Relatively
DMZ · May 26, 2010 at 9:26 pm · Filed Under Mariners
I believe that according to announced attendance, the Sounders have outdrawn the Mariners every time both teams have played at home on the same date this year. Today, playing at night while the M’s went early, they got within shouting distance of doubling the M’s total.
4/17, Mariners 31,647 to Sounders 35,924
5/1, Mariners 30,225 to Sounders 36,219
5/8, Mariners 30,446 to Sounders 36,273
5/26, Mariners 22,422 to Sounders 40,122
I don’t know what MLS’ standard for sales is, but MLB uses tickets sold and not butts in seats.
Good to hear from you, DMZ.
While I am not surprised by those numbers, I made some comparisons. The Sounders have 18 home games, so there are fewer games to attend – more like the Seahawks than MLB. But they stretch from February until October, so it isn’t like this is the best weather the fans will see. They have a 3-4-3 record, so they aren’t tearing up the league (but may be exceeding expectations for all I know).
Conclusions are left to the reader.
Retirement not agreeing with you? Good to see a post from you.
I think context is important. The Sounders, as far as it has been described to me because I know jack shit about dive-ball, is or was a decent team. Decent teams will actually draw fans.
I know, I know. This concept is alien to the Mariners, but it seems to hold true.
Good point G-Man. If their were 81 home soccer games you wouldn’t see that…
If the M’s want to fix their attendance problems, I have a radical suggestion: PUT A TEAM WORTH WATCHING ON THE FIELD!!
They didn’t have any trouble drawing in 2001, as I recall….
Tonight’s match was also a friendly against the Boca Juniors from Buenos Aires which, even though meaningless for the season, is a huge honor just to host them.
But yeah, in general, I feel like the MLS season has much more of an event feel to it because of the fewer games.
Tonight’s match was also a friendly against the Boca Juniors from Buenos Aires which, even though meaningless for the season, is a huge honor just to host them.
But yeah, in general, I feel like the MLS season has much more of an event feel to it because of the fewer games, turning more people per event.
Sorry… not sure why that double posted with the first one cut off.
Definitely not apples to apples. This would be more like having the Mariners play in Japan, and comparing the attendance to an ordinary midweek day game.
On the other hand, I was at today’s game. No way in hell were there 20,000 people in the stadium.
the mariners top out average attendance in all of the mls around 36-37k
2nd is philly around 30k
3rd is toronto around 20k
it’s a little weird having the most popular team in the league. reminds me of sonics in the early 90′s.
You mean the Sounders, Draketw206. They top out at 36,000 and change because that’s a sellout — there are more seats that that, obviously, but they’re covered up and you can’t buy them. They’re as full as the league will allow them to be, every single game. And those are butts in seats.
They sell more than any other MLS team because no other MLS team is allowed to open up that many seats. The league tries to push people together for atmosphere.
Tonight’s friendly was a special case, with some additional sections opened up, but Boca is nothing remotely like last year’s Chelsea and Barcelona, who FILLED Quest to the rafters. Boca’s not the club they used to be. But the fan appeal for the Sounders is definitely real — there’s no dropoff at all from last year, even though they have frankly sucked at home. The Mariners have sucked for a lot longer; it takes a few years for the attendance rot to really set in.
But there’s nothing quite like a Sounders crowd; there’s not as many as the Seahawks get, and they may not be as loud, but the constant singing and chanting and booming and flag-waving are pretty inspiring, especially compared to the sad, scoreboard-driven “BUM-BUM-sha” fan participation at Safeco.
Maybe the Mariners need a few songs. Something derogatory about their opponents’ wives would be good. “Katrina Hunter takes it up the” — uh-oh, that’s going too far, isn’t it?
I think it is fair to note that the Ms have a lot more home games than the Sounders. Certainly, if the Sounders had almost 5x the number of home games the attendance would be lower.
That said, there is no denying the enthusiasm for the Sounders. Even the most casual sports fans in town say that the Sounders games are fun: they are loud, everyone stands the whole time, etc. As a season ticket holder, I also appreciate how eager the Sounders are too please. The March to the Match, the Golden Scarf, refund a game, etc. All of that enhances my loyalty.
I also appreciate the fact that the games are relatively short. The whole thing is over in 2 hours.
What, the Mariners should now play soccer? They are just now managing to play baseball. Let’s let them give baseball a shot.
Nice to see you tag line DZM.
What, the Mariners should now play soccer? They are just now managing to play baseball. Let’s let them give baseball a shot.
Nice to see your tag line DZM.
“They sell more than any other MLS team because no other MLS team is allowed to open up that many seats. The league tries to push people together for atmosphere.”
Not actually true. MLS won’t turn down money. The fact is no one else draws that many. Most teams have stadiums that seat much less than an NFL stadium, but almost no one is reaching 100% capacity.
The real story here is that DMZ has forsaken baseball for soccer. And that would piss off Jim Rome, so of course I approve.
WIN AND THEY WILL COME.
Sounders = novelty, democratic ownership (giving power to the fans), made the playoffs a year ago, less games to go per year
Mariners = 81 games a year, hands-off ownership that gives NO power to the fans, but most of all: HAVEN’T MADE THE PLAYOFFS IN 9 YEARS AND HAVE HAD SOME REALLY BAD BASEBALL PLAYED DURING THAT TIME
It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the Sounders are outdrawing the M’s right now.
EDIT: Another great point I keep seeing on here, the Sounders atmosphere is MUCH MORE LIVELY than a Mariners game. The brass in the M’s PR department and in-game entertainment department need to figure something out in that regard.
The Mariners run their show for the lowest common denominator, the kid who’s never been to a game before. “The phrase that starts every game at Safeco Field.” As though “Play Ball” is a Seattle tradition. “Score that Play 6-3″ when what you want to do is score that play “Lopez swung at the first pitch out of the strike zone again.” Even at tense moments in close games, most of the fans stop clapping when the music stops, which it has to when the pitcher puts his foot on the rubber. The exception that proves the rule is the wave, which will be started at inappropriate moments. Mariner fans are led to expect they will be entertained, and their entertainment will be programmed by the team. Hard to believe this is the town of Bill the Beer Man and the spontaneous clapping when RJ got two strikes on a batter.
Sounders fans organize and participate in their own entertainment. And the fans are content to entertain one another. Would that continue if the team sucked as long as this team has? Who knows; they’re the new kid in town right now and they had a great first season.
The Mariners and Sounders are pretty similar this year. Underachieving, all defense and no offense, trying to eeke out one run ballgames or one goal victories, respectively.
Both teams have ineffective stars who are long past their prime. While Freddy Hjungberg is clogging up the Sounders midfield, Griffey is clogging the middle of the Mariners order. Hjungberg has taken most every Sounders corner kick and I don’t think the Sounders have scored on one yet.
Every time I see Freddie Montero overshoot the goal yet again I think of all the Lopez fly outs and three-pitch strikeouts I’ve seen over his career.
DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!
WE HAVE A WINNER!
With World Cup fever growing, plus hosting a prestigious team and it the novelty factor still strong in Seattle, you have to expect the Sounders would outdraw the Mariners.
But screw the football, all I care about is that Derek made this post.
The Sounders’ attendance has nothing to do with World Cup fever. This season and last season they’ve nearly sold out the portion of the stadium they open for all their regular season matches. It should also be noted the season tickets for the season are sold out and there is a significant waiting list to get them.
The bottom line is that they’ve done a fantastic job marketing the team and the game day atmosphere tops anything I’ve ever experienced at a baseball game.
However, attendance across the rest of MLS is nowhere near as high as in Seattle and that would be the case even if they were selling out their games because most of the soccer specific stadiums across the country seat about 16-25,000.
Also, I live in NY now so I only get to go to Sounders games when I’m visiting home but if you’ve yet to go see one, you should go. Even if you’re not a soccer fan. What the Sounders have managed to do in terms of stirring up an enthusiastic fanbase is pretty special, even by the standards of international soccer.
MLS also goes by tickets sold vs butts in seats.
I wish I could go to Sounders games but I made a deal with my wife after I got shoved to the concrete by a Timbers supporter back in the USL days…
I was at the Sounders game last night…they put a product on the field that’s fun to watch, and a friendly with the most storied club team in the hemisphere doesn’t hurt as a draw. In a league that struggles to attract and keep top talent, they still manage not to put players in the starting lineup that are a slap in the face to paying ticketholders (looking at you, Hugger and Griff!).
I bought decent tickets in the north endzone stands, but you can pretty much get up and go sit wherever you want once you’re in…a distinct advantage over Safeco, where the Octogenarian Seat Gestapo will stop you from downgrading your seats when there’s 6,000 people in the stadium. All in all it was a much better value than the average M’s game (in my opinion), at least if you’re considering a scenario with the purchase of pretty good seats in either venue.
The m’s must be traveling near the speed of light, while the sounders are stationary.
I was recently thinking, contemplating all the 2-1, 3-2 etc. scores that the Mariners ought to consider switching to soccer. They could even get away with a nil-nil, which has seemed to be an objective of theirs for a long time.
My daughter and wife love soccer. I appreciate the high level of skill involved. However, it has always struck me as reminiscent of a Henry James novel – people running all over the place getting excited, and nobody scores. Okay, like a lot of Mariners games recently.
Sounders games are seen as “events”, which draw Seattle fans like flies. If something is seen as hip and cool, they will come. The M’s used to be that way, as did the Seahawks. Let’s see how Sounders attendance looks 5 years from now, when the novelty has worn off, and 1-1 ties get old.
It might be worth noting that Sounders FC takes a different tack on how many seats they’re willing to open up for friendlies (like last night’s match) than regular MLS contests. In that context, 40,000 is higher than their usual cap around 35,000 or so, but it’s well below the 65,000 they got for Chelsea last year.
As far as what the numbers represent, I’m pretty certain that like any sports business, both the Mariners and Sounders report sales rather than actual attendance. Though I assume teams normally have a good idea of both figures, and it would be fascinating if the gap between them was public knowledge.
daddydriz,
I think you underestimate the soccer fanbase in this area…that’s okay though, you’re hardly the first or the last. They may see a drop in average attendance in the next few years if they’re not winning, but overall I think they’re always going to do fairly well with ticket sales…part of that is having 90 minutes of action (plus 5 or so for injury time), and a 15 minute halftime, which means it’s something I can reasonably do after a full workday without exhausting myself and cutting my sleep time short. A 7:30 Sounders kickoff will have me home in north Sound by 10 PM, whereas a 7:05 M’s game, assuming I stay until the end, won’t get me home until 11 at the very earliest on most nights.
Another plus for the Sounders is that Portland and Vancouver join next year. That’ll keep the interest going.
Good to see a Derek post!
I can say that I know more people (well, aside from you cyber folks I rarely see) fanatic about the Sounders than the Mariners. There may be more Mariners “fans,” but there’s already a pretty solid foundation of Sounders fans who are nuts about the team.
Also, smb makes solid points about the length of the game and amount of action.
MLS has been pretty brilliant, by accident or not, with their expansion I think.
I wonder if Vancouver fans will travel down for matches like they do with the Blue Jays, even though they’ll actually have a team in town. Canadians are pretty crazy about their sports, so it’ll be interesting to see this three way rilvary develop.
The MLS is such a different league than the MLB. And Sounders is such a different team than the Mariners. Sounders avg attendance is roughly equal to the avg attendance of the EPL and LaLiga and beats Seria A. Sounders have something special going on. When my friends come to town there is only one sporting even in Seattle worth going to and that’s the Sounders.
Next year I’m traveling to a Timbers match and a Whitecaps match. Going to try and trade tickets with fans from those clubs. I’m excited for the NW rivalry.
The Portland Timbers MLS entry will have about a 20k seating cap.
A bit more like the league average. No comparison as to the crowds…..The Timbers Army (filling most of one side of the stands), will not sit or stop cheering and chanting for the whole match. Smoke bombs……chainsaw log cutting after each goal.
I have been a Mariner fan from Portland since 1980 and travel up for a few games a year…….but I am a season ticket holder for the Timbers and look forward to the games between Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. They simply will wild!
It’s always fun when Derek comes out from hibernation to post!
This is a telling stat considering that if we went back 5-10 years the M’s average attendance could have outpaced the average Sounders match with little trouble.
The Sounders do have the advantage of only playing once or twice a week and home matches coming few and far enough between to avoid the oversaturation that comes with, say, an 81 game home schedule. But it still speaks to how far the M’s are from being the drawing card they used to be.
“The Timbers Army (filling most of one side of the stands), will not sit or stop cheering and chanting for the whole match. ”
Yeah because Sounders crowds have been known for sitting and saying, “Well played,” after a goal.
Wait. I thought it was Saunders we were talking about here.
budump bump
Indeed.
They will most definitely be traveling. Traveling to opposing cities for games is a part of soccer fan culture. MLS team supporter groups routinely charter buses to go to games in other cities. Even when the Sounders played here in NY there was a decent sized contingent of fans who flew out here. Same with when Chicago was in town. Local rivalries, like Philly, DC, and Boston usually result in the largest groups coming to NY for games and it will be the same for Seattle when Portland and Vancouver are in town.
Also people traveled in small numbers for USL games so I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t for MLS.
It is too bad that imo Portland is too small to support MLB. Seattle needs a regional rival.
I like the (non-rowdy) atmosphere of a MLB game.
Part of the fun is sitting for a long game on a nice day; the constant murmur of the crowd imbetween action is hypnotizing/relaxing.
Still, a good team and a good game make it more enjoyable…
As distinguished from a “Commissioner-designated” rival!
Well put!
…..and a better team would not be a bad idea either…..:-)
For the record, I was at yesterday’s M’s game. If there were 22,000 fans there, I’ll not only eat my Mariners hat, I’ll stop making fun of Jose Lopez.
And of the about 10,000 fans in attendance, about 2,500 were elementary school students on field trips. But on the bright side, it was a mostly intellectual crowd (as opposed to the usual drunkards needing something to do on a Friday night). I’ll have to do a day game again sometime soon!
As a Sounders season ticket holder, I enjoy the games and what the team represents.
However, the idea that somehow their success is just the result of superior marketing is pure drivel. And to compare that to the M’s marketing is even more of an apples-to-oranges comparison than the difference in the number of home games/matches.
If there were a secret sauce to Sounders marketing, it would have already been transferred to every other MLS town…and San Jose would be drawing 36k a match, too.
The Sounders are popular because the franchise tapped into a huge and enthusiastic soccer base that already existed…owing largely to the disproportionate popularity of youth soccer here.
I say fans of the Sounders and the Mariners are both beneficiaries of very good front offices and marketers.
Those elementary school kids are surprisingly knowledgeable. Just don’t tell them that ERA and OBP are (gasp!) math.
They were pretty funny, actually. Especially with their constant cheer: “Strike him out! Strike him out!”
Poor, little urchins…
A few more years of attendance like the last few and that will be a huge potential market.
Yow, I didn’t know this about Safeco … I thought Dodger Stadium was the only place that enforced class-based segregation.
But at least in Safeco even if they don’t let you switch seats, they do yet you wander all over, yes? In Dodger Stadium there are levels that you can’t even enter if you don’t have the right ticket.
(That’s the situation now; Dodger Stadium used to be much less restrictive.)
As for the Sounders, yeah when I saw them play the Galaxy in LA last year there was a whole section of green-clad Sounder fans with flags and banners and everything. Did they actually travel from Seattle for the game? Or were they fans of the Sounders who live in LA, and through the fan club or whatever got organized? Either way, impressive.
The comments about the Sounders being more than marketing are correct, but no one’s mentioned the concrete proof that Seattle’s had a large soccer fan base ready and waiting for a major league (as major as the US gets anyway) team all along: is no one here old enough to remember the original Sounders of the late 1970s? They’d draw crowds of 40,000 to the Kingdome (so forget about outdrawing the Mariners, that was an order of magnitude larger than the Mariner crowds). I travelled with a carload of friends to the Soccer Bowl in Portland in 1977 to see the Sounders take on the NY Cosmos (with Pele and Beckenbauer).
Then the Sounders were sold to that crummy owner whose name I’ve forgotten, and the NASL made mistakes with expansion and financing, but Seattle’s had a ready core of soccer fans for decades.
The reason they open up those seats is because they can sell them all. No other team can fill that many seats for a match.
I hope DMZ sent this to the M’s ownership. This is what they get, when fielding an uncompetitive product for nearly a decade now.
I like baseball way more, but I enjoy going to a Sounders game more these days.
It’s been mentioned here, so I’m adding my name to the list. I don’t like Safeco mostly b/c of the loud noise & the distractions on the video board going 24/7. Everytime I’m there I feel like I’m one step closer to being diagnosed ADHD, no joke. I’m not some old grandpa either, I’m early 30s and I’m usually ok with loud music & the tv always being on and that type of stuff. But, I can’t stand Safeco in this regard.
M’s marketing people, please move beyond the lowest common denom that we’ve been talking about here! I think we have a strong enough fan base that will show up w/o the continous freakin audio & video distrations. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. It’s teaching bad habits to the fans who are learning to become more legit baseball fans (and preventing that from happening of course). Plus, like myself, I think we’d have people coming (families too) who don’t come now, for the reasons I’ve just explained. Someday – maybe. I just wish there could be a dialogue about this topic somewhere. Thanks to USSM here for providing at least a small place for this to come up. The Ms people sure don’t seem to care about it. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up w/soccer as my favorite sport in 10-15 years if this keeps up. Not that I’ll ever not like baseball, I love it.
Go Sounders! Go Ms!
Different atmosphere, different type of events.
I agree with those who are pointing out that the Sounders popularity isn’t just some ‘flavor of the month’. The league I played in 30+ years ago is heading into the seventh decade of operation. FAR more kids in this area played soccer growing up than they did LL, or football, or basketball.
And yes, the folks from Vancouver and Portland will travel here, and Sounders fans will travel to those cities as well. Back in the NASL days, those were always some of the biggest, rowdiest crowds, with plenty of fans who were very obviously from Van. & Port.
Soccer is a sport that doesn’t have to be explained to most people around here, and for newer fans, the nuances of soccer are much easier to grasp than are those of baseball.
Sure, it’s a simple game; you throw the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball, but understanding the infinite possibilities in those three actions takes a lifetime. Americans don’t seem to have the patience for the complex anymore.
—
And they gotta have points, thinking a 21-14 football game is somehow different from a 3-2 baseball or soccer game.
It’s a legitimate point you make here, but I think you’re forgetting that this has always been Mariners’ baseball. When you have a team that goes more than a decade w/o winning more games than losing, you have to keep that lowest common denominator entertained.
Of course, now that we actually have Safeco, a field designed in a pseudo-classic style, you’d think we could move a little beyond this.
But personally, I can’t help but get excited when “Funk Blast” appears on that big screen. Not that this team lets us see it very often. I was lucky enough to catch a game at Wrigley recently, too. They may not have big video screens, but at least we don’t have TVs everywhere with the same damn commercials running all game long!! I will never go to Six Flags as long as I live.
Genre – We live by the gimmic, we die by the gimmic. Maybe our team has sucked for a decade in part because unconsciously the leaders of the org know that a large group of the fans are kind of…..really into entertainment other than the actual game. It’s like this website. I’ve been exposed on USSM to seeing the game and appreciating the game on a different level (beyond the usual fluff and sensationalist journalism – and as a result I was able to appreciate the last decade in new ways that makes me appreciate baseball as a game even more (even w/all the losing). But, for me, the stadium experience has lost much of it’s appeal due to the sensory overload. Safeco is such a great stadium too, that it makes that fact even worse!
This has not ‘always been M’s ball’. Going to the dome as a kid I loved every game I went to, and we were crappy as hell. They didn’t have all the crazy games on the screen and the loud noises 24/7. It’s somewhat where our culture is. But, we shouldn’t give into it and let the baseball game become the sideshow while the noise & video overstimulate the senses. The other sounds & smells and everything else about the game is one of the things that makes it so great. I can barely have a conversation with whoever I’m with in between the innings cause it’s so crazy loud. That’s messed up. The game is a great game by itself. Let the game be on center stage.
Well said, Dome. I just don’t think we’re the only stadium dealing with this. This is the unfortunate evolution of sports. While I was watching the game the other day, I could see part of ESPN’s PTI broadcasting on the big screen at Qwest. This isn’t unusual anymore.
I think that new stadium in Dallas represents where we’re going to a good degree. While I do believe that most of my iconic Kingdome memories where really trumped-up ballpark experiences, we didn’t have the technology to take too much away from the game. You’re quite right in that respect.
What I think is really unfortunate about the way the fan experience is changing isn’t the loud noises or finding out that Rob Johnson’s favorite cereal is Fruit Pebbles (yes, seriously); it’s the direction toward a minor league experience. I don’t mind loud music, but the gimmicky garbage drives me crazy. Seriously? We’re going to watch a guy catch a pop fly in a traffic cone? We’re going to watch a lady unlock an autographed Gutierrez baseball in a safe with a giant Keybank key?
I don’t mind the loud noises and music or the big screen graphics, and maybe that’s just me, but I’m tired of watching the same things I experienced when I worked in Spokane for the Indians appear on an MLB field.