If you don't know by now you aren't paying attention. The Toyota Center has some of the "swankiest" bar/lounge area of any arena. As such, all the ultra-cool people in the lower section simply go to those areas, order drinks and stand around before the game starts and at halftime.
Here we go again. No homecourt advantage. People at the opera are louder than this. Make some ****in noise
That's just some bs excuse. It's more because houston doesn't have enough supporting fans... not because it has a nice bar/lounge. this is an allstar game, you would think that the seats would be filled. I saw the seats during the beginning, middle, and end of the game and it was all the same... empty seats... it's NOT because of the bar area... not THAT many people sit in the bar area to relax...
No. You're wrong. I've probably been to close to 50 games at the Toyota Center. In the regular season, the lounges do play a large role in the fans being/not being in their seat. For that matter, I imagine you could look up attendance records. They are not sold out all the time - they suck - but attendance is higher than many think. Also, I watched the game, too...and it looked like the seats were full in the 4th quarter to me. It is because of the lounges, especially the Lexus Lounge.
No matter how nice the building is, NO ONE should blame Toyota Center for the lack of fan participation. I could give a rat's ass about the club seating. I'm there for a game to scream my lungs out. Anyone who just hangs out in the lounge and doesn't give it up during a game is not a fan. If your house is messy, you don't blame the house for not cleaning itself up. You blame the people who live in it. Well, our fans have been sucking pretty badly lately and we have no one to blame but ourselves. By the way, the game was sold out and I know for a fact that they had volunteers there as seat fillers when people left their seats like they have at the Emmy's or the Academy Awards so the arena looks full. And, fewer than 3000 tickets were made available to season ticket holders for the game. The vast majority of tickets went to the league, its sponsors and the players. To go to the game, you either had to know someone, be a season ticket holder who won a random lottery or pay about $500 per seat to go.
So, the lounges put a gun to fans heads and said, "You must sit here and not cheer!"??? I don't know about you, but I've sat in the club seats and not set foot in the stupid ass lounge. I was too busy watching the game. "The lounge makes our fans sucks" is a lousy excuse.
I know this is totally off the subject, but, does anybody know where I can get video for the player intros and singing before the game started tonight. My stupid DVR is acting up and didn't record any of the game. I'm mad!!!
The place looked completely full to me at the end. But ya... the club fans are lousy and just play pool or whatever in that lounge most of the time.
Most good seats are corporately held. For most of the people in the lower sections, the game they are at will be thier only Rocket games. They are there to be seen, Rocket games are a social gathering, with the nice bars and lounges. The traditional beer swilling hell raiser has been replaced by guys in khakis and hilfigers sitting on their hands. Until the NBA lowers the prices for seats and makes good seats more affordable for the average fan, we will continue to have plenty of empty seats and dead crowds. Of course a little playoff winning would go a long way in getting some fans to get to their seats and make more noise. This just in: Winning solves pretty much everything.
I refuse to blame myself for this problem. If they handed out tickets to Clutch Fans and not "that guy from Scrubs" then the All-Star game wouldn't have had any problem with empty seats.
Yep...just the nature of the city. That's the way it will always. God is Love...nice that the buddha recognizes.
Yup, Houston is just not a hardcore sports-town and will never be, especially when it comes to basketball. But Astros faced the same thing as well until they caught fire and people jumped on the bandwagon. That's Houston sports fans in a nutshell for ya: Bandwagoners. The few "hardcore" fans are mostly on this board. When you have a city of 5 million people and they can't draw enough fans for the freakin' All-Star Game weekend -- an event that won't be in town again for may be another two decades at the least -- that tells you all you need to know. This isn't Philly or NYC or Chi-town...
Why is everyone blaming Houston for the seats being empty? The season ticket holders (being one of them) received upper level behind the basket seats. The lower bowl and center court upper bowl tickets were all taken by the nba. They give out or sell the seats to stars, corporate sponsors, and VIPs, so why the blame towards Houston on the attendance problem?
Season ticket holders got screwed too, it seems. My father pays 32 thousand dollars a year for his season tickets, and has been a season ticket holder for over 20 years now. (granted, they weren't always as high as they are now) His regular season tickets are at half-court, 11 rows up. section 120, row 11, I believe. He has four tickets. Anyway, for the All-Star game, they sent him a notice saying if he wanted more than two tickets he had to fill out the included paperwork and mail it back to them. He did so, then never heard back on it. Then he hears there are tickets on sale. When he does get his tickets, they have him in section 404. 32 thousand dollars a year and he gets section 404. He's pretty pissed. I don't think he's going to renew his season tickets next year as a result. This isn't the only reason though. They've offended him on more than one occasion and he's been complaining about the annual raise in ticket price for years.
Ummm I've been to at least 10 games sitting in the front row and as much as I love watching the Rockets, i'm usually at the bar drinking a couple of beers and talking to my dad's business partners. And there's usually a lot of people around me too.
Don't blame the bar, blame the owner who can't find a good marketing guy. The Mavericks before Cuban couldn't do much, but after Cuban, the place is packed.
