It says something that even though many people migrated here from up North in the 70's and 80's - when the Dolphins were good - those people still kept their allegiances. Now, throw in people moving here when they're struggling? Yeah.
I walk around in Atlanta all the time with my Dolphins hat on...you know what i hear from people the majority of the time? "The Dolphins suck" "I'm sorry you like the Dolphins" "The dolphins? *snicker*" The national image of the franchise has been painted to make us look like idiots. It is everywhere and the media down in South Florida doesn't help either. The Dolphins need to rebuild their brand...it is not "cool" to be a Dolphins fan right now.
No disrespect but besides college, Florida just simply isnt a good pro sports town.....it is highly transplanted from people within other areas of the country. Add to that the Dolphins are bad, and you have this.....Don't get me wrong if you build a winner they will come, and it definitely helps things but that's not the case right now unfortunately.... Devil advocates will say "look at the Heat" and yes that is true, however they have something that I think everybody in America regardless if you like them or not want to see.... What is going on in Tampa with the baseball team is a shame, every year they are a fart smell away from the WS, and they draw squat....
Tampa's stadium location sucks. It's in St. Pete, and not in a great area. If it was off of Dale Mabry in Tampa, I think they'd draw more. But yeah, that's the gist of it. Like I said, it's a combination of the demographic and the team not winning. That's not really a great recipe.
That's true. But also true is the fact that the Trop itself blows rhino dick. I won't even go there, period. It sucks that bad. I had free tickets bought for me by a relative to the bowl game hosted there (forget what they called it that time around) and I left at halftime because the stadium sucked so much ***. It's like the equivalent of going to that one movie theater in town with the musty smell, sticky floors, tattered upholstery and 14 month old non-digital movie reel.
I don't doubt it. I haven't been there in about 10 years. I actually thought it was OK then, but a lot can change in a decade.
Yes, the average individual in Miami is making the same money he used to. Most people did not get fired during the recession and most people did not have their salaries cut. Per capita income in Miami-Dade County has remained about the same for the last 5-6 years. There has been very little, if any, inflation, so buying power has remained about the same. The minimal rise in unemployment (1-2 per 100 people) does not explain the much larger drop in attendance. And those unemployed were generally on the lower end of the income spectrum even when they were employed and probably weren't going to Dolphin games even whent they were employed. The fact that the Heat's arena holds less for each game means little when you consider that they have so many more games. Again, SoFla fans pay a lot more to see the Heat each year than they do the Dolphins. I wonder why . . .
Those demographic issues are definitely a factor. IMO much more so than the heat. The Rays play indoors, so the lack of local Rays fans has nothing to do with heat. Most Sun Belt teams have the same problem, to varying degrees. They have a lot of transplants who have no affinity for or loyalty to the home team. I think there's a certain amount of apathy and a laid back attitude in those places that makes attendance a problem, especially when the team is bad. Put a bad team in Miami, Tampa, Jax, LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Atlanta, New Orleans, etc. and you will see an attendance problem. It's much less of a problem in places like Pittsburgh and Green Bay where most people grew up there rooting for those teams and with going to the games being a ritual.
That is not the reason many former season ticket holders aren't going to games. I happen to know at least twenty former season ticket holders who have stated they will not purchase season tickets again until Ireland is replaced. They just have no confident he has the ability to turn this team into a consistent winner. I purchased four season tickets for over thirty years, but I gave them up two years ago because of my frustration with the direction of this team. I have attended several games this year because I support the players, but I will not purchase season tickets again until Ireland is replaced. Purchasing season tickets means I have to pay for preseason games and parking for these games which I don't attend. This adds nearly one thousand dollars to the price of the four tickets. I can accept paying this extra money when I am satisfied with the product on the field and when I feel the team has an effective GM. There are plenty of sports fans with the money to attend games. They just have decided to spend their sports dollars on the Heat and other activities. When Ireland is replaced and this team starts winning consistently again, fans will return to the stadium. Blaming a weak economy for the lack of fans is merely a cop-out. The weakness is in the front office of the Dolphins. Not in the financial pocketbooks of the many season ticket holders who have stopped purchasing season tickets in recent years.
So how do you explain teams that have been just as bad as Miami selling significantly more tickets???
Depends on the market and what else is competing for the dollar there. Some markets are so big that it should be impossible not to sell out (like in NY)
Heat numbers actually do prove a point. The Heat has a WAITING LIST that has 10-15k people on it. You say 20k capacity? I say..Dolphins= 10 home games (w/ preseason) Heat= 44 home games (w/ preseason) The Heat will draw somewhere around 850k for the regular season. Dolphins around 550k. If you count the playoffs, the Heat will draw AT LEAST ...DOUBLE the amount of people that the Dolphins did.
I think DJ ought visit the Trop and then he might realize how good Miamians have it. Truthfully I've been to Raymond James many a time and I've been to Miami's stadium, and maybe that's a bad sample pool since Tampa has bad attendance problems as well but I don't think Miami's stadium is bad. I could buy Steve Ross' constant gripe that considering the hot weather, Miami's stadium should really be an indoor stadium...but of course that would do away with our infamous heat advantage. About that, I would note that prior to the start of the season I pegged three games for potential heat/humidity advantage games. Those games were the Raiders, Jets and Rams games. Miami won 2 of the 3. I wasn't at the Raiders and Rams games but it looked bright during those games whereas the Jets game (which I was at) was very cloudy and almost gray. I had no problems with the heat/humidity during that game. I do believe the heat and humidity may have played a factor in the Raiders and Rams games although obviously the Raiders were just totally windless that day.
One more... The Sounders....who oddly enough...have a chance at outdrawing the Dolphins this year....
I really don't know where you get this stuff about Heat games. That place is LOUD. and I attended Games at the OB....There have been games at JRS that were just as loud or louder. The 09' Jets game was as loud a crowd as there ever has been for a Dolphin game.
Convince Vegas that there is no such thing as a home field advantage, cause to me that's essentially what your saying. The cubs sell out every game because of the lure of the building...same for the Red Sox..that only proves my point..it also proves as to why it would be a wise investment to team up with the university of Miami, but that's another story. Besides Seattle and their inherent advantage, Baltimore has always been next in line, I've studied, I've been to, and it's a special building...Ravens 25 and 1 last three years bud. I'm not saying that it can single handidly win you games, I'm saying it can be impactful on several levels, player performance..attendance..culture development..and when it comes to player performance, I believe in the emotional part of the game, the mindset, the inspiration, the gladiator mentality..I believe that an intimate stadium, can lift a player, and a team,to higher level of their senses, even if its just for the first quarter of the game, that my friend is a competitive advantage, that we simply cannot create in this building on a consistent basis, all due to the distance.. Let me ask you this..why do you think fans in Baltimore and Seattle are in their seats before the game starts..why do you think they know to stand and cheer when on defense, especially in the beginning and late in the game..why do you think there is a connection, why the understanding, I'll tell ya, because their on top of the action, which engages them, which in turn makes them have more energy, all of that, decreases the chances of their home team coming out flat, which in this crazy game, affects wins and losses.
Good numbers there. I think one thing that's maybe not talked about much are the marginal ticket prices. Just pop over to ESPN to look at Miami's schedule and you see links next to each game saying the lowest price available for tickets. For instance there are only 1125 tickets remaining for the Patriots game with the lowest price being $51 a ticket. However, that price is an abberation, and purely a function of so many transplanted New England fans that have bought tickets. The Jacksonville game has 5518 tickets available for as low as $14, and there are 4090 tickets available for the Buffalo game as low as $20. Those prices are much closer to what I saw when I checked the page for the Titans and Seahawks games, the day before game day. If I look at the same page for the Miami Heat, the upcoming game against the Spurs has 1511 tickets available for as low as $24. I look at those pages fairly often because I find them interesting. They represent in my eyes the marginal cost for Mr. On The Fence game attender to go to a game. The fact that the marginal cost for the Dolphins games is usually lower than what I'm seeing for the Heat games to me shows that we've reached a point where lower price fans view the idea of going to a Heat game to be more attractive than going to a Dolphins game. And that's disturbing when you consider as you said that the Heat have 44 home games in a year to the Dolphins' 10 games. Even if you account for the differences in crowd size (Dolphins crowds on average about 2.5-3.0x the size of Heat crowds), I think middle class Miamians are spending more $$$ on the Heat than the Dolphins.
Yup..they do need to rebuild their brand, and if they were smart, it would be with renovations...or if they were really smart, a new smaller building shared with the canes.
Bingo. That's the thing being lost in this. Again I point to the marginal ticket prices. I look at the Miami schedule on the ESPN page and while Miami's marginal ticket costs are as low as $14 and $20 for the Jacksonville and Buffalo games, the marginal ticket costs of the games IN San Franciso and IN New England are $115 and $125. People talk about attendance like the number of people is all that matters. It's not. Ticket costs are in there. Demand for Miami Dolphins tickets is so low that marginal ticket costs drop to dirt cheap and they're still not bought up. That's pretty significant.
That is right..and if you dig a little deeper....you see that every premium Heat game has a markup of at least 4x the face value in the 300-400 level...while the Dolphins will have 1 game all year that will have marked up secondary markup seats (this Pats game)
Wrigley Field has not helped the Cubs win anything for over 100 years and their culture is that of "lovable losers". Not exactly something to aspire to. and fenway didn't help the Red Sox win anything for 86 eyars until they started spending like the Yankees. Then it became some "magical place" You are also overlooking that the fans were loud in Seattle and Baltimonre before those new stadiums opened. The Kingdome was a loud venue and so was Baltimore's Memorial Colisseum which was much more collegy in atmosphere then even their current stadium. Miami is never going to have fans like in Baltimore, stadium or no stadium. It's a different kind of town with a different kind of inhabitant. No building is going to change that.
That's in Standing Room Only....... In the 100 level..they are up 5x. In the 300 and 400..they are up 3 x ... and people are still paying it, and the waiting list grows each year.... I wonder what it is that they are doing???????
This is where this year's schedule in particular hurt the Dolphins. It was simply a dog home schedule in additon to the Phins being very mediocre. Next year gets much better with premium home games against Baltimore and Atlanta, plus nice matchups with Ciny and Carolina (the Newton factor, plus maybe Jon Gruden/Chip Kelly on the sideline) So if the Dolphins improve, you should see an increase in demand next year
Which implies 20% annualized revenue growth, to the point where Heat revenues may actually exceed Dolphins revenues. How much do you think Dolphins revenues have grown from 2008 to 2012? It's hard to see how you have a point here.
Because this is true, sadly enough, is why you have to think outside the box..you see the Initial philosophy of Ross was to try and get people to come to the stadium for other reasons while enjoying a game..bad investment, probably wasted 10s of millions of dollars doing so..The lure is to create a 12 th man, that would be a way to get fans into their seats, and to attend games, on its own merit, and the only way to do that, is to design it.
If you include the revenue they get from the league, a lot. How much do you pay for NBA League Pass? NBA Replay with coaches tape? An NFL team can average 20k fans a game and they will still clean up. Attendance drops 20% and just tell your GM to cut $10M worth of salary. The NFL isn't in the business of having their teams struggle financially. They've created a system where nobody can lose. My point here is that losing attendance isn't keeping Stephen Ross up at night. Its a lot smaller source of revenue that people want to believe.
20 tickets? you couldn't have "just" bought them. You have to have bought them through group sales a month ago. To buy 10, you have to pay $30 right now per seat, and those seats are the worst in the house. But that Nets game is a perfect illustration for my point... I like sitting in Section 326. it's sold out..so lets move on to 325. In Section 325....they have 20 available. The cheapest price is $89. The face value of those tickets are $32.50 So let's recap boys and girls....A Heat / Nets game in December is being marked up by more than double.... I think I proved my point?
If Ross didn't care about attendance, he wouldn't be buying up the tickets so games don't get blacked out.
Does it matter? It's his decision. Why do that if you're not worried? Why not just do what San Diego and Tampa do and have all the games blacked out except for the Jets and Pats?
Ummm, yes I did. 20 tickets, all going to disadvantaged children. Yet their revenue is only up ~20% since 2007, and they still don't come close to the revenue of the Dolphins, so what exactly is your point.
