Any true-blue sports fan would agree that very few things can match the thrill of watching a game live. This is why stadium owners do everything in their power to enhance the in-arena experience. Doing so ensures that fans enjoy every second. That being said, Business Insider ran a poll last October to find out which arenas in the NBA are the best. Here are the top 10:
10. TD Garden – Boston Celtics
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.)