It is a rainy night and I was bored so I thought I would look at the impact on attendance for games against opponents from other conferences. People in general seemed to believe that playing teams from other divisions would increase attendance because fans were bored of seeing the same old teams. Visually, I haven't seen that impact so I thought would crunch the numbers.
Overall, attendance league wide (core teams) is actually down 13.2% for cross over games compared to division game attendance.
By Conference - MacKinnon down 19.6%, Phillips down 8.2% and Ruddock down 17%
20 of 29 teams show a decrease in attendance for crossovers.
The impact may also be understated because some of these games were home openers where attendance will be high regardless.
If you think of the extra cost for teams that wouldn't normally take buses, attendance would probably have to increase about 70 to 80 people per game off set the cost. Instead, it's down an average of 31 people.
For those Central fans your attendance on average is down 14.7% compared to last year in the old divisions.
Says a lot about the importance of rivalries and the out of town draw doesn't it?
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You are so right, rivalries have a lot to do with attendence figures. The Central Division has killed the rivalries in the other Divisions.
In my opinion though, I think that the live coverage of some teams by Rogers TV and the Central's deal with the B2Network, is the biggest reason for the drop in attendence numbers.
Aurora had a decent crowd of 235 (note) last night at home against the Vaughan Vipers and guess what, it was one of the Tiger games that Rogers did not cover live.
note - Unlike Newmarket, Aurora does not include season ticket holders in each game attendence figures.
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