Analysis, Football, NCAA, Sports Fan Data

Insights into College Football Game Attendance by Team

In our last post, we examined overall attendance for NCAA football. This time around we take a look at individual team attendance. Unsurprisingly the best teams with the largest numbers of alumni have the best attendance rates. Alabama leads in total attendance for the past five years (4,225,443), which is to be expected given that they have been competing for a playoff spot every year recently. Ohio State is second with 4,003.658, while Tennessee’s attendance seems to have outperformed its ranking at 3,845,002. Penn State (3,805,806) and Michigan (3,727,339) round out the top five.

Visit FanWide.com to find a NCAA Football game watch party or fan club near you.

Analysis, Baseball, watch party

David Bote’s Walk-Off Grand Slam Cinderella Story

Five months ago, not even the biggest baseball fan had heard of David Bote.

He was 25 years old and posting mediocre stats across the board as an infielder on the Cubs’ minor league affiliate teams. And despite being picked in the 18th round of the 2012 MLB draft, Bote seemed destined to end up as a minor league career journeyman, condemned to a lifetime of obscurity and the pain of watching many of his teammates make it to the spotlight of the major leagues.

Yet fast-forward to the evening of August 12th, when Bote was in the process of making MLB history with one mighty swing of the bat. What happened between March and August to catapult David Bote from anonymity to stardom?

Visit FanWide.com to find a Chicago Cubs game watch party or fan club near you.

Analysis, Football, NCAA, Sports Data, Sports Fan Data, watch party

Beginning to Look into College Football Attendance

With fall fast approaching we turn to analyses of football. Since high school football
is played on Friday nights, college on Saturdays, and the NFL on Sundays, we follow
that order of presentation and let the big boys headline the publication of findings.

Visit FanWide.com to find a NCAA Football game watch party or fan club near you.

Basketball, News

LeBron Keeps his Promise to Akron

Most basketball fans thought that LeBron signing with the Los Angeles Lakers would be the biggest move he made this summer. However, the opening of the I Promise School, a joint venture funded by the LeBron James Family Foundation and Akron, Ohio Public Schools, certainly showed the public that LeBron is capable of making headlines off the court as well.

Visit FanWide.com to find a Los Angeles game watch party or fan club near you.

Analysis, Basketball, Fan Data, Sports Data, Sports Fan Data

How to Accurately Gauge Live NBA Game Fan Interest

The story of individual NBA team attendance is less straightforward than that of baseball. Since attendance hovers around max capacity at 93% and arena sizes are the smallest of the major sports, much depends on the capacity of the home venue for each team in addition to the usual factors such as team success and market size. Thus, the team with the largest venue—the Chicago Bulls, who built the United Center during the peak of Michael Jordan’s popularity—has the highest total attendance and the highest average attendance.

In fact, the 14 teams with the highest total attendance yield the identical order in terms of average attendance. These data suggest that other attendance statistics should be used to asses live game team interest. For example, the Bulls have the 19th lowest minimum game attendance at 17,462. To see the full data on NBA game attendance along with more insights, view the previous installment of FanWide’s data science blog series. 

Visit FanWide.com to find a NBA game watch party or fan club near you.

Analysis, Basketball, Fan Data, Sports Data, Sports Fan Data

Delving into NBA Attendance by Team

The story of individual NBA team attendance is less straightforward than that of
baseball. Since attendance hovers around max capacity at 93% and arena sizes are
the smallest of the major sports, much depends on the capacity of the home venue
for each team in addition to the usual factors such as team success and market size.

Visit FanWide.com to find a NBA game watch party or fan club near you.

Analysis, Basketball, Fan Data, Sports Data, Sports Fan Data

NBA Game Attendance: Is Basketball Quickly Gaining Popularity?

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.)

Analysis, Baseball, Fan Data, Sports Data, Sports Fan Data

A Deeper Look into Fan Attendance by MLB Team

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.