http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance Only the Pistons draw less fans to the arena than we do. We only draw about 13,000 fans in an arena that can contain 18,300. This is a big drop off from last year, as we seated over 16,000 fans a night, good for 20th in the NBA. It's pretty embarrassing to be honest. Here in NY, Madison Square Garden is jammed packed every night, even a few years back when Marbury and Steve Francis were running the show. Perhaps this is why Les doesn't want to tank. We can easily go from 13,000 fans to 10,000 fans if we are only winning 20 games a year. What do you think can draw fans in? It's getting pretty annoying seeing a sea of red seats at opening tip off when I watch the Rockets on tv.
guess you didn't notice with all the attendance threads popped up in the past 2 weeks..... i like the fight in you to get us to go all the way from New York, but everything has been said already and its gonna stay like this until people show up sadly.....
This begs the question of how many of those 13k are on corporate accounts and spend most of the game looking at their blackberries. Doesn't make for much of an atmosphere or home court advantage whatsoever.
Better parking and comp tickets. Its not all bad. I think those with the corp tix don't even show up.It was pretty empty last game. People just aren't basketball fans in this town.
That's a horrible excuse man.. We are the 4th largest city in america, right? Something like that. Being 29/30 for a big market team is BAD, no matter what the excuse.
the worst part of it, is that the team changed the start times 30 mins early to get people to stay later because of the "games end late " excuse and people STILL leave early......
I don't think its a HUGE factor, but keep in mind too, that we don't play Orlando, Miami, Chicago, or Celtics at home. Dallas and Lakers I think only come once this season (but haven't yet), & those have draw a lot of opposing fans and Rockets fans. Those are usually some near sellouts if not sellouts. After playing only 9 home games, had we had played a few of those big name teams and had a couple 18,300 crowds, we wouldn't have averaged out to #29.
Tickets prices aren't that bad and you can see pretty good from anywhere in the arena. There are a bunch of seats up top for less than $20 if your trying to save money.
If you click on the link in the OP, and then sort it by average road attendance, Rockets rank #11. A lot better than I thought they would. Then using that data you can see what kind of crowd other teams in the NBA draw at away games. The Pistons, who rank at #18, draws the best away crowd of the teams we've played at home. We haven't played any of the top 16 away crowd teams yet!!! Rank of away crowd attendance of teams we've played at home: Pistons 18 Thunder 19 Hawks 20 Bucks 21 Blazers 25 Hornets 26 Spurs 27 Kings 28 We'll knock out Wizards (15), Knicks(16) and Wolves (22) by Monday. That'll be 12 home games of playing bottom 16 away attendance teams.... Yes, fans have a major role in our poor attendance, but also it has to do with the teams we've played.
This makes me sad. Got a chance to go last Saturday and felt right at home. The only thing I have to look forward is to see the baby Rockets play the Toros next week at the Cedar Park Center......Damn I miss Houston.
I get the point that you're making, but have you really thought about what you've said above? Why should attendance hinge on the OTHER team? Teams with die-hard fans and teams that are good will usually sell-out or get close to selling out regardless of who's in town.
Cause people would rather see the Heat/Lakers/Bulls/Magic/Celtics/Clippers than any of the teams we've played. The die hard fans ARE ALREADY at the games, we just don't have 16,000+ die-hard fans there every game, its the casual fans that need to show up. Those casual fans want to see the other team to comes to town because they have 41 games a year to see our own team play.
Make those assets into bigger winners or get better players. Fan favorites are made with guys who want to play hard here in Houston or play winning.
