NBA Attendance: Brief Notes

I'll have some graphs and such on Monday (too few games to generate anything worth looking at thus far), but here's some short notes, Harper's Index style of what's happened so far.

Number of times the Jazz failed to sell out the Delta Center in their last 164 regular season games: 1
Number of times it happened in their first four games this season: 2

Average attendance at the first four Pistons games in last two seasons: 22,076
Average attendance at the first four from this year: 17,541

Change in overall attendance in the first two games of this NBA season compared to the first two games of last season: -22,462

Number of teams who have seen attendance decreases: 19
Number who have increased or remained the same: 11

Attendance Report

I've tried all sorts of ways to show how massive an impact the Sonics' move has had on NBA attendance, and how by removing that particular aspect from the equation totally alters the picture of the league's health.

Unfortunately, the graphs I've thrown up there haven't adequately captured just how much of an outlier the Sonix are this season. The graph below, though, goes a long way to showing that uniqueness. Listed below are all the teams, with their corresponding attendance from last year to this year.

NBA Attendance, From Another Angle

In studying the NBA attendance figures this season, my eyes have gone a bit bloodshot entering in daily totals for every single team. Still, it hasn't been without its rewards, garnering such insights as:

-If every NBA team could play every game on Saturday night, the Sonics would be in KeyArena right now and David Stern would be wearing platinum-plated underwear instead of those miserable gold-plated boxers Larry O'Brien gave him in 1982. LeBron, Kobe, Shaq ... nobody has as much impact on an NBA team's attendance as a Saturday night.

-I don't know which is more worrying for the league, that the Bobcats are as popular in Charlotte as George Shinn biographies, or that the Pistons have dropped from the ranks of the Sellout Every Night Club. If the Pistons don't advance to the second round in the playoffs this season, I'm guessing next year might be a bit tough at Auburn Hills.

Sideways banter aside, allow me to provide you a new graph for your reading enjoyment. This time, I've taken the average attendance of every team and paired it with their standard deviation from said average.


You'll notice that fans of the teams grouped in the bottom right corner are those in no danger of seeing the word "relocation" any time soon in their local newspapers. Fans of those teams in the upper left and, especially, in the bottom left, on the other hand, are free to start their bitching about the inequities of modern professional sports. Not that it will do you any good, mind you, but I thought you ought to prepare.

As you'll gather by looking at the chart, teams which fall into the bottom left quadrant are victims of (1) low attendance and (2) apathy, in that their attendance is neither high on average nor on a once-a-month scenario, regardless of a LeBron sighting, a foam finger giveaway, or what have you.

Teams with high deviations, those at the top half of the graph, tend to have more fluctuations, which is why you'll see the Wizards and their schizophrenic attendance at the very peak, located nearby Charlotte, Minnesota, and Philadelphia, who have managed to get good numbers occasionally, but not often enough to off-set the bad nights.

The graph points out all too well how precarious the situation is in Sacramento these days. Not only is their average attendance quite poor, but it very rarely changes. Please don't take this to mean that I believe Kings' fans are unjustifiably apathetic. Far be it. Rather, I think they've been afflicted with the same malaise we've seen in other cities (cough, Seattle) that visits fans of teams with uncertain futures and miserable on-court play.

Attendance Report, March 3, 2009

All data through March 2, 2009. Teams are shown with their attendance on a year-over-year basis from the 2007-08 season.

. Oklahoma City 143506 . New Orleans 81083 . Philadelphia 51520 . Indiana 35765 . Portland 32819 . Atlanta 24450 . Denver 10592 . New York 7478 . Houston 1670 . Boston 0 . Cleveland 0 . LA Lakers 0 . Phoenix 0 . Utah -309 . Detroit -356 . Charlotte -1712 . Milwaukee -4791 . Dallas -5851 . Memphis -7677 . Minnesota -10728 . Toronto -10728 . San Antonio -11834 . LA Clippers -13279 . Orlando -14089 . New Jersey -14357 . Golden State -14761 . Chicago -22332 . Washington -28837 . Sacramento -40011 . Miami -50257

A Picture's Worth ...

A while back I asked our readers to snap some shots of the games they were attending - but not of the on-court action.

No, what I was looking for was what it looked like in the arena. Sure, the teams are announcing attendance which makes it look as though things are rosy in the NBA, but are those announced numbers even close to being accurate? With the overwhelming number of digital cameras and cameraphones, there's really no excuse for the public to start being reporters.

Well, Jason Ferguson was at last Monday's Rockets-Bucks tilt in Milwaukee, and was nice enough to forward some photos to me. Bear in mind that announced attendance was 13,904, and that the Bradley Center holds 18,717, which means that the arena was supposedly 75% full. These pictures were taken during the middle of the second quarter.

First, the lower level:



Then, center court, upper deck:



Finally, the upper deck endzone:



From the looks of it, the Bradley Center's upper deck is about as populated as the surface of Mars these days.

Jason apologized for the quality of the pictures, but considering what he was paid to do this (that's nothing, in case you're wondering), I don't think it's necessary. I'm just glad someone took me up on my offer, so much thanks to Jason for the effort.

Now, does this offer irrefutable evidence that the NBA is on the verge of collapse? Of course not - even a cranky old Sonic fan such as myself wouldn't go that far.

Does this indicate that maybe the NBA is doing worse than it is letting on, and that while the Clevelands, Bostons, and LAs of the world are doing just fine, that the smaller markets are really caught in a tight spot between huge salaries and other expenses on the one side, and declining disposable income on the other?

You're darn right it does.

If you're going to be attending a game in the near future, do us a favor and pack your camera/phone with you, snap some shots, and email them to us at supersonicsoul AT hotmail DOT com. We'll be glad to post them.