Week 17 Battle Lines Are Drawn: Bengals v Ravens and Bengals Fans v Mike Brown

I'll give the Bengals this: 2011 has been one hell of a season.  It's only fitting that the last week of the season promises to be a dramatic blow off top on a couple of levels.  The first level is on the field, where the team needs to beat the holy-crap-when-will-it-end Ray Lewis era Ravens. I don't have much to add there except to say that the Bengals are perfectly capable of winning and as 2.5 point dogs at home I'd even consider putting money on them.

The second level of interest is fan attendance.  Listening to local talk radio, it seems to be the main focus in fact.  Make that national media too.  See Pro Football Talk, Shutdown Corner at Yahoo!, ESPN and National Football Post for more.  I expected many of these outlets to get this story completely wrong, and call out the city for having "bad fans".  Instead, they get it kinda sorta correct and highlight the souring relationship between the fans and the ownership.  Gregg Doyel actually comes down harder on ownership than we probably do here at WDR.

With paid attendance seemingly fluctuating more or less in the 40,000s, essentially the Bengals have about 20K+ season tickets available for future seasons they would love to sell.  Another way to put it is that they are operating at 75% of the stadium's capacity.  I wanted to take a look, using the best data I could find with some basic searching, to see exactly what is going on here in Cincy.  We all have our own opinions and narratives we want to use to explain this story, but a little hard data goes a long way.

For starters, I'm working off of ESPN.com's attendance database, which is only good from 2006.  Not perfect, but good enough because it captures the growth just before the Great Recession, the Great Recession, the Lockout and some of the economic recovery.  For those interested, here's a spreadsheet of the data: Download Attendance Trends

In short, here is what has happened in Cincinnati:  Since 2006, paid attendance in capacity terms has fallen roughly 27%.  This happened in steady drips from 2007-2009 and then accelerated in 2010 and 2011. 

ESPN doesn't provide data in 2006 and 2007 for Indy, Minnesota, Oakland and Miami unfortunately, so I cannot tell you if that is the worst decline in the NFL, but it is definitely the worst of the measurable teams.  It is a shame too because Oakland and Miami, in particular, are teams that have shown large drops in attendance.  Though when you do look at the data available for Miami & Oakland, I am not sure it would change the conclusions about Cincy anyway.

According to ESPN, here is the capacity trend at PBS since 2006: 

• 2006 - 100.7% full v NFL Avg 99.74%
• 2007 - 100.4% full (-0.3% drop) v NFL Avg 99.71% (-0.03% drop)
• 2008 - 98.6% full (-1.79% drop) v NFL Avg 97.05% (-2.66% drop)
• 2009 - 97.7% full (-0.93% drop) v NFL Avg 95.39% (-1.71% drop)
• 2010 - 92.1% full (-5.73% drop) v NFL Avg 94.54% (-0.89% drop)
• 2011 - 73.6% full (-20.09% drop) v NFL Avg 95.31% (0.82% gain)

One thing I will note is these stats do not factor in COST.  I do not have good data for that.  So if the almost flat attendance in the NFL during the Great Recession and the Lockout was propped up by collapsing ticket costs, that would make the paid attendance figures misleading.  However, based on my understanding, the all-in cost of going to live games in the NFL and at PBS has not changed much or even increased on average during this entire time. 

For example, in 2008, see this article which shows the "Fan Cost Index" rising over 6% in 2008 for Bengals fans.  In 2009, the offseason during which the full recession effects would be hitting, Bengals all-in costs decreased only -0.9%.  These same measures indicate the NFL raised prices in 2010 about 4% and kept things flat in 2011.  You can argue about the exactness of these figures but the point is this:  demand for the NFL is INELASTIC.  People just don't cut their spending all that much on the NFL.  Thus, the NFL hasn't been playing games with the cost to attend games and so this hasn't biased the attendance figures. 

The reasons people generally cite to explain attendance trends for the most part come down to 1) Winning/Losing, 2) Economy 3) General fan interest and 4) Attractiveness of alternatives to attending live games (i.e., watching at home).  These factors obviously don't work in isolation and their effects can be muddled, especially for the Bengals in the past 5 years.  So let's take a look and see if the data really fits nicely into those explanations.

To begin with, factor #3 or "fan interest" is sky high and growing.  You can see this from TV ratings.  They are sick.  For televised Bengals games, for example, roughly 65% of local tv's are tuned into the Bengals games when they play.  Even with a lockout, fans haven't lost interest or held a grudge, as paid attendance for the entire NFL will climb this year for the first time since 2007.  So let's just eliminate fan interest in football as explaining any of vagaries of attendance from year to year.  People are addicted to it like crack.

Back to the Bengals.  From 2006-2008, there was a general downtrend in performance as the Bengals could not sustain the success of their breakthrough 2005 season.  During this time, at least, when most season ticket buying is done (the offseason), the economy was also not in recession.  Thus, you see a slight downdrip in paid attendance.  Nothing seems too strange here, and performance coupled with HDTV awesomeness could easily explain the drop in attendance over these years.  You might expect a bigger drop in 2008 or in 2009 because the team was terrible in 2008 and the full force of the recession hit towards the end of 2008 and into 2009.  However, there was a nice built in excuse for the poor performance of the team, Carson Palmer was out basically the whole year in 2008.  Attendance declined only slightly for 2009 as fans may have viewed 2008 as worse than it would have been with Palmer healthy.

Indeed, the Bengals did rebound in 2009 with a division title, however, this did not translate into increased attendance in 2010.  In fact, a sharp drop occurred of over 5%.  It was the 3rd largest drop in the NFL that year.  This is where things get interesting.  Certainly performance cannot explain it.  People do their season ticket buying in the offseason, so a good year on the field on average tends to drive attendance the following the year (for example poorly attended Tampa Bay won in 2010 and saw attendance climb over 14% in 2011). 

Let's move onto the economy. By early 2010, the economy had bottomed and started to climb again.  Why would people suddenly not be able to afford tickets in 2010 after making those payments in 2008 and 2009?  Perhaps people tried to maintain some of their lifestyle through the recession but after it turned out the recovery was also weak they realized their prospects were still dim and they finally capitulated.  I am sympathetic to this argument but economic factors should manifest themselves league-wide unless you are willing to argue that Cincinnati had a uniquely different economic experience in 2010 than the other NFL markets (hint:  it did not).  I do not see conclusive evidence that 2010 attendance was worse than the other recession years of 2008 and 2009.  In fact, it appears to be slightly better on average for the league (though certain individual teams had a real nasty time like Tampa).

Beyond that, you would expect to see other sports entertainment in Cincinnati experience poor attendance trends.  Reds, Bearcats and Xavier attendance records do not indicate any effect from the economy in 2010.  Even the Freedom Center appears to have had flat attendance. Therefore, I cannot truly endorse this explanation, there just isn't any evidence.

Certainly each year, as more people play fantasy football and become more interested in ALL NFL teams and as HDTVs become cheaper and better, many fans are opting for the home or bar viewing experience instead of going to games.  However, this is a multi-year trend that should act as a consistent drag over time in a league otherwise gaining in popularity.  It is not a 2010 specific trend so that explanation doesn't seem right either.  Traditional factors, therefore, don't really offer compelling explanations of the 2010 drop.

In 2011, stated clearly, Bengals attendance collapsed.  Similar to 2010, it's tough to think the economy explained this drop as we're now into another year of the weak recovery and paid attendance will increase this year in the NFL for the first time in 3 years.  And again, viewing at home didn't get suddenly so attractive 20% of fans abandoned season tickets.  But performance, oh boy, that could certainly explain some things.

As I mentioned before, ticket purchasing takes place in the offseason and the 2010 offseason felt like the apocalypse while it was happening.  With the awkward Marvin resigning, the lockout, letting JJoe walk despite him wanting to stay (ask @JohnThornton about that on Twitter), Carson retiring and hiring Jon Gruden's brother...fans were wondering what the f*** was going on?  Coupled with a terrible on the field performance and the 2010 offseason was probably worse in Cincinnati than anywhere else in the NFL.  My guess is this triggered the attendance collapse this year.

However, a fall this big is extremely rare.  There are only 3 other teams that showed falls this large in the past 5 years.  Two were in 2009, when the offseason ticket buying should theoretically have been hardest hit by the Great Recession.  Those teams were Jacksonville and Oakland.  Jacksonville has a reputation of being a market simply not capable of supporting a NFL team coming off of a miserable year and Oakland is a notoriously poor city where I would expect the recession to have an outsize affect and they coming off a long stretch of total futility. I can plausibly explain why those teams saw such a huge drop. 

The other collapse was Tampa Bay in 2010 (down almost 22%).  They were coming off of a 3 win season but many teams have awful years and don't see attendance fall THAT much.  Traditional factors don't explain it and perhaps it was random.  After all, Tampa attendance rebounded this year by 15%.  I am not very familiar with that franchise but would curious to know if anyone could provide a narrative that made any sense.  Regardless, the Tampa drop appears to be the best comparable drop to the Bengals, in that it happened outside the peak of the Great Recession window.  Therefore, we might expect a large rebound in attendance next year if you believe in that the Tampa situation mirrors Cincy.

That's the data, limited as it is. The summary:  the Bengals have had a huge attendance collapse but it's something with precedent and they can expect to gain some but not all fans back in the offseason.

However, something kind of smells about the 2010 drop.  It's as if there was a forewarning that the Bengals were primed for a large attendance fall.  I think a couple of narratives may help shed light on the Bengals attendance trend and predict a slightly different result than we have seen with Tampa.

The first narrative is this:  fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me. 

After the Bengals could not sustain winning after 2005, fans started to feel like they had again been duped into trusting Mike Brown.  They had been fooled once by Mikey, and they were suspicious yet again.  So in 2009, even though the Bengals won the division, the fans remained circumspect.  After all, they didn't exactly impress in the 2nd half of 2009, limping to the division title, and they were crushed twice in a row by the Jets to end the regular season and the playoffs.  The fans would not be fooled twice and stayed away.

When in 2010, the team performed miserably followed by the offseason apocalypse the fans decision not to be fooled appeared vindicated and this sent attendance into freefall.

That is where we are at.  In the face of fan resistance, the Bengals have made some promising moves.  Not enough for fans like us at WDR to remove our prejudice but they are certainly encouraging.  First, they have had a good string of drafts, particulary the most recent.  Second, there are stories Mike Brown was talked out of Mallett for Dalton, which, regardless of whether Dalton had performed as well as he did was encouraging because it shows a flexibility we had not previously seen.  Third, they fired long time "friend of the family" Brat and brought in a guy who really seems to know how to call a game.  Fourth, even Mike Brown demonstrated his principles do have a price and he dealt Carson.

Fan dissatisfaction has appeared sticky though.  Despite holding the #1 seed in the AFC through 8 weeks in 2011, fans did not respond by buying tickets.  Not until the recent BOGO deal did fans come back and start filling seats.

This leads to the second narrative that may explain what is going on:  Bengals fans have reset the price at which they are willing to pay for tickets.

Note this is subtely different from saying the bad economy means tickets are too expensive.  No, what it really means is that Bengals fans have decided they get an inferior product here in Cincy and it needs to come down in price.  If the Bengals were a good product, people could pay the $65 for the cheapest ticket...they did in 2008 and 2009 after all.  But the Bengals are a bad product and so people want it for less.  It turns out that less may be anywhere from 25%-50% lower.  Yikes.

Therefore, I think perhaps the Bengals may actually revisit their pricing given the success of BOGO.  Lowering of ticket prices coupled with a good offseason means many fans will likely come back.  However, the current state of Bengals fans is very fragile.  The Brown Family has a small margin of error with their fanbase, who is ready at a moment's notice to shed their season tickets.

At WDR, the boycott remains.  The Bengals remain guily until proven innocent and while they are doing some marginal things to make their case they have not yet provided smoking gun evidence of change.  As Bengals fans though, we will not let that stop us from enjoying the conclusion to this refreshing regular season.  As I have said before, this season has been the best of all worlds here:  the team is doing well on the field and fans are sending Mike Brown a message.

Comments

[BigPetesJohnson]

As if on cue, Joe Reedy (Bengals beat reporter) tweeted that the Bengals 2012 season ticket prices were lowered up to 33%.

[cj]

yup!

http://www.bengals.com/news/article-1/Bengals-2012-season-ticket-prices-announced/e21e2906-a949-4607-aeeb-fdba146d3e73

[sexonthebreech]

SWB, shocked at your confidence in the Bengals to win at home vs. a motivated Ravens team that needs the win for their first home-field playoff game in years, especially given how shat the Bengals have been against quality opponents this year (and frankly against the garbage teams too, needing to eek out wins against the likes of Cleveland). I'll gladly take the money you mention you are considering "wagering" ;)

Interesting stuff on the attendance- love that Bengals were forced to pay NFL for the free seats and now are steeply lowering ticket prices... will make it that much sweeter in 2012 when they see the same 40,000 turnout.

[Hofbraunow]

Hey, that's great and *you know it* !

Downtown with Mike Brown
(and I don't mean downtown at the Riverfront in Cincy, I mean downtown....STUPID-TOWN, thats' what I mean)

Go Bengals, kick their balls (and I don't just mean on the three-and-outs).
C'mon do it! Knock them junk around!

On Sunday, we do not eat crow.
On Sunday, we dine on RAVENS (just like a cornish game hen)!!!

WhoSaySerious?

WHÖ DËY !!!

[WhySoCephalus]

"this season has been the best of all worlds here: the team is doing well on the field and fans are sending Mike Brown a message"

Now see right there that's it!

And if anyone remains confused:

* Read it

* Live it

* BE IT,

WhoDeyHeads!!!

WHO DEY !!!

[Mike Brown's Lumina]

Interesting article Bieniemy. I also wonder how the seat liscence dynamic played in to this drop in attendance. I remember comments from many season ticket holders last spring mentioning they were not going to renew even though they would lose their seat liscence. It seems a lot of fans reasoned that the seat liscence fee amortized over 10 years was their cost/benefit breaking point. In other words, they didn't mind giving up the fee to get out of paying for Mike's product.

[Dan R.]

I like your reasoning, and I think the fact that we were still selling out during the height of the economic collapse in 2008 and 2009 makes it easier to argue that this is Mike Brown and not the economy that's causing all those empty seats. Unfortunately, when we sell 20,000 seats after a BOGO offer, I'm expecting every voice on TV tomorrow to attribute this to cost and not ownership. As always, it's more likely some mix of the two.

Now, what would truly be the best of both worlds is if we make the playoffs, beat the Texans (doable), and by some miracle get by the Pats/Steelers/Ravens in Round 2 and see Oakland in the AFC title game - great narrative against Carson and, more importantly, our second round pick becomes a first round pick.

It's just too bad that's not going to happen.

[Sleeping With Bieniemy]

@sexonthebeach - Ravens have been pretty bad on the road this year. If young players can control emotions and harness energy of home crowd, you should see a really inspired effort too. But yes, the Ravens are a better team. Let's just say I wouldn't wager too much on the Bengals here. And unfortunately, you will probably see a pretty big rebound in our attendance with with ticket prices down and promising young core.

@Mike Brown's Lumina - it's annoying part of fans dropping season tix and then renewing, Brown Family gets another bonus round of money for COA (seat license) purchases. They are expensive though, my guess is they'll have to drop that cost too. Once people take a hard look at getting new tix and see $900 for a COA they may give it a second thought.

[#DoNotOccupyPaulBrownStadium]

Things are at a tipping point I would say.

If the Bengals managed to win on Sunday, Mike Brown could go back to Candyland.

If the Ravens beat the tar out of the Bengals, fans might not show up in 2012 even if tickets were free.

[Bob F.]

Gregg Doyel really nails it, especially the comment about us all knowing this season is a mirage.....

[blesterov]

I have $40 on the Ravens giving up 2 points rather than going with them straight up since it was a larger return giving up the points. I put my other $10 on the Chiefs to shut up Tebow. My only concern in losing my money is that the Ravens shit the bed since they suck on the road. But since they are presently the better team, I will be amazed if that actually happens. Regardless this is going to be a great fight to watch.

I agree with don'toccupy. If the Ravens knock the shit out of the Bengals Sunday, fans are going to be irate. This would only benefit our cause, and possibly spare us from having the Steelers in the Super Bowl again.

Regarding the attendance, I think you made some great points and are on the right track. I would also like to add some additional thoughts:

The depression (that is really what this is, but no one wants to say so to keep people from panicking) affected everyone at different times. It was like a wave, that hit certain sectors first and then other sectors months or even years later. For example, the market initially crashed in China during August of 2007 due to the failure of the bundled mortgage securities to pay out as advertised. The US did not feel the effects of the China crash until 13 months later, when housing prices dropped due to the bundled securities becoming toxic from Wall Street being unable to sell the securities anymore to overseas investors and the derivative clauses kicking in. Once the derivatives kicked in, credit evaporated since everyone on Wall Street was over-leveraged. Ohio's housing market was hit really hard since they overdeveloped the suburbs, and I was surprised to see the number of homes in foreclosure when I went home last weekend.

The US market tanked at the end of September, by November my architectural firm lost approximately 50% of our business, and we laid off staff and cut salaries around Thanksgiving of 2008. Not only did my portfolio get killed, but my monthly take home took a significant hit immediately. The construction industry didn't get really pounded until 6 months after we did since there was no longer a line of projects in the que. We did not see a rebound in new business until January of 2010, once the stock market bounced back to 10,000, and we really took off around June of 2010. Notice there is now a bump in construction sector presently. As of today, we are in a slow downward trend again in acquiring new business, so I believe we may be in a double dip already. On top of this, if the Germans can't stop the Euro from collapsing, then we are going to see a much larger credit tsunami in 2012 than we experienced in 2008.

Back to my point: public sector employees (e.g. teachers, etc.) did not really feel the effects of the crash in their take home income really until 2010. Yes, their portfolios were hit hard in 2008-2009, but their take-home income was relatively untouched until years after the collapse. Things are now starting to getting worse for them now with pay freezes, cuts in benefits, layoffs, and state funding cuts finally catching up from the years of decreased revenue.

So this is also why I think we did not see significant drops in ticket sells in 2009 or 2010. Yes, the national economy was at its lowest, but a lot people still had discretionary income and could afford upper deck seats at $60 a piece. Now things are tight for more people, and when you add to this that people are fed up with Mike Brown's antics it was a perfect storm for the ticket sales to plummet this year.

I don't think dropping the upper deck seats to $40 a ticket or having a young emerging team next season is going to be enough to fill them back up to full capacity since a lot of people are hurting out there. Things may only get worse if we see another crash in the coming months. So I think there is a good chance this trend of blackouts isn't ending anytime soon.

[guttersnake]

Stephen A. Smith bashed the Cincinnati Bengals fanbase today on ESPN's First Take saying "no disrespect to the organization" (ie MFB) but that the fans should be "ashamed of themselves" for not supporting this young winning team.

I don't tweet (yet), but if any of you do, someone please blow his shit up and get both he and Skip Bayless informed. They should both be viewed as taget Progandists #1 and #2 for The Revolution.

[guttersnake]

...sorry, Propagandists.

[Wyatt]

Just sent out a four-part Tweet to Stephen A Smith. Skip Bayless is functionally illiterate, so I won't waste my time tweeting him.

[TJanns]

I think it will be a game for almost a half.

Then the Ravens will get a couple big plays and blow it open.

Just don't see this team winning this game. I could be wrong...

[Hofbraunow]

Dammit it's only 2:46am EST 1/1/12, and I can't wait for the game to start

[#DoNotOccupyPaulBrownStadium]

I see the Bengals are starting this game as you'd expect they would. Giving up a 70 yard TD run where Rice wasn't even touched.

[#DoNotOccupyPaulBrownStadium]

17-3 near the end of the first half.
Real "battle" there Bengals, LOL

[Comrade Ken]

Typical Bungals. Stupid mistakes and bad calls.

Looks like they still might back into the playoffs.

[#DoNotOccupyPaulBrownStadium]

Backed in to the playoffs on the strength of the worst group of playoff-seeking teams in a long time.
They *all* suck!

[#DoNotOccupyPaulBrownStadium]

Every time I get to thinking the fans of Cincinnati will wise up... I see all the Koolaid drinkin' "Who Dey!" folks already predicting glorious victories over the Texans and scheming how we're gonna beat New England's bad defense. LOL. The crack they hand out at PBS is might strong.

[Whysoserious]

Ppl like do not occupy are what's wrong with this site. There is hatting ownership and their stupid actions and just plain hating the team. DNO just plain seems to hate this team and anyone that roots for it, which is just plain sad

[BungleLow]

saw the Bengals score while I was working...dang.

Harley-

David-

SONOFABITCH

Oh well, we knew they'd have trouble

[Bungle-O fresh/frozen ground crow]

Well, that's no way to stay in the playoffs, is it?

[#DoNotOccupyPaulBrownStadium]

We should salute the Dolphin Revolution:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/fl-fire-ireland-airplane-banner-0101,0,4557860.story

http://www.finsnation.com/fins_nation/2012/01/dolphins-vs-jets-open-thread.html

[guttersnake]

There are years there are so many good teams that there simply aren't enough play-off spots for every deserving squad. This is not one of those years. You know, 5 of 12 teams backed into the play-offs yesterday, so to a small degree, #DNOPBS does have a point...

...but as it was said several weeks ago, this is not the BCS; this is the NFL. Making the play-offs is still making the play-offs. If someone would have posted on this site prior to week 1 that we'd make the play-offs this year, he would have been dubbed a 'kood aid drinker' and ridiculed for weeks. Being objective (or fan-biased, for that matter) about this team is wholly different than hating the management. The current list of contributors has been very bad about this. Continued line-blurring hurts our cause.

MFB made money for a single game this season, and that was yesterday. So what. Next year will be the same... unless he keeps doing outragous ticket deals like he did on Sunday. Isn't that a win for WDR?

Here's the other thing. Do I think we're poised for a deep run? No - the very fact that we are even here is as much of a pleasant shock to me as it likely is for most. However, of all 12 teams (AFC & NFC) that are in the play-offs only Denver would have been a better match up for us in the wild card round. Is this game winnable? Yes. Very. Much more so than Sunday.

In 2009, I knew in my gut that the Jets were going to crush us. I'm really liking us in this match up. If the "real" possiblity of Cincinnati winning its first play-off game in 20 years doesn't fire you up, you don't have pulse.

Now, if they win, Brady will shread our secondary. There. A little reality for the cynics.

[blesterov]

If the ending of yesterday's game was different then you expected, then you don't understand the game that well. The Raven's had the better team, they won the chess match throughout most of the game, they executed better, and the ref's helped them out a little with some bullshit calls or helpful no-calls. Fundamentally the Ravens are a good team, and they are my pick to make it to the Super Bowl from the AFC side.

I was impressed how well the Bengals were able to stay in the game with everything going against them; even threatening to tie the game in the final minutes. Years ago they would have imploded and this game would have turned into a blow out. The Bengals just need to make personnel improvements at a few key spots this offseason and they will be able to win these type of games next year, especially if they can retain this mental toughness. If Mike &/or Marvin fuck it up, this is as good as they are going to get for years to come.

The Bengals do have a decent chance of winning next week, but Gruden is going to have to call one hell of a game to ensure the win. I don't see that happening against one of the best defenses in the NFL at their home stadium. Dunlap improves the defense compared to the last time they meet, but not that much since the Texans have the best OL in the NFL right now. So as of right now, you have to give the advantage to the Texans.

If they win, Gutter is right. Pats destroy the Bengals the following week.

[Wyatt]

@blesterov: One thing you fail to mention that is definitely in the Bengals' favor: Jake Delhomme, he of the 5-interception playoff game (and one lost fumble to boot), may be playing quarterback for the Texans. I haven't heard any updates on Yates' throwing shoulder, but we should all be hoping for Mr. Anti-Clutch to be slinging the football on Saturday.

[Hofbraunow]

Please, let there be no more 'hatting of ownership'...

The only ones I can think of that were hat-worthy were Vince Lombardi, Paul Brown, and Tom Landry

(wait, Vince and Tom weren't owners , were they?)

[Hofbraunow]

Too late...every year, we witness the Ultimate Ass-Hatting of Ownership via Mike Brown

[justin bieber shoes]

It is rediculous to even suggest that. It is not fair to take the actions and ideas of group of people.

[charmingdate scam]

Nice to be here and see your post!