Warning: attendance geek post.

With more sponsorships (even in Charlotte), and a record-smashing, perhaps even revenue-generating All-Star Game, why is attendance down a bit, especially over the past month?

Donna Orender says "attendance is on par with last year." Kim Callahan answers: "Granted, the numbers won't be too far off last year's, but down is still down."

Granted, down is down, but I think there are somewhat reassuring reasons for it. First, the best teams this year play in the smallest markets. Hartford, Connecticut has just 125,000 residents; Norwich and New London, Connecticut, the cities closest to Mohegan Sun, combine for about 50K. Fewer than 800K people live in Indianapolis, just 560K in Seattle proper, and just over 400K in Sacramento.

By comparison, there are almost 3.8 million people in Los Angeles itself (never mind the suburbs), two million in Houston, almost 1.2 million in San Antonio.

So the teams with the buzz and the winning streaks this year-- and the team with the championship from last year-- are teams with smaller pools of potential fans. In the case of the Sun, the disparity extends to arena size: Connecticut could sell out every game and still come in under the 1999 league average, as the casino knew when it bought the team. (The tribe's businesspeople sound happy about the investment.)

Of course, many fans live in suburbs. You can get populations for metropolitan statistical areas, rather than just for cities, right here if you don't mind downloading a PDF: L.A.-Long Beach- Santa Ana has 12.4M, Houston 4.7M, San Antonio 1.7M, Indianapolis 1.5M, Sacramento plus outlying cities 1.8M, Seattle-Bellevue-Everett 2.3M, Hartford 1.1M. But if city populations produce one set of distortions, MSAs can produce another: some of the people in these areas live quite far from the relevant arenas. In Seattle, some of them live on islands. (By the way, comparing stats within New England to stats outside it is harder than it sounds.)

The other reason for the slight overall decline is, simply, the Washington Nationals. If you think the Nats don't compete with the Mystics, not just directly, for individual ticket-buyers, but indirectly for space in the news and the like, you haven't been to DC this year. This yearlong effect more than cancels out the rebound in Liberty attendance from the Radio City Music Hall stint, which only lasted six games.

Could we bring more people to games? Sure we could. But when there's no new franchise this year, Seattle holds the title, Connecticut leads the league, and L.A. and Washington languish below .500, nearly-flat attendance isn't so bad. Fans use attendance numbers as proxies for the league's financial health, when in fact sponsorship revenue, paid gate, and even merchandise sales might say as much or more. And attendance should perk up next year because new franchises always do well in the first year, and because we won't be comparing pre-baseball to post-baseball figures for the Mystics.

For really roaring attendance trends, though, wait till New York, L.A. or Chicago win a championship. As Clay put it: "When the Sparks are good [and] when the Liberty are good, it's good for the league." Good for attendance numbers, anyway.