Wednesday, April 30, 2003 | 9:52 a.m.
Gladiators' home attendance figures
Monday, Feb. 17 vs. Tampa Bay: 12,521 (actual)
Sunday, Mar. 2 vs. San Jose: 8,627 (actual)
Sunday, Mar. 16 vs. Chicago: 8,324 (paid)
Saturday, Mar. 29 vs. Georgia: 9,618 (paid)
Saturday, April 5 vs. Colorado: 9,080 (paid)
Sunday, April 27 vs. Detroit: 10,157 (paid)
Yank the German shepherds from behind the garlic fry window and pull back the search party from the bowels of the arena.
As anyone who attended Sunday's Gladiators game can tell you, 10,157 people did not come to the Thomas & Mack Center to witness it. Yet that number -- at least double or maybe triple the actual number of bodies in the seats -- is what the team announced as its crowd.
Gladiators general manager Mary Ellen Garling explained Tuesday that the attendance figures used by the team is based on paid tickets, and is not an accurate count of people in the arena.
"I'm not in any way, shape or form announcing that there were 10,000 people in the building," Garling said.
A crowd of 10,157 would be near capacity in the Gladiators' setup. With almost the entire upper deck curtained off and numerous pull-out and portable floor level seats cut off by the arena football configuration, the seating capacity of the arena drops significantly from the full sporting event total of 18,651.
What Garling is saying is that more than 10,000 tickets were purchased for the game, including bulk blocks by sponsors and ticket promotions, but she put the unused ticket amount closer to the 3,000 than the 6,500 in published reports. The Gladiators' season ticket base is about 1,500.
For the first two home games, the Gladiators reported the actual number of fans at the game as the attendance, with 12,521 at the home opener against Tampa Bay and 8,627 at the following game with San Jose. That did not sit well with league commissioner David Baker, who attended the Tampa Bay game.
Beginning this year, the Arena Football League operations committee mandated teams report their paid ticket count instead of their "drop count," or actual number of people through the door.
"The first two games of the season, I screwed up and got my head handed to me on a platter," Garling said.
In four home games of reporting paid ticket count, the Gladiators have averaged 9,295.
In past seasons, teams were allowed to report anything they wanted. Some used the drop count and others reported paid attendance. The ultra-inflated number of tickets out -- paid attendance plus comps -- also was used in some places. The wink-wink, nudge-nudge practice of eyeballing a crowd, jacking up the number and announcing a figure had its place as well.
"It was, needless to say, difficult to calculate a true average," Garling said.
Garling's goal is to fill the lower bowl of the arena which would create a better game atmosphere and sell the bulk of the team's more expensive seats. Yet the team did not fill its inexpensive $8 seats Sunday, and the Gladiators hope that a full offseason after a successful year will provide a more reliable base of season and corporate ticket sales.
"We knew this year, we weren't going to go out and beat people over the head for Gucci seats," Garling said.
Through their arrangement with the Thomas & Mack, the Gladiators must pay UNLV $3 for every ticket sold, regardless of the ticket price.
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