By Michael B. Sauter
Sports teams often go through sharp swings in popularity. Attendance rises and falls. This frequently has to do with how well a team performs. When teams do well, people outside of their primary fan base become interested and start going to games. An example of this is the Florida Marlins, who won the world series in 2003 and saw attendance rise 60% in a single year. Alternatively, teams who do poorly also win new fans.
Attendance for the four major league sports – NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL – remained relatively flat from 2001 to 2010. The total fan increase for all NHL teams — the best performer of the four — was only 2.59%. The weakest, the NFL, only grew .49%.
Despite the relatively anemic growth overall, some teams have done extraordinarily well drawing fans. MLB teams such as Los Angeles and Minnesota saw crowds increase more than 50%, while Philadelphia’s attendance doubled. NFL teams such as Arizona, Atlanta, and Dallas jumped more than 25%.
Using records provided by ESPN, 24/7 Wall St. examined changes in attendance for the four major league sports from 2001 to 2010 to identify the twelve teams that decreased more than 20%. The majority of these teams have performed poorly in recent years, causing fans to lose interest. The win-lose record and number of championships is included to reflect the former and current state of each team.
12. Oakland Raiders
Decrease in attendance: 21.32%
2001 W-L record: 10-6 (finished 1st in AFC West)
2010 W-L record: 8-8 (finished 3rd in AFC West)
League championships last decade: none
In the 2002 season, the Raiders went 11 and 5 and won the AFC championship. From that point on, the team’s luck changed dramatically. From 2003 through their 8-8 season last year, the team went through six different coaches, and became the first team in NFL history to lose at least 11 games for seven straight seasons. The team’s combined record over those seven years was 29 wins and 83 losses. In 2001, Oakland had 472,000 total fans in home attendance. By 2010, the total had dropped by more than 100,000, to 371,000.
11. Columbus Blue Jackets
Decrease in attendance: 21.76%
2001 W-L record: 28–39–9–6 (finished 5th in Central Division)
2010 W-L record: 32-35-15 (finished 5th in Central Division)
League championships last decade: none
Columbus entered the NHL as an expansion team in 2000, along with the Minnesota Wild. The team had the 12th-highest turnout in the league in that first season, with 715,000 fans in attendance for home games. Two years later, the team had the second-worst record in the league, and ticket sales began to plummet. To date, the team has finished in the bottom ten (out of a total 32 teams) every year except 2008 — the one year it had a winning record. And apart from that year, attendance has declined every year since 2002. Between 2000 and 2010, annual ticket sales at Nationwide Arena dropped from 715,000 to 546,000.
10. Indiana Pacers
Decrease in attendance: 24.32%
2001 W-L record: 41-41 (finished 8th in Eastern Conference)
2010 W-L record: 32-50 (finished 10th in Eastern Conference)
League championships last decade:none
During the 1999-2000 season, the Indianapolis-based Pacers had the second-best winning record in the NBA, behind the LA Lakers, who would beat them in the Finals, four games to two. The Pacers scored poorly in the following two years, however, until a series of trades got them back in the running. The team had the best record in the NBA in the 2003-2004 season under newly-acquired star Ron Artest, losing in the conference finals to the Pistons. The following year, Artest got into a serious brawl and was suspended for the entire season. From then on the team declined, and would not make the playoffs once between 2005 and 2010. Ticket sales declined from 733,000 in 2001 to 582,000 in 2010 — the fourth-worst attendance in the league.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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