Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Poincare_Confection t1_j9b8hxr wrote

Reply to comment by Make_the_music_stop in Average Attendance for North American Sports Leagues [OC] by BoMcCready

It's explained by supply vs demand.

Baseball has 162 games per season. No other sport on this list comes close to that. Next highest is NHL and NBA at 82 games. Baseball stadiums also have relatively high max capacity as you can see.

Twice as many games as NBA and twice as much max capacity explain the bigger gap between avg attendance and max capacity. What ends up happening is that there are so many games and seats that fans pick and choose the "best" games to attend (with best opponents). In NBA seats are so scarce that you just pick whatever you can afford.

12

RelativeAssistant923 t1_j9broy0 wrote

The NBA is also very willing to charge a ton of money for tickets in a half full stadium.

2

Poincare_Confection t1_j9bza2x wrote

Well, the data here shows they almost always fill their stadiums. Average attendance is 91% of average max capacity. That's insanely good. Means almost every NBA game is sold out.

2

RelativeAssistant923 t1_j9csfz1 wrote

Maybe I'm only going to unpopular teams? Or maybe there's a big gap between tickets sold and button in seats? I've gotten some very expensive tickets for half empty stadiums in multiple cities.

2