panchess
02-27-2007, 05:03 PM
One reason the ABA franchises struggle so much is how weak they are, and the inability to sell season tickets for a league where the teams rarely complete a home season.
We had a taste of it in the CBA this season with Utah folding. The Albany Patroons are averaging about 1,500 a game this season. Not great, but they are pretty consistent.
They had a re-scheduled game with Pittsburgh moved to a new night with two weeks notice (to be fair, it snowed that night too). The result? 470 people. The next smallest crowd of the year is 1,114 on Christmas night against Indiana (so much for Jim Coyne's theory that this promotion works).
Two-thirds of the normal crowd disappeared.
Do that five or six times in a season, and I am guessing most of the people just give up.
We had a taste of it in the CBA this season with Utah folding. The Albany Patroons are averaging about 1,500 a game this season. Not great, but they are pretty consistent.
They had a re-scheduled game with Pittsburgh moved to a new night with two weeks notice (to be fair, it snowed that night too). The result? 470 people. The next smallest crowd of the year is 1,114 on Christmas night against Indiana (so much for Jim Coyne's theory that this promotion works).
Two-thirds of the normal crowd disappeared.
Do that five or six times in a season, and I am guessing most of the people just give up.