the arena it's hard to get engaged throughout the game when you know in your mind if the teams are good it will be tight in the final few minutes and the real game will begin. It gets made worse with the timeouts. The final two minutes were brutal live last night. TV timeout, timeout, injury timeout, timeout, timeout. Foul, foul. Ugh.
The attendance at the game last night was fine. Almost all the seats were full. The problem was the beginning of the game and the beginning of the second half. To start the second half the lower bowl had 50% in their seats - disgraceful! Get back to your seats!
Probably the case, but thats why I think the team needs to put some sort of rule of making playoff tickets tied to your attendance during the regular season.
You're certainly right about the game's not decided until the 4th quarter perception. I wasn't where I could watch the game last night but I was checking the score on my phone. It was 17-6 early. My mind immediately thinks, "no big deal". Assume it was a baseball playoff game and it was 2-0 in the second inning. That could very well be a big deal.
Who wouldn't want to see the Astros get owned by a fat 44 year old instead of the best team in the NBA? I do think some of it is racially motivated. Not in a racist way but in a cultural way.
Oh, please. It's not racially motivated. The Astros are the freaking World Series champs. You don't think that'll give them a boost with the sports fans of this city? Sure, the Rockets had the best regular season record in the NBA this year, but until they actually win the whole thing, some fans will have a lukewarm attitude towards the team.
I honestly thought it looked filled up and very loud. Maybe we have such low expectations, a few 20-30 empty seats won't bother us anymore. hah
same here. a bunch of friends went to the game last night and said it was rocking inside. ill take their word for it
I was at the game. I could not believe how many people paid $100 for a ticket to stand in a 20 minute line for food. People probably missed entire third quarter just for some chicken tenders.
Yes I think that's exactly what's gonna happen on Wednesday, what a disgrace, tilman main to do list for next season even if we got that chip is how to improve the attendance or develop new strategy for tickets sales, this is absouletly a horrible representation for this city an it's team.
Just accept it: Houston really doesn't care about the Rockets. It's apathy. It's not about race; not about traffic; not about evil corporations. The city of Houston, as a whole, does not prioritize the Rockets. Over the past 20 years, we have had coming through the franchise (successful or not) during supposedly "productive and popular" years of theirs: Hakeem, Drexler, Barkley, Pippen, Francis, Yao, Tmac, Lowry, Dragic, Harden, Lin (sucks, but popular), Dwight, Paul. And we still can't get consistent attendance, with empty seats during playoffs (in a city with metro 6.5 million)??? Yeah nobody cares really. Make all the excuses you want, but many big names have come through the franchise over the years and still nothing. We had one actually poor year that netted us global icon Yao, and then the next "rebuilding years" included future all-stars Lowry and Dragic while never being below 0.500. What awful rebuilding years, the horror! It's ironic because our global popularity might be 7th (in no order: NY, Chi, LaL, Bos, Lebron, GS), yet bottom for relative local popularity.