Charles Kuffner has an interesting post about the John Lopez column noted earlier here that suggested that the $80 million or so in public financing for the proposed downtown soccer stadium is a political payback to the minority groups that have given certain civic leaders a pass for supporting the two more expensive downtown stadiums, Minute Maid Park ($286 million) and the Toyota Center ($250 million). Kuff goes on to observe about the location of the proposed stadium:
If it’s going to be in Houston and not Sugar Land or the Woodlands, then I think downtown is fine. It will be both more convenient and more attractive than Robertson Stadium, where I presume they’re at least drawing enough of a crowd to be viable. I just think they ought to pay for that downtown stadium themselves.
Norm Chad, as an aside to his funny column regarding the Dodgers’ stadium seats that come with free food, makes the following observation about the number of folks who are really watching MLS soccer:
Column intermission: “Beckham Fever” is contagious. This month, MLS games have attracted throngs of 7,426 in Kansas City, 7,802 in New York and 9,508 in New England. One fan in Houston even thought she sighted David Beckham, but it just turned out to be a good-looking grad student from Rice wearing a Subway sandwich board.
Come to think of it, has any civic leader bothered to ask how many folks are attending Dynamo games?
Come to think of it, has any civic leader bothered to ask how many folks are attending Dynamo games?
I’m no civic leader, but I have kept an eye on Dynamo attendance when we were talking about the Dynamo some on the Bad Sports podcast.
They’ve actually done okay for themselves at Robertson, despite the fact that the firm that handles security for UH is as hapless as ever. They averaged 18,935 last year, which is good for that sport and for Robertson (UH football doesn’t always draw that many per game!). I’m not sure if that figure includes a promotion at Reliant that sold out, though, which would obviously distort the numbers. Quite a few games drew in the 10-15,000 range in 2006.