League attendance is often a topic of conversation when determining the hold the games have on the local populace.
Consequently, there is a general opinion among followers of the Kansas City Chiefs that attendance has been consistent, down through the years, since the Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City in 1963. As anyone who is facing the aging process, one's memory is not what it used to be.
The first five years of the American Football League were difficult, attendance-wise, as most followers of the game understand and that included Kansas City, housed in aging Municipal Stadium. It's the fate of all new leagues, where the record of success is particularly grim.
Then why did the AFL succeed, where so many others have failed?
According to records found in the Lamar Hunt archives, the team's attendance in Kansas City in 1963 was actually lower than it was in Dallas in 1962, or so it appeared. But a closer examination of the Hunt records reveal that the 1962 Texans attendance was greatly "inflated" because of what Hunt termed "the attendance war with the Cowboys."
Both teams averaged 10,000 per game at very low prices. In Kansas City, the attendance that first year represents "paid" at prices that were close to the highest in all of pro football, Hunt admits. As a result, the Chiefs that first year could boast of being in the black, a true oddity of what we know of new sporting ventures today.
Meanwhile, around the AFL if not in Kansas City, new stadiums were appearing, with the first in New York, where the Jets moved into Shea Stadium, located in the borough of Queens in 1964. In Shea, the Jets averaged 42,000 per game, up from 14,000 the previous year at the old decrepit Polo Grounds. The next year, the average jumped to 58,000 in a stadium that seated 60,000. It was quarterback Joe Namath's rookie season.
The construction of Shea signaled the beginning of a building boom with Oakland/Alameda County Stadium (1966), San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium (1967) and Houston's Astrodome (1968). The dome was actually four years old, when the Oilers moved into the stadium.
These four new stadiums combined to give the AFL the best new venues in all of pro football and made it pretty evident to anyone in the sport that the fledgling league wasn't going anywhere. It is one of the often-overlooked reasons for forcing the NFL to the table to negotiate a merger. With the exception of St. Louis, all NFL teams played in older stadiums.
A further examination of the numbers show how important new stadiums were to the growth of the AFL. Oakland averaged 32,215 in 1964, San Diego 39,615 in 1967 and Houston 40,500 in 1968.
Hunt later used these figures to impress upon Major League Soccer owners just how important the construction of soccer-specific stadiums was to the growth of that game in this country.
AFL HOME ATTENDANCE 1960-64
(Based on "announced" attendance, not "paid")
Team
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
Dallas/KC
171,500
123,000
155,409
150,567
126,881
Oakland
86,281
53,582
76,893
122,048
127,369
Denver
91,333
74,508
178,485
132,218
118,259
Buffalo
111,860
133,408
195,436
240,763
297,576
New York
114,628
106,619
36,161
103,550
298,972
Houston
140,136
195,024
200,285
163,372
141,777
Boston
118,260
115,610
150,626
169,870
199,652
LA/San Diego
109,656
195,014
153,908
191,491
169,656
TOTALS
994,654
996,765
1,147,203
1,273,879
1,480,142
Pct. Avg.
+5.52%
+15.1%
+11.0%
+16.2%
Avg. per game
16,869
17,799
20,486
22,748
26,431
Key Factors
(1)
(2) (3)
(4)
- Chargers move to San Diego
- Chiefs move to Kansas City
- Patriots move to Fenway Park
- Jets move to Shea Stadium
