Attendance Rates

Denver is lucky to be one of only eight cities in the country to have all five professional sports leagues in the US. Considering that Denver is one of the smallest markets in all the leagues, it says a lot about Colorado sports fans that Denver can support all 5 teams successfully.

	MLS	NFL	MLB	NBA	NHL
Boston	Revolution	Patriots	Red Sox	Celtics	Bruins
Chicago	Fire	Bears	Cubs, White Sox	Bulls	Blackhawks
Denver	Rapids	Broncos	Rockies	Nuggets	Avalanche
Dallas	FC Dallas	Cowboys	Rangers	Mavericks	Stars
D.C.	DC United	Redskins	Nationals	Wizards	Captiols
New York	Red Bulls	Giants, Jets	Yankees, Mets	Knicks, Nets	Rangers, Devils, Islanders
Philadelphia	Union	Eagles	Phillies	76ers	Flyers
San Francisco	Earthquakes	49ers, Raiders	Giants, Athletics	Warriors	Sharks

This got me thinking about attendance rates and how the Broncos have sold out every home game since I can remember. So I found the attendance statistics for Denver's 5 pro teams to see how well Denver sports are at drawing fans, and I was impressed.

	Rapids	Broncos	Rockies	Nuggets	Avalanche
Average Attendance for most recent complete season	14,838	75,327	35,923	16,901	14,820
Average Percent of Stadium Filled	82%	99%	71%	88%	82%

I then wondered how Denver's attendance statistics compared to the other 7 cities who have all five pro sports. I found the average attendance for each major sports team in each market, and calculated how full each stadium is on average for each team. I then averaged all the teams in each city together to get the attendance rates listed below.


San Francisco is a bit funky because nearly every team was at 100%, but the San Jose Earthquakes were at 115%. For some reason the average attendance at a SJE game is larger than the total capacity of their stadium...

Also, NY has nine teams. Some are well attended (like the Giants, Yankees, and Red Bulls) and others are not well attended (like the Nets and Islanders). This is why NY is below Colorado because some of these rates really dragged them down. If I only included the best attendance records from each sport, NY would be at the top. Oh, the tyranny of choice...too many teams for New Yorkers to choose from!

City	Attendance rate
Philadelphia	95.3%
San Francisco	93.8%
Boston	91.9%
Chicago	89.4%
Denver	84.5%
New York	84.1%
D.C.	80.7%
Dallas	79.7%

I was disappointed to see Boston above Denver in this list. I don't think Boston should be better than us at anything.

I then calculated simply average attendance by all five sports (not considering stadium capacity). Dallas skyrocketed to near the top of the list because of the enormity of New Cowboy Stadium. NY also went to the top simply because they have so many teams in the area. I was happy to see Denver above Boston, mostly because of the poor attendance of Revolution games.

City	Attendance
New York	34,614
Dallas	33,986
San Francisco	33,877
Philadelphia	33,462
Denver	31,562
Boston	31,174
D.C.	30,606
Chicago	30,266

Here's the attendance rate for other cities whose sports teams I follow, but don't have all 5 pro teams.

I wasn't surprised to see that the Timbers in Portland had nearly a 100% attendance rate, but I was shocked to see that the Trail Blazers in PDX had the 2nd best attendance in the NBA during the 2010-11 season!

Seattle would have been close to 100%, but the Mariners really hurt the city by having only a 48% attendance rate compared to the Seahawks and Sounders who are close to 100%.

City	Attendance rate
Portland	98%
Buffalo	92.3%
Seattle	82.7%

	MLS	NFL	MLB	NBA	NHL
Portland	Timbers			Trail Blazers
Buffalo		Bills			Sabres
Seattle	Sounders	Seahawks	Mariners