Sitting here watching the Chicago Rush beat the Georgia Force on Ustream, I can't help but think how empty the seats look. I remember going to Chicago in 2007 to watch the Chicago Rush take on the Kansas City Brigade, and it was a packed house. Going back and looking at the attendance records for the Chicago Rush in 2007 and 2008, the average attendance for a Chicago Rush game was over 10,000 fans per game. Today, the Chicago Rush are averaging only 6,800 fans per game, and they are not alone.
In 2008, the league average for attendance was almost 13,000 fans per game across the league. In 2010, the first year that the new AFL was in operation, the average attendance dropped to 8,100, and in 2011 the average had a slight gain, rising to 8,200. Fourteen weeks into the 2012 Season, the average is down, currently running at 7,600.
What is going on? The game is going dull. We are not seeing the level of play that we say back in the original AFL ownership. The players that kept the league exciting have moved on to other endeavors simply because they cannot afford to leave their jobs to play football during the AFL Season. I have discussed this before, but the league wage for a normal player is only around $400 per game. Now, how many people can afford to leave their regular job to attend regular practices and meetings for a mere $400 per week. The new AFL has basically become a hobby league where key players, mainly quarterbacks, are the only people paid enough money to dedicate themselves to their teams each year. The rest are simply going to be a part of the high turnover that the AFL experiences each year.
The drop in average attendance is a classic example of how the league is becoming dull, that fans are not satisfied with the product that the league is offering. In week 14 of 2008, the league's average attendance was 12,351. For week 14 of 2012, the league average was 6,495. That is 52.5% of the 2008 attendance, and some teams are suffering even worse than that.
In Kansas City, the Brigade were averaging over 12,000 fans per game. In 2011, when the team returned as the Kansas City Command, their average attendance was 4,353, and so far in 2012, their attendance average is hovering at 4,800. Yes, the average attendance is up for 2012, but there have been a lot of promos running to draw people into the games, and by looking at the seats during the broadcasts of the games, the number of Season Ticket holders is way down.
The AFL is not going to survive under the program that is currently running. People have stated that the new ownership have set back the AFL ten to twenty years. Take Kansas City. Why should I pay $15 for the cheap seats at Sprint Center and then pay premium prices for parking, food and drink because the game is located in the KCP&L Entertainment District. The fans were happier at Kemper Arena, and they were happier when the League was paying for players that were just out of the NFL performance level. Today, we're seeing players that probably couldn't make the cut for a practice team under the old AFL ownership.
How bad is it? When was the last time one of the celebrity owners like Mike Ditka, Neil Smith, or Bon Jovi showed up for a game to meet the fans? Could they be embarrassed to be associated with this new format of the AFL?
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