Attendance is up 41% and the buildings are the constraint

League attendance rose 41 percent this season, and six clubs sold out every home game. The obstacle to growing further is not demand. It is the calendar of buildings the clubs do not own.

Four of the six sold-out clubs are secondary tenants. The primary tenant holds first call on dates, and where a building also books concerts and family shows, a secondary tenant is scheduled into what remains. That typically means fewer weekend dates and more midweek games — precisely the inverse of what a growing club wants.

The bigger-venue experiment

Two clubs have responded by moving selected games to larger venues in the same city, and both drew crowds above 18,000, well beyond their regular capacity.

The economics are less obvious than the attendance figure. A larger building costs more to rent, requires more staff, and generates less per seat because a bigger house means more cheap seats. One of the two clubs said the move was roughly break-even financially and clearly positive for everything else — broadcast presentation, sponsorship, and the number of people who now know the team exists.

We sold eighteen thousand tickets and made about what we make on a sellout at home. We would do it again tomorrow, and not because of the money.— A club president whose team played at a larger arena

What is being built

Three clubs have announced dedicated practice and performance facilities, and one has broken ground on a purpose-built arena in the eight-to-ten-thousand range — a size that suits current demand without the overhead of a building designed for twice as many.

Executives elsewhere in the league describe that size as the sweet spot, and the availability of financing for it as the thing that has actually changed.

• Attendance: up 41% year over year league-wide
• Sellouts: six clubs sold out every home date
• Constraint: four of the six are secondary tenants without date control
• Experiment: two clubs drew 18,000-plus in larger venues, at roughly break-even

Broadcast is following the same curve, with rights fees for the next cycle expected to rise sharply. Several executives cautioned that the league has been here before with a growth spurt that plateaued, and that the difference this time is whether infrastructure gets built during the good years rather than after them.