Hawks attendance

[StephenHawking]

I know this has been an issue since always but throughout those last couple of games I wonder if the Hawks even make sense from a financial standpoint because there are like 200 people attending a game. 

What are the issues other than the history of atlanta sports and the rebuild. Can someone from the area explain? 

Are their any ways to improve attendance or interest? 

As a German it's strong meat to see that. The average attendance in the soccer stadium of my city is about 50.000 people. Its always packed even though the amount of traffic is even higher than in atlanta, the highest in germany. 

[capstone21]

The attendance has never been that great ever ... fans don’t really come out to support the Hawks even when the team is winning ... playoffs is a different story but regular season is always a struggle to bring people in.  

[NBASupes]

Enjoy the tank. We get Bagley or Ayton and they will come

[AHF]

Falcons used to struggle with attendance.  Then they drafted Vick and he galvanized the fan base.  Even with him going down in shame and the team bottoming out, the Falcons had a much stronger core of fans after that and have been much more consistent thereafter.

[lethalweapon3]

http://www.espn.com/nba/attendance/_/sort/homePct

Apologies if the following is a bit hijacky, but a side Q: How "off" has the underlying arena capacity been for the Hawks (and other teams) in setting the "Home Percentage" stat?

The current per-game average logged (above) by ESPN (13,964), and the associated "percentage" of seats-attended (74.6%), assumes a Philips Arena capacity of about 18,700. (They don't post the assumption, they make you work backwards by doing the division,)

Back in September, C-Viv noted that not only is the current capacity reduced by about 2,500 from last season (due to Phase 1 Reno), but that the arena-listed capacity of 18.238 in 2012-13 was reduced by 2014-15 to 18,047.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/basketball/renovations-will-reduce-philips-arena-seating-capacity/InzbQLNcUAZl5oi6M7JBGP/

The Hawks' printed 2017-18 media guide lists the arena's estimated max-capacity for this season as 15,711, verifying C-Viv's earlier reporting.

https://atlantahawkspr.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/1718_hwk_pr_mediaguide.pdf (ginormous PDF file, but the capacity is mentioned on page 293). Also on that page, a hint that we were once able to seat more than 18,700 is in the reference to the "sports attendance record of 20,425" back during the 2008 Celtics-Hawks playoff series.

If the ESPN-posted per-game average is accurate, then the "Home Percentage" should really be 88.8 percent, roughly the same as what ESPN posts for the Grizzlies (19th-ranked) and Jazz. And if the capacity assumption is from a bygone era, the drop in percentage-attendance may have been getting exaggerated for quite some time.

Now, we all know the actual proportion of booties-in-seats is closer to 8.88 than 88.8, but that's probably the case for lots of teams, and it seems like, as far as ESPN goes, this is more of a denominator problem than a numerator one.

~lw3

(P.S., just found the 2010-11 media guide... http://www.nba.com/hawks/media/1011_HWK_MediaGuide_update.pdf ... where the capacity for that season was 18,729. Rounding up, 13,964/18,729 creates the exact "Home Pct" of 74.6 that ESPN calculates for today's attendance chart. So the capacity and Home Percentage values, at least for the Hawks, have been faulty since at least 2012-13.)

[LamarHampton]

^ weird, none of those numbers sound right. As long as I can recall the attendance capacity has always been 15k and change. Never heard anything about 18k+ and don't understand how we could have a record attendance at around 20k with either of those figures. And the current attendance figures and percentages just don't pass the eye test.

attendance issues have been documented and discussed on here for years, but it seems to come down to Atlanta being subject to major sprawl and poor transportation infrastructure, thus making it hard to get (back?) downtown before games starting; few other downtown draws to the area; too many other entertainment options in the city; and/or white people "allegedly" being afraid to go downtown or something like that. Might be missing a few reasons.

[Wurider05]

I will tell you this. regardless of the crowd size this year the fans have been some of the most active and vocal I recall in a while.  They are really into the game.

[benhillboy]

4 hours ago, StephenHawking said:

I know this has been an issue since always but throughout those last couple of games I wonder if the Hawks even make sense from a financial standpoint because there are like 200 people attending a game. 

What are the issues other than the history of atlanta sports and the rebuild. Can someone from the area explain? 

Are their any ways to improve attendance or interest? 

As a German it's strong meat to see that. The average attendance in the soccer stadium of my city is about 50.000 people. Its always packed even though the amount of traffic is even higher than in atlanta, the highest in germany. 

Wow, traffic in your city has to be ungodly if it’s worse than Atlanta.  Amazingly our expansion MLS soccer team does 55,000 every game, speaking to how heavily transplants and immigrants make up the population. 

2 hours ago, LamarHampton said:

^ weird, none of those numbers sound right. As long as I can recall the attendance capacity has always been 15k and change. Never heard anything about 18k+ and don't understand how we could have a record attendance at around 20k with either of those figures. And the current attendance figures and percentages just don't pass the eye test.

attendance issues have been documented and discussed on here for years, but it seems to come down to Atlanta being subject to major sprawl and poor transportation infrastructure, thus making it hard to get (back?) downtown before games starting; few other downtown draws to the area; too many other entertainment options in the city; and/or white people "allegedly" being afraid to go downtown or something like that. Might be missing a few reasons.

You touched on most of em.  As a native I’m allowed to call the support of the Hawks and Falcons awful for the most part.  Braves fan support has always been fair or better I guess.  

There are things that happen/ don’t happen at Falcons and Hawks games that are blasphemous in real sports towns.  Hundreds of  empty seats at the beginning of halves in playoff games?  The mayor of Green Bay would sound a red alert horn throughout the city.  85% of the crowd chanting MVP for an opposing player?  You’d be banned from TD Garden.

Edited January 26, 2018 by benhillboy

[benhillboy]

Its fascinating that Atlanta has 48 more years of major sports history than Miami yet talent from the Atlanta Sports media has rarely been seen on ESPN (if you call Terrance Moore “talent”). Dan Lebatard seems to have a lifetime clause with the network covering his city and their collective teams’ stock are at an All-Time low.  Hell, they got multiple Alabama correspondents now.  Ala f&@kin Bama.  They aren’t purposely leaving the 33rd world ranked GDP  out.  Their data has told them year after year simply that not enough people give a damn.

Edited January 26, 2018 by benhillboy

[StephenHawking]

vor 6 Stunden, lethalweapon3 sagte:

http://www.espn.com/nba/attendance/_/sort/homePct

Apologies if the following is a bit hijacky, but a side Q: How "off" has the underlying arena capacity been for the Hawks (and other teams) in setting the "Home Percentage" stat?

The current per-game average logged (above) by ESPN (13,964), and the associated "percentage" of seats-attended (74.6%), assumes a Philips Arena capacity of about 18,700. (They don't post the assumption, they make you work backwards by doing the division,)

Back in September, C-Viv noted that not only is the current capacity reduced by about 2,500 from last season (due to Phase 1 Reno), but that the arena-listed capacity of 18.238 in 2012-13 was reduced by 2014-15 to 18,047.

http://www.ajc.com/sports/basketball/renovations-will-reduce-philips-arena-seating-capacity/InzbQLNcUAZl5oi6M7JBGP/

The Hawks' printed 2017-18 media guide lists the arena's estimated max-capacity for this season as 15,711, verifying C-Viv's earlier reporting.

https://atlantahawkspr.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/1718_hwk_pr_mediaguide.pdf (ginormous PDF file, but the capacity is mentioned on page 293). Also on that page, a hint that we were once able to seat more than 18,700 is in the reference to the "sports attendance record of 20,425" back during the 2008 Celtics-Hawks playoff series.

If the ESPN-posted per-game average is accurate, then the "Home Percentage" should really be 88.8 percent, roughly the same as what ESPN posts for the Grizzlies (19th-ranked) and Jazz. And if the capacity assumption is from a bygone era, the drop in percentage-attendance may have been getting exaggerated for quite some time.

Now, we all know the actual proportion of booties-in-seats is closer to 8.88 than 88.8, but that's probably the case for lots of teams, and it seems like, as far as ESPN goes, this is more of a denominator problem than a numerator one.

~lw3

(P.S., just found the 2010-11 media guide... http://www.nba.com/hawks/media/1011_HWK_MediaGuide_update.pdf ... where the capacity for that season was 18,729. Rounding up, 13,964/18,729 creates the exact "Home Pct" of 74.6 that ESPN calculates for today's attendance chart. So the capacity and Home Percentage values, at least for the Hawks, have been faulty since at least 2012-13.)

Man it doesn't even bother me to see the percentages. What bothers me is to see the game start and there are factually like 20 people in the stands. 

Is there no way to improve for the city on this bullcr*p? What's different with ATL United that people actually attend their games? 

Are the ticket prices too steep? The wages of Atliens too low? I can't recall a city in Germany which surrounds a collective disinterested in sports. In every city we have just about the same type of people on average. 

Granted I'm not sure how attendance would look if our soccer team played more often on weekdays. 

In the end it just makes me sad. Players won't ever identify as fast and much with the city as elsewhere because there's a great lack of interest. I can't see a superstar caliber player saying "I want to bring a ship to ATL" because people won't care that much anyway. I think that's actually the thing why nobody wants to play for Atlanta. There is nobody youre playing for but the money.

Edited January 26, 2018 by StephenHawking

[Wurider05]

Hell there were alot if empty seats for the Falcons and Braves as well. Especially the Falcons.

[lethalweapon3]

1 hour ago, StephenHawking said:

Man it doesn't even bother me to see the percentages. What bothers me is to see the game start and there are factually like 20 people in the stands. 

Is there no way to improve for the city on this bullcr*p? What's different with ATL United that people actually attend their games? 

Are the ticket prices too steep? The wages of Atliens too low? I can't recall a city in Germany which surrounds a collective disinterested in sports. In every city we have just about the same type of people on average. 

Granted I'm not sure how attendance would look if our soccer team played more often on weekdays. 

In the end it just makes me sad. Players won't ever identify as fast and much with the city as elsewhere because there's a great lack of interest. I can't see a superstar caliber player saying "I want to bring a ship to ATL" because people won't care that much anyway. I think that's actually the thing why nobody wants to play for Atlanta. There is nobody youre playing for but the money.

I hear you, and my apologies, because I didn't get to the crux of your specific concerns in the OP. With "Hawks attendance" as the topic, it jogged the ESPN data issue that had been gnawing at me for awhile. I figured I would throw that issue in for good measure. Having slept on it, I decided to see if I could bug Koonin into getting ESPN.com to fix the capacity/percentage errors. Relative to getting people to fill up Philips on the regular, that's an easy fix.

There are probably 1,000 different "attendance" threads over the history of Hawks fan boards, and everyone from us casual fans in internet forums to co-owners in board rooms have not found an elixir, although we do have some adamant, oft-divergent ideas on the symptoms. I'll add my diagnoses in a bit, and will at least *try* to be concise with it.

~lw3

[NBASupes]

6 hours ago, Wurider05 said:

I will tell you this. regardless of the crowd size this year the fans have been some of the most active and vocal I recall in a while.  They are really into the game.

When I went to the Mavs game around Christmas. People really was enjoying themselves 

[lethalweapon3]

(TL;DR... no solutions here, just diagnoses)

The Atlanta that MLS entered in 2017 is vastly different from the one the NBA was lured to in 1968.

I don't know if you could have picked a more tumultuous calendar year to introduce a metropolis to a professional sport. Nationally: assassinations (including that of Atlanta's most well-known, if not most universally respected at the time, native citizen), riots, the Chicago Convention, Mexico City, bubbling unrest over Vietnam, and Ali. Tommie Smith's and John Carlos' salutes were literally simultaneous with the Hawks' first regular season home game in October 1968. I don't know how they could have made it on the top side of Page 1 in the sports pages, to say nothing of the front pages of our newspapers at the time.

Locally, with apologies to my brethren of other races, we were becoming a two-tone city politically and socially. We were being newly freed of the federally-sanctioned crutches of segregation, but not of the century-plus-instilled sentiments that simmered everywhere you look. Schools, shopping, housing, workplaces, swimming pools, leisure, social clubs: On these matters, people were making, or compelled by peers and leaders to make, conscious decisions about who they associated with, and where and how and during what times of day, along racial lines (we do this now, too, but not nearly as stark as when the Hawks arrived from St. Louis in '68).

Atlanta at that time had its issues with desegregating public schools and accommodating a growing black middle-class, and most leaders seemed willing to quit resisting and slowly transition. But Atlanta '68 was awash in a state that had just elected a Governor best-known for fending off black people with pickaxes in his restaurant ("The Pickrick") near Georgia Tech (about three blocks down the street from the Hawks' first home). That governor would go on to sell those pickaxes ("The Pickrick Drumstick") to his way-too-happy customers at Underground Atlanta.

The Bravos of the 1960s brought a National League home run leader to town. Yet he and his team were receiving tepid responses, at best, at the turnstiles and in their mailboxes. The Falcons had maybe the most dominant collegiate player of the 1960s not named O.J. Simpson in its stead as an expansion team. But big-tackling linebackers, then and now, weren't selling a lot of tickets.

The benefit those two teams had over the Hawks was, they got their foot in the door just before the harrowing year of 1968, and local leaders had been planning to promote their almost-mutual arrivals through years of local press coverage, whereas the Hawks sort of came in through a back door at an awful time.

Everything from stadium planning to fan accommodations and team lodging was well underway by the mid-1960s for the onset of pro baseball and football, two sports that continued capturing the national imagination as their stars leapt off magazine covers and onto newfangled TV sets. The teams moved into a state-of-the-art stadium from the outset, one designed for them, with no need to borrow anyone else's facility in the interim.

As I recently noted, when the Hawks' new owners made the May 1968 announcement they would be coming and playing here just a few months later, the city was still unnerved by MLK's death one month before. They'd be spending time in a decade-old college arena until the developer/owner could get his pro palace built downtown. Pro hoops, struggling to keep fans in these arenas, not yet worthy of the Golden Age of television, was also becoming unfairly brushed as "that" sport where "those people" like to excel.

Sports teams have to be able to plant the seeds of attractiveness before they arrive, and sustain it during their nascent years. Not only did the Hawks have to learn this the hard way, so did their younger sister, the NHL Flames. So did the Braves and Hawks' other sibling, the Chiefs/Apollos of the NASL, a club that literally won America's biggest soccer championship for Atlanta in 1968, their second year here, but not enough hearts-and-minds around town to last long.

ATLUTD did not have to navigate the Tricky Sixties, when would-be sports fans risked being judged and castigated on the basis of where, and how they supported local teams, to say nothing about which specific players they supported on said teams. They did not have to endure the stain created by the Atlanta Child Murders in 1979-81, which cemented the city's perception, in the burbs and beyond, as an unsafe place, particularly after dark when the Hawks and Flames tended to play.

ATLUTD did, however, benefit from a population and construction boom that accelerated intown after the Olympic age. People weren't simply moving here in droves from other American cities anymore, they were arriving from other countries and continents, places where futbol, not football, is king.

Unlike the 1960s, if citizens have got the dough, they can live and move and eat wherever they want, support whomever they want. Since the boom, they've had a couple decades to build up their nest eggs, if they didn't come here with one to begin with. And with that money, they're looking to latch onto something fresh-and-new, not so much the city's relics of the 1960s-1980s.

Just off Tech's campus in Home Park, there's a burgeoning Italian restaurant district, an example of the intown area's late-evening hang out spots that did not exist even ten years ago. Prominently displayed on the central pizza-place's wall is a mural of the state of Georgia in red-and-black stripes, with happy multi-racial fans depicted in the foreground. This, again, is mere blocks up the street from that racist 1960s Governor's former restaurant, and from the Hawks' first Atlanta home in '68. There is no way such a display of support would be acceptable for the Hawks back in that day, or for decades afterwards.

The flag you see above sits in Candler Park, a leafy neighborhood of well-to-do tidy homes and apartments, barely a couple miles from MLK's birthplace near downtown. Ride through the neighborhood, and you'll be hard-pressed NOT to find a ATLUTD flag, especially one that notes on the flag that the homeowner is a PROUD SUPPORTER.

Key point: these flags were in place, in windows, hanging from patios, in manicured yards and gardens, before the team ever kicked a ball. Their homes' inhabitants aren't just satisfied with flaunting logos on baseball caps and Starter jackets. They are committed to going to the games and cheering whomever is on ATL's side. They're not going anywhere, either. By and large, folks leave Detroit and Denmark to come to places like Atlanta. If these folks leave Atlanta, and places like Candler Park, it's usually because they're leaving the Earth, too. These newfound fans will be paying to attend and support every year along the way to the final urn.

Conversely, I can point out the exact spot where I saw the first, and only, Hawks flag ever flying (during the Kyle Korver Threak and Coach Bud Just Got Here years) from one of these Candler Park homes. Lots of well-established watering holes, including the progressive-minded Manuel's Tavern, but no expressed Hawks love outside their doors, and you have to squint to find some inside. Auburn, and UGA flags? Sure. Bravos and Falcons when they're acting right and there's a Chipper or Matty Ice to root for? Absolutely. But never Hawks. This is year #50 for the Hawks in Atlanta.

Besides social dynamics, what was going to be different about MLS's entry to the city?

The future soccer team had a leader who had built up stature and name-recognition throughout the ATL metro, even before he stepped in to acquire the moribund Falcons in 2002. He established enough trust with business leaders, local citizens, and sports fans, to pour their money and their hearts behind a future sports investment, with no certainty that the team would be successful on the field right out of the gate. The north side calls him Mr. Blank, the south side "Uncle Arthur," affectionately.

Blank had his organizers canvassed neighborhoods like Candler Park, their public events, their community meetings, and got people with money to spend hooked in. Old money, new money, trust fund money, didn't matter. MLS required a certain scale of local commitment in advance, but Blank wasn't just waiting for the all-clear to plead for locals' buy-in on the potential for something exciting coming down the road.

In short order, bearing the Five Stripes flag and wearing the scarf became a Status Symbol, much more than some casual, fragile allegiance dependent on tomorrow's boxscore. ATLUTD fandom is backed by the reverence Atlantans hold for Blank and his longstanding philanthropic endeavors. Conversely, since the early days of Ted Turner, the Hawks owners' names aren't recognized among the local populace, not unless they've managed to screw something up royally.

Hawks fans are hoping for a superstar to come down the pike that can turn its sordid local/national perception around for good. ATLUTD fans barreled through the gates not knowing, or caring, all that much about the race, origin, or playing history of the guys who were about to play for them. As far as most of them know, Luka Doncic is an attacking midfielder.

What Blank has showing up at his stadium's doorstep is genuine, modern "Atlanta Spirit," not the contrived facade the Hawks' bickering old regime tried to present. For a team around the corner from Mercedes Benz Stadium, we have five decades of different kinds of band-aids, placed on a patient that was bleeding before he got here, in a community that wasn't seriously ready to treat him from the jump.

The Hawks came to Georgia with rstablished All-Stars and future Hall of Famers in tow, and they reached the Final Four of the NBA in their first two years in Atlanta. The reaction from the locals? Same as for soccer's Chiefs... "Yawn." The Atlanta of 1968, when the Hawks arrived looking for fans to attract, was in no mood to Unite and Conquer. The multi-generational impacts of that fan-deficit are what we're struggling to fix, still, to this day.

~lw3

[lethalweapon3]

One other pet-peeve that isn't so much about this year's attendance, but also contributes to the generational fan-deficit.

We have to be the oldest NBA franchise that absolutely can not settle on a look.

We've gone from red-and-blue to blue-and-lime to red-and-gold to black-and-red to mustard-and-ketchup to red-silver-and-blue and now to red-grayish-black-and-neon.

We've gone from comic-book-birds to silhouettes to Clutch to Swoop and back to Clutch and back to the Pac-Man silhouette again. Even the script/lettering has changed about 4 times in the past two decades alone.

Only our brothers-in-championship-futility Royals/Kings had as much of an unstable history as us. But at least when their club finally decided raisin-purple-and-black was The Move, they stuck with it and still roll with it.

A Suns fan can go all-in on a purple-and-orange team T-shirt and a hat without feeling like a total anachronism five years from now. The Mavs' logo+lettering have been awful from the day they trotted them out, but they stayed with them and work their jerseys around the scheme.

Identity is a crucial part of fandom, but the Hawks haven't presented the local fanbase (the ones paying to go to the arena and cheer for them) with a reliable sense of how they choose to stand out among their basketball brethren.

Many of us are fans of the teams we cheer because our parents/grandparents helped model the notion for us. It's natural for many fans of NBA teams to pass down their traditional allegiances to their progeny. A Robert Parish fan can take his Kyrie Irving fan grandkid to the new Garden and feel a connection through similar jerseys. A Gail Goodrich fan can show her Lonzo-loving grandchildren old highlights, each player rocking the bluish-purple and yellow-gold.

But the elder Hawk fans don't want to display their support in public, at the arena, with caps and fan gear that smells like mothballs and leaves them looking like they managed to outlive their prison sentences, or missed out on Throwback Night again.

There is no visual continuum from Lou Hudson to Pistol Pete to Roundfield to Nique to Deke to Smoove to Joe to Pawl to Dennis. Just watch a game from the great 60-win season three years ago. You'd think it was from some bygone era.

Kooninball insists that we're going to stay True to this current color+style pattern for decades to come, allowing our millennial ATLiens to grow with it, commensurate with their disposable ticket-buying income. We'll see. But "She's Got a New Hat!" is old hat for this franchise, and it's not great for keeping fans around.

~lw3

[Dejay]

Thanks, Lethal. I was about to type long diatribe about this like I always tend to do whenever this topic is brought up but after reading your posts, that is not necessary...

[Sothron]

Atlanta is the transplant capital of the USA. This isn't changing. People bring their sports loyalties with them. If Atlanta teams started winning titles then you'd see more of those transplants and their generations of kids who continue to root for the teams that "my parents always loved them" start to become real Atlanta fans.

[Dejay]

27 minutes ago, Sothron said:

Atlanta is the transplant capital of the USA. This isn't changing. People bring their sports loyalties with them. If Atlanta teams started winning titles then you'd see more of those transplants and their generations of kids who continue to root for the teams that "my parents always loved them" start to become real Atlanta fans.

 

[Dejay]

28 minutes ago, Sothron said:

Atlanta is the transplant capital of the USA. This isn't changing. People bring their sports loyalties with them. If Atlanta teams started winning titles then you'd see more of those transplants and their generations of kids who continue to root for the teams that "my parents always loved them" start to become real Atlanta fans.

How many times do we have to say this? So long as we keep having White to Pearson, Jim Leyritz, Lonnie Smith, Eugene's fantastic voyage the night before the Super Bowl, Game 6/7 of the '88 Eastern Semis, Ed Sprague, and 28-3 as the crux of our pro teams' narratives, you're not going to convince folks who moved from other places (with more disposable income, might I add) to start rooting on the local product(s), especially those who came from towns with championship banners draped all over the ceilings of their arenas and stadiums.

A person coming from Detroit or Chicago would still laugh his ass off at the thought of paying to see the Hawks get it on unless their hometown team or (insert superstar player here) was in town because despite whatever issues their squads have, they still see them as lightyears superior because they have world titles. The same goes for a guy from a place like Milwaukee because he can easily gravy train the Packers and quickly end the conversation right then and there.

I've said it once and will again. We've lost entire generations of potential season ticket holders and fans because at some point, every last pro sports team failed to capitalize on the big moment when it was there for the taking. Need we go on with the Braves in the '90s or the Falcons this past season?

[Sothron]

The Falcons 28-3 is something I will never get over. I cut  back significantly on how much I watched them this season. I'm a life long fan, brought up here in Georgia and lived here all my life. Fan for over forty years. If I can barely watch them after what they did, what does that say to Mr. Transplant from Da North Where Mah Teams Actually Won Titles At Some Point?