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Post by dogman on Oct 10, 2007 0:00:20 GMT -5
I noticed a topic on another OHL forum about calculating OHL attendance. Does anyone know how it is calculated for the IceDogs and the OHL in general. Is it the number of fans in attendance or the number of tickets sold. If it is number of tickets sold, do they also count comp tickets or only purchased tickets.
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Post by Kevin on Oct 10, 2007 13:59:53 GMT -5
The announced attendance is based on tickets sold, not fans in the stands. I believe the announced attendance would also include all complimentary tickets, provided its an actual ticket and not a voucher for a ticket. So basically you take your arena capacity minus the number of seats still available for purchase and you have your announced attendance. The team would also keep attendance figures for fans in the stands. They use this number to determine the concession sales/person, merchandise sales/person etc. However, teams NEVER release the fans in the stands attendance number.
As an aside, I know the minor league baseball industry quite well and can tell you that the announced attendance is often simply a number from someones head. Many years ago (before the Bisons new park was built) the Bisons got into some hot water when it was discovered that they were grossly inflating their attendance. Back then, the city ran the ballpark and supervised the ticket takers. A person from the media got a hold of the Bison's turnstile count for the year and it was something like 40% less than the announced attendance for the year. Over inflating attendance figures is basically a common practice in minor league baseball.
Sometimes there is a method to the madness however. Teams often have sponsor nights where a sponsor will be given X number of vouchers to a particular game as part of their package. On that game night, sometimes only 10% of the vouchers are redeemed. Teams will often use a formula to include unredeemed vouchers in the official attendance number. (e.g. 3 unredeemed vouchers counts as 1 person in attendance). The reason for including the vouchers is that they are part of the sponsors package which the sponsor purchased. Therefore the vouchers were paid for, albeit at a much lower price than walkup tickets. Usually the league will have guidelines on how to calculate attendance but its up to the individual teams to determine whether they follow it or not.
I have no idea whether these type of things happen at the OHL level or not. If they do, it would appear to be minimal. Certainly the announced attendance at the IceDogs games thus far appear to be reasonable and not over inflated.
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Post by excanucksfan on Oct 11, 2007 13:16:06 GMT -5
Very interesting information. So it would appear that in many cases, the attendance should be taken as an approximation to the number of fans at the game only and not as a hard number.
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