Originally Posted by
Khorasaurus
Another point: While the Palace is successful financially, the Pistons were 28th [[third from last) in the NBA in attendance last year, ahead of just Sacramento and New Orleans. They were dead last in attendance as a percentage of capacity, with just 67% of seats sold.
Now, a large part of that is because the team sucks. But people will go see a bad team if they can make a fun evening out of it. They won't go see a bad team if the rest of their evening is spent in traffic trying to get out of a parking lot.
Edit: By contrast, the Wings were third in the NHL in attendance despite having one of their worst seasons in decades [[albeit better than the Pistons). They drew about 6,000 fans more per game than the Pistons did this year. And that's playing in JLA, which is objectively a dump.