Attendance figures in the story

A writer at a previous stop put in in EVERY gamer. If it wasn't in the body of the story, it would be in the end-of-story notes. It would always say: "The team announced the attendance as 13,000, giving it XXX,XXX for XX home dates." That ALWAYS was the first thing I cut if it needed to be cut.

As some above have said, there has to be a compelling reason to run the attendance in the story since, in most cases, it's in the box score/summary if readers are curious.

 

The compelling reason at our paper is that the EE wants it.

 

Eh, what are you gonna do? I don't cover high schools anymore. So I don't have to worry about "unofficial" counts.

 

I count the crowd during the national anthem before high school basketball and football games for my own personal amusement. It's easier, of course, at basketball games, but I like to marvel at just how small the crowds are around here. I've often wanted to include it ... "Jimmy Dicksuck scored 28 points to lead West Bumblefuck past Perineum Academy 65-47 before a crowd of 74 dedicated fans at Harry Reemus Arena on Tuesday."

 

I'm curious. In cases where it's mandatory, do you just force it in somewhere as a throwaway item, or do you try to weave it in creatively?

 

The victory, which came before a sellout crowd of 86,283, moved the Pygmies into a three-way tie for fourth place.

Johnson rushed for 97 yards and scored on runs of eight, 12 and 32 yards for the Pygmies, who won before a sellout crowd of 86, 283.

 

Basically like Some Guy said.

 

I've always been told it's essential; likewise, I've always been told that after I've (rightfully) neglected to include it.

At a game this summer, actually, I asked the owner of the team I was covering how in the world they could announce attendance at 8,000 when there were visibly 2,000 people or less in the stands. He said that he wishes he could say there were just 2,000 people in attendance, but because there was some kind of tax the team had to pay to whomever for every ticket sold, it could be bad news if they underreported it.

I don't know if that was a load of bull, but it sounded legit to me at the time, and it does slightly make sense. Plus, part of me thinks too that if they legitimately sell the building out but nobody shows up, they're still actually selling those tickets.

 

It really isn't hard. It's just a pain in the ass, sometimes. Especially in this era of shrinking space.

 

but I think part of the point is to give the reader an idea of how many people were there. It's part of painting the scene.

I don't care how many tickets they sold. I care how many asses are in the seats.

Many NCAA basketball teams report paid attendance AND turnstile attendance on their box scores. I always report turnstile.

 

If you want to be completely factual for a pro game, the figure they give you may have no relation to the number of fans in the stands. The figure they give you in most cases represents the number of tickets sold and not the attendance. That's why some writers say "the attendance was announced as." It only really works for an end-of-story note because it looks clunky otherwise, but you could say "23,200 tickets were sold for the game." My preference, of course, is to leave it out!

 

I know an SID who would announce attendance with the last few numbers being the date of the game. Say, if it was January 6, the attendance would be reported as 5,106.