Arguing Averages

Quote: RLBandit "Arguing about words doesn't get to the core point, which is to understand how well or badly attendances are doing.

For argument's sake, let's say each round of Superleague was played on a single day, at a single venue, like a super bum-numbing magic weekend crammed into one day. If each one of these days was attended by just 10k people (say), we'd be kidding ourselves to say that RL was in great shape because our attendances 'averaged 10k per game' - even though I accept there's a semantic argument to be made where that is technically the case. The point is, it can be as technically true as you like, but it wouldn't represent good attendance figures. 10k attending a whole day is plainly not the same as different groups of 10k people going to multiple games. One says that RL attracts 10k fans, the other says we attract 70k fans. By the same logic, it's a little misleading to say that we sold 45k tickets for Eng-Aus and 45k tickets for Wales-Italy. We didn't. We sold 45k tickets for a double header. In terms of tracking attendances, measuring performance, planning finances, etc. etc. you have to discount the attendances somewhat - I think halving it to 22.5k is probably too much, but recording it as two lots of 45k is misleading too, because we all know that if the games were played separately they wouldn't get 45k each. The only case where I'd change my mind on that is if the double-header cost twice as much as a normal single game event (or close to twice as much anyway, taking into account the cost savings in venue, policing, admin, etc. - two games on the same day are presumably slightly cheaper to stage)'"