Friday, October 8, 2010

Miami Heat and NBA Risk Heavy Attendance Losses Due to Poor Crowd Trend

First off, I'm talking about actual crowd attendance. The seats may be sold, but is there going to be anyone sitting in them? The NBA told the Heat to change the colors of the seats awhile back because they were too visible on television. Obviously, it was before they had Lebron James. But when you have Shaq and Wade on the same team and there are empty seats everywhere, how is it going to be any differt with Lebron and Wade? It will be hot when the season starts, but lets crawl 3 months in and are empty seats going to start popping up? If that's the case, in David Stern's terms, he'd rather have Lebron in a town packing the home stadium (actual bodies sitting in the seats, not just selling the tickets). Think back to 1997 when the Marlins bought all those stars and won the World Series, the attendance as the season progressed dropped dramatically and then they had the firesale after the season. Now, nobody goes to the Florida Marlins games -- and they have Hanley Ramirez, argueably the best regular-season player in the game. Lets be honest here -- South Florida is no Chicago, Boston, Detroit, or New York when it comes to crowds. The only thing that draws consistently in South Florida is the University of Miami football games, largely due to the fact of a large alumni and passionate crowd.

If you had a chance to tune into the debut of the Miami threesome Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Chris Bosh suiting up and playing together in a non-scrimmage official preseason game for the first time, you probably noticed the lack of attendance. I’m not talking about the seats that are sold; I’m talking about the empty seats in the crowd.

Even though it’s a preseason contest, you would think people would be hyped up to see the three-man duo on the court for the first time in South Beach together. LeBron got a moderate arousal out of the crowd when he threw it down. Other than a small spirit by LeBron, it looked like a typical Miami Heat crowd—scattered empty seats everywhere and a fanbase not entirely interested in the game, but more to be seen.

If David Stern is watching and this looks like anything to come, there is going to be a big drop in attendance in the NBA this season.

Think back to the years the Heat had Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O’Neal, and they had empty seats on a Christmas day game. There were often empty seats allover the arena throughout the regular season.

Shaquille O’Neal was runner-up for the regular season MVP award to Steve Nash and Dwyane Wade was an emerging power in 2005, and they couldn’t fill the seats. In 2006, they got over the hump and won the NBA Championship, and their regular season crowds were still ratty at best.

I know the season ticket sales went up for the Heat this year, as anyone would expect if they landed the two-time regular season MVP LeBron James, along with NBA local favorite and MVP Finals winner Dwyane Wade. But how many people are actually going to go to the games?

I predict the first two months attendance will be okay. The seats will be 4/5 full and people won’t perceive the issue. But after a couple months, I expect this to be the Florida Marlins all over again.

Fans in South Florida are amazed at the trendy new acquisitions, but once that desire dries up, it will seem like a clothing trend that passed overnight. People in South Florida would rather spend their money and time hanging out in South Beach, Fort Lauderdale, boating, going shopping, and going to the beaches off I-95.

The Florida Marlins, who own the bragging rights to the lowest attendance in the MLB, had a game where it was believed less than 1,000 people were in actual attendance. The Florida Panthers give away free tickets at the gate. The Dolphins usually have empty seats unless they are playing in a playoff game.

I’m not advocating LeBron to be playing anywhere else, but from a league standpoint had Lebron stayed in Cleveland they would have had a packed house every night. Now that Lebron is in South Beach, attendance sales has improve some, but actual people who attend the game will likely not sustain throughout the entire season.

Wade playing with Lebron and Bosh is great from a fan standpoint and will provide plenty of entertaining nationally televised games. But from a league standpoint—having three stars playing in a town with tourists, transplants, retirees, and plenty of alternative entertainment—will hurt the NBA in the place it least desires: its pocket.


Michael Jordan himself has stated he didn't agree with Lebron leaving Cleveland so this is totally different than Michael Jordan playing his whole career for the Bulls.

First, here's how the league suffers in attendance:

If Lebron stayed in Cleveland:
Cleveland = packed stadiums, bars packed, beers, hot dogs, James merchandise, Cavs merchandise selling

Miami = sell more season tickets with Wade & Bosh, ticket sales are up and attendance about the same

With Lebron in Miami, Stern completely losses Cleveland. Is Cleveland going to be an empty garage again now that Lebron's gone? They did a special on ESPN and the negative effect it will potentially have on the economy in C-town.

Now, Lebron in New York:

NY has an extremely loyal fanbase and they would tap into those fans and span allover the Northeast with jersey sales, merchandise, and the tv ratings would be through the roof considering the market. Yes, they would lose the Cleveland market, but the NY market has enough loyal fans who go to games and buy merchandise that it would more than makeup for the loss in Cleveland. The league would still lose attendance considering Cleveland would be dead.

Again, the league is not in trouble in terms of ratings. The NBA Finals had the best ratings since 1998. The lockout is the owners wanting to restructure the collective bargaining agreement so they get a larger piece of the pie. They don't like losing money on players who sign Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis deals and don't perform up to the expectations of their contract and owners are stuck in 7 year deals. The owners want 4 year deals that they have wiggle room to opt out, more like the NFL.

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