Attendance figures lie?

We had a thread a couple weeks back regarding published attendance figures vs. actual seats in the chairs attendance figures. (One side said: all the owners care about is tickets sold. Other side: concession revenue and parking is important, too, and sold-not-used tickets are a sign of disinterest in the team.) Most places appear to report tickets-sold attendance figures even though the handheld bar code scanners let you get exact attendance counts instantly.

From the USCHO recap compiled by staff, meaning no one apparently was there and saw it: >>> Tuesday's doubleheader drew [their words] 7,401 fans to Germain Arena, home of the Florida Everblades ECHL squad. The championship game between BC and St. Cloud State will take place Wednesday at 7:30 ET.

Germain formerly TECO arena has a listed hockey capacity of 7,128 according to a number of sites, including this one that lists capacities of thousands of stadiums worldwide. Note the first URL takes you to the home page and lots of annoying popups; the second for North America has none or fewer.
[www.worldstadiums.com] <-- careful clicking on this
[www.worldstadiums.com] <-- north america stadiums only

So how full did it look given that attendance was listed as 300 over capacity? It's hard to eyball the stands from TV this year and from being there last year, but it looked far less full this time around. Notre Dame and OSU (sorry, The OSU) have thousands of fans and snowbirds, although St. Cloud State at 16,000 enrollment is not exactly dwarfish.

And who seemed to have the most fans there?

On TV it looked about half full for the Cornell game and maybe a quarter full for the Maine game...I remember reading on this forum that tickets to the game were part of the season ticket package for the minor league team so there you go.

Much of the crowd was only there for one game or the other, so even if they counted people coming in (which they could have done, since they scanned barcodes on our tickets) they would have got a larger number than were actually in the arena at one time.

I believe this tournament is included as part of the Everblades season ticket package. I know a lot of the people I talked to there were season ticket holders. So they probably included all of those in their numbers.

I'd concur that it was about 1/4 full for Maine/SCSU and maybe 1/3 full for Cornell/BC. I think the attendance was lighter this year than last, probably because it was held mid-week this year.

SCSU seemed to travel very well and may have had the most fans; Maine did OK and had a golf tournament for their alumni (although they've had more in past years). The BC fans that were there complained that their athletic department was encouraging people who were going to travel to go to the football game instead of the hockey tournament.

[Q]schoaff Wrote:
The BC fans that were there complained that their athletic department was encouraging people who were going to travel to go to the football game instead of the hockey tournament.[/q]

Ha! The game is in North Carolina against...wait for it...North Carolina. Their fans will have no affect on the game. If anything BC blew it by losing to Syracuse and missing out on a real bowl game.

BTW, it was confirmed during an intermission interview with Craig Brush that they oversold because tickets were included in their season ticket package and they didn't expect all of the season ticket holders to attend.

[Q]schoaff Wrote: ... BC fans that were there complained that their athletic department was encouraging people who were going to travel to go to the football game instead of the hockey tournament.[/q]

This is an issue that Cornell's athletic department has fortunately not had to confront.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

schoaff Wrote: ... BC fans that were there complained that their athletic department was encouraging people who were going to travel to go to the football game instead of the hockey tournament.[/Q]
This is an issue that Cornell's athletic department has fortunately not had to confront. [/q]

By virtue of there being no I-AA bowl series? I'm missing your point.

 

___________________________
Cornell '98 '00; Yale 01-03; UConn 03-07; Brown 07-09; Penn State faculty 09-
Work is no longer an excuse to live near an ECACHL team...