Victoria Highlanders vs Seals Attendance

Finding exact attendance figures for the Victoria Highlanders of the USL Premier Development League (PDL) is not exactly straight forward. In an earlier post I noted that through their first five home games, the Highlanders drew a total of 8,110 fans or 1,622 fans per game. I scoured the web and noted that their attendance for their last three home games this year was:

• July 5, 2009 - 1,637 (source: Victoria Highlanders web site)
• July 16, 2009 - "close to 2,000" (source: Victoria Times-Colonist)
• July 19, 2009 - 2,205 (source: Victoria Times-Colonist)

For argument's sake, let's assume that attendance on July 16th was 1,900 (it may have been lower). That brings the Highlanders' total attendance for 2009 to 13,852 or 1,732 per game.

By contrast, the Victoria Seals have drawn 58,239 fans through their first 26 home games. That translates to an average of 2,239 fans per game -- second best in the entire Golden Baseball League. If we extrapolate these numbers, the Seals are on pace to draw 91,838 fans.

So there you have it: 13,852 Victorians went out to a state-of-the-art facility to watch a fairly decent team play pro soccer in the summer of 2009 (the Highlanders had a 6-6-2 record). Meanwhile, close to 92,000 fans went out to a 1950's style stadium to watch a last-place team play pro baseball (the Seals had a 22-33 record going into Wednesday's action). Put another way, for every fan who went to watch pro soccer, close to 7 others attended a Victoria Seals game. That bodes well for the Seals in 2010.