Even though the Hornets are among the top teams, their home attendance is so low! Like today their attendance is only 12,400.
That just shows how bad Hurricane Katrina has hurt the city. You guys don't really expect sellouts after all thats happened to that city do you?
people in new orleans are more worried about their kids getting packed in cramped schools and them living in deathtraps of FEMA trailers... Give them a few years.
i think they are waiting to see if NO can actually make it to the playoffs before they their spend money. every year NO remains a good seed and then they randomly disappear out of the top 8. might not happen this year..but u know.
Their attendance had been declining even before Hurricane Katrina hit. NOLA is a football city. The Saints have sold out all their games for the past 2 years after Hurricane Katrina.
the hornets are 27th in avg attendance, and 28th in overall attendance. 13,214 is what they are averaging per game. the saints averaged just about 70,005 for their 8 games in 2007. the nfl as a whole had an average of 67,738 fans per game. i'm not sure where the saints ranked overall, but you can see they pulled 2,200 more people per game than the average. from all of this, i would say the hornets were better off in okc. in the two seasons there these were the averages - 18,168 in 05/06 17,830 in 06/07 http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/attendance?sort=home_total&year=2008&seasonType=2 http://www.nfl.com/teams/schedule?team=NO http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Jan/03/br/br2734095861.html http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/attendance?year=2006 http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/attendance?year=2007
This is also the first year that the people in new orleans had a reason to cheer for the hornets... they completely sucked when baron was here except for one magical season. The saints on the other hand went to the superbowl and they have a tradition in new orleans. You see the difference? Give the hornets a few seasons of winning basketball and im sure the fans will come.
Hurricane Katrina has nothing to do with their poor attendance. As stated several times above, the Saints have sold out their games and Hornets attendance was on the decline before Katrina even hit. What hasn't been said is this: The vast majority of people who can afford to go to an NBA game were not affected by Katrina or have since recovered from the situation. As per usual, the extremely poor were hit the hardest and though it's tragic, it shouldn't affect attendance in the slightest. It's safe to say the poor make up only a very small percentage of people who attend NBA games, and it's getting harder and harder for even the working and middle classes to afford them.
This is the main reason. The Hornets have no history in New Orleans. They have had bad teams almost every season and have been playing in Oklahoma City for the two seasons before this one. They aren't going anywhere though because they have an iron clad long term lease with the New Orleans arena.
The NFL is a once a week event 8 times a year. It draws not just from the city, but the state. You can roadtrip to an NFL game on a Sunday. Much more difficult to draw in a city for an event on a Wednesday night in March. Particularly as city like NOLA.
Unfortunately, New Orleans is just not a basketball city. It was when the Hornets initially moved there. The declining population and lack of corporate sponsorship did not bode well for the success of the team in Louisiana. The same can be said for Memphis and now, Charlotte. The teams have no tradition in their cities and since arriving, have not done much more than lose. And in the case of the Hornets, they've been good the past two seasons when they were mainly based in Oklahoma City. The Hornets and Grizzlies should never have left Charlotte and Vancouver, respectively. Part of the failure of the Bobcats in Charlotte is that the city no longer trusts the NBA - would you? Even though the chance is close to zero, do you think that Seattle would re-embrace the NBA after what David Stern and Clay Bennett have put them through with the Sonics? While Stern's watch has seen the growth of the game to an international level, he's neglected it in the US and has allowed teams in respectable markets to relocate to small markets with new arenas and he is now reaping the "rewards," of low attendance, poor merchandise sales, and poor play in small markets.
