Time to readjust expectations on XFL attendance
I've had the sense for some time that XFL ticket sales have been sluggish. This weekend, XFL Commissioner Oliver Luck removed all doubt in an interview with The Seattle Times.
There's no way around it: having to cut that goal in half less than three weeks before kickoff is a disheartening development.
Still, it's important not to overestimate the important of attendance. The path to sustainability is through a lucrative television contract. On this front, attendance is only indirectly important to the extent that it correlates with the television market and that it affects the visual presentation of the game.
[Luck] said the league would like to average at least 10,000 per game in attendance, but the hopes are much higher than that in Seattle, which is expecting more than 20,000 for its home opener Feb. 15 against the Tampa Bay Vipers. ...
ST: What are you most excited about?
OL: Just getting into a stadium like CenturyLink — a great venue — and if there are 22,000 or 24,000 people in the lower bowl, and that atmosphere of being something new, that’s pretty cool to be a part of.League supporters will probably try to spin this as though 20K was always unrealistic. That's not the case. Luck was on record as saying that the minimum expectation for each market was to average at least 20K in attendance. And given that the original XFL averaged just over 23K in attendance, it was an entirely reasonable expectation.
There's no way around it: having to cut that goal in half less than three weeks before kickoff is a disheartening development.
Still, it's important not to overestimate the important of attendance. The path to sustainability is through a lucrative television contract. On this front, attendance is only indirectly important to the extent that it correlates with the television market and that it affects the visual presentation of the game.
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