Low attendance should raise flag on expansion talk

Who's got the clicker

An article in today's Columbus Dispatch claims that the padded attendance numbers of the Columbus Crew belie an "apathy" among its fan base to support the team during the week and in foul weather.

Watch as the Dispatch gets all Woodward and Bernstein on your assess:

According to internal club documents obtained by The Dispatch, the attendance figures announced by the Crew after each of its eight games this season are on average 3,243 higher than the number of tickets scanned at stadium gates.

Also, the Crew is behind budget in ticket sales and ticket revenue. The team has had an average paid attendance of 9,987, 888 below its projection of 10,875. Its gross ticket revenue has averaged $185,964.25 per game, more than $11,000 less than budgeted.

Is this a surprise to anymore who has ever attended a midweek match in MLS before?

This article is interesting not so much as snapshot of a fan base. You can't blame them for being skeptical of their clubs recent success given their history of inconsistency. They'll eventually jump on the bandwagon, fill up the stadium and inevitably some asshole will embarrass the city by spouting racial epithets. Joy! And it's not surprising that MLS inflates statistics like a Hollywood plastic surgeon. All professional sports play with attendance numbers like this.

No, what makes this article noteworthy is that it reveals that even those clubs that we thought were earning money, thanks to the revenue streams that come with soccer-specific stadiums, are still struggling to put butts in the seats. This is not to say that the league is in some kind of financial crisis. Indeed, in most cases the numbers are up, and clubs are doing a nice job reaching out to their communities. Given the economic downturn, it isn't surprising that some revenue streams aren't flowing as freely as before, and MLS is still the best (and cheapest) ticket in American professional sports.

But this is just one of a few red flags warning against unchecked expansion by MLS. So, Vancouver, St. Louis, New York pt. 2, San Diego, Tijuana, etc. -- sorry, but MLS needs to close its borders for a while.

Major League Soccer needs to focus on making the clubs it currently has profitable before adding additional markets. When people think of the collapse of America's last top flight NASL, the New York Cosmos' overspending is oten cited as a reason for the league's demise. But just as culpable was the over expansion of the league, which quickly went from 12 teams to 24 teams. Expansion also thins the talent pool and we could have issues filling rosters with talent from collegiate and academy ranks as we increase the number of possible destinations for these individuals.

The argument for expansion is that we could tap into new and possibly lucrative markets, like MLS has done in Toronto, and while I would agree that expansion into Toronto looks like it will be a success, I would rather see any new "can't miss" market opportunities filled by the old "missed a lot" markets.

Take Kansas City, for example. They have the absolute worst attendance of any team in the league, a distinction that they seem to have every year. And it doesn't reflect their play on the field because the Wizards have had years when they played an attractive brand of soccer (ok, one yearl). Now, they have Argentine legend Claudio Lopez (and soon Josh Wolff), yet they are still a pitiful draw, averaging (and these are MLS-inflated numbers mind you) just 9,483 per game. Why not call a bust a bust and move the franchise to St. Louis or Vancouver, rather than creating a new franchise that will dilute the existing talent and stretch the marketing efforts of the league? I'm sorry KC fans but it just hasn't worked out and all five of you are going to have to find a new team to root for.

Of course, I'm not suggesting we make MLS a multi-city moving circus and we shouldn't touch the markets that have been successful so far (Columbus included). But we should be careful not to get too caught up in the incredible growth spurt the sport has enjoyed over the last 10 years in this country. We should be careful not to get ahead of ourselves. And we should carefully (and correctly) count the number of butts in seats in all current stadiums before we begin thinking about filling up brand new stadiums.

Or else the league might have to get even more creative with its bookkeeping.