The All-Star Break is coming to an end, and the MLB trade deadline is fast approaching. Every team is in the process of figuring out whether they should be a buyer or a seller.
With that in mind, here are predictions and scouting reports for each NL team for the second half of the season.
With the NBA Final recently completed, and the NBA itself is enjoying new heights in
popularity, the Warriors are one of the most popular teams playing against one of
the most popular athletes in the world in LeBron James, we begin our series of posts
on stadium attendance and interest with an analyses of NBA regular season game
attendance. (We opted for regular season attendance because playoffs games are
almost always sold out.)
The All-Star Break is coming to an end, and the MLB trade deadline is fast approaching. Every team is in the process of figuring out whether they should be a buyer or a seller.
With that in mind, here are predictions and scouting reports for each AL team for the second half of the season.
In our last post, we explored the attendance patterns across major league baseball. In this post, we take a closer look at the attendance performance of individual teams. As the data in the table show, the Los Angeles Dodgers have the highest average attendance in baseball the past three years (46,230) followed by the St. Louis Cardinals (42,854) and the San Francisco Giants (41,303). The Tampa Bay Rays have the lowest average attendance the last three years at 15,650.
The ticket sales departments of the high average teams are undoubtedly pleased, but even better than a high average is a consistently high average, or put differently, low variance in attendance. The Giants have the lowest attendance variance of any team in baseball the last three years, though the Cardinals and Dodgers are also in the top five. After all, it’s hard to maintain a high average without regularly selling a lot of tickets. But having a high average and low variance suggests that home team fans are supportive of their team no matter who is playing—arguably a higher degree of interest.
The 2018 World Cup finished a little over a week ago now. Big storylines around this year’s World Cup include the introduction of Video Assistant Referee (VAR), the lack of scoreless draws, and Croatia’s unprecedented run to the finals. (Read previous blog article about Croatia’s 2018 World Cup run here) However, one key storyline was missing from the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the one involving the US Men’s National Team (USMNT). The US failed to finish in the top four spots of the hexagonal round in the CONCACAF World Cup Qualifiers last fall. Only needing to earn a draw against Trinidad & Tobago, the US failed, and summer plans to compete in Russia were put to bed.
Visit FanWide.com to find a USA Soccer game watch party or fan club near you.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup came to a close Sunday when France secured a 4-2 victory at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium with a strike from outside the penalty box by the Golden Boy Award winner Kylian Mbappé. Les Bleus had impressed en route to the final, with two-thirds of their matches finishing as shutouts. But perhaps more impressive is who made it to that final match as their opponent, a country which only recently gained their independence in 1991 and whose population is only 4.29 million.
Croatia, that young country, needed to overcome soccer powerhouses such as Argentina and England to secure their place in the final. They beat Russia—a nation of over 142 million—in penalties in the quarterfinals, and persevered over England, who boasts a population of around 53 million, in extra time in the semifinals. And although they ultimately came up short against France, Croatia had played a full 90 minutes more than their opponent coming into the final due to three extra time games, and their entire country’s population was merely one-fifteenth of France’s.
The 2018 NBA Free Agency started on July 1. NBA fans all over the country have been incessantly refreshing Adrien Wojnarowski’s and Shams Charania’s Twitter feed since then. Every fan wants to know how this NBA Free Agency will affect their favorite team’s chances next season and in those to come. FanWide will have you covered during the season with game watch parties once the season begins. Below you will find detailed explanations of some major offseason moves thus far so you can prepare yourself for the 2018-2019 NBA season.
Stadium attendance is, of course, the oldest form of fan interest and occurs whether a game is televised or not. So, as we contend in our previous post, in-stadium attendance is ultimately the highest fidelity signal available for measurement. Each stadium has a fixed capacity and standing room only ticket sales are rarely sold with the exception of the Dallas Cowboys after the construction of their home venue in 2009. Even with standing room tickets, Cowboys stadium capacity is capped at 105,000. Because one body fits in one seat on almost all cases, attendance is thus a reliable benchmark to compare television viewership. (We acknowledge that not everyone who bought a tickets makes it to the game and many teams count promotional tickets—many of which go unused—in their reported attendance numbers, but we assume that most teams that do not sell out every game do this to roughly similar degrees which makes for a bit a noise in the data, but otherwise doesn’t completely destroy our model.)
Cord cutting—the process of cancelling paid TV service—which began in roughly 2010 has continued to proliferate to the tune of 3.4% of subscribers cancelling year over year during Q4 2017. These cancellations have likely affected the mediated viewership of major sports since sports programming is a significant driver of cable subscriptions. Available viewership data from the various leagues cut in both directions—NFL television viewership is down almost 10 percent season over season in 2017, but NBA viewership is up by upwards of 20 percent. So it is unclear whether cord cutting represents a decline in interest the sports themselves or merely paid television viewing of certain sports.
With the US failing to qualify, many were worried that this year’s edition of the FIFA World Cup would lack as much excitement as usual. So far, it has been one of the most exciting cups in recent memory. The two factors that have revved up the excitement: close games with late goals and the small number of scoreless matches.
Visit FanWide.com to find an International Soccer game watch party or fan club near you.