It also emerged yesterday the Breakers basketball team is unlikely to return for another game in the city with fewer than half the tickets sold for tomorrow night's pre-season game.
The third Southern Showdown event was held at the Edgar Centre on Saturday and promotor Doug Kamo said there had been a steady decline in crowd numbers.
In 2012, a crowd of 1100 went to the inaugural show. That dropped to 800 last year and a crowd of about 650 attended on Saturday night.
He said last Saturday night's event ran at a yet-to-be calculated loss.
Kamo said he was undecided whether he would come back and do another Southern Showdown next year in Dunedin.
Compared with other cities, Dunedin was a tough sell.
''You look at Invercargill and the Fight for Life down there and they get up to 2500. In Queenstown it is sold out in the first week. Christchurch has been going on for seven years and going well. Here we are struggling,'' he said.
''We are looking at putting on another couple of events in Dunedin and this sort of turnout makes me question whether we should.''
Kamo promoted the Mama Mia musical in Dunedin this year and it attracted 11,500 punters.
''I was happy with that but then in Invercargill you can get 10,500 and that is a city half the size of Dunedin.''
Kamo said there were many different reasons for the low turnouts at events but one of the main ones was apathy.
''People will spend more than $500 to go to Auckland for a show yet they won't support events here. It is a struggle. There is a lot of apathy across all the events.
''People want an awful lot for very little. I don't think people realise how tough it is to put on a show and make money. You can only sell so many ringside tables. People need to look at the price and understand what they are getting for that. It is difficult for us to make money.
''We are constantly questioned here about the ticket price yet you go to somewhere like Queenstown and no-one questions it. There seems to be a high expectation in Dunedin for what you get for your money.
''The expectation of what they are going to get is a lot higher than what they are prepared to pay.''
He acknowledged there had been some issues around the showdown event in the opening years but those had been sorted out.
He said it was too soon to decide whether he would bring back the event next year as the books had to be completed but he had a fair idea and it was ''not flash''.
As a Dunedin-based promoter, he was extremely disappointed he might not be able to stage events in the city.
The Breakers are set to play the Sydney Kings at the Edgar Centre, which has a capacity of 2900, and so far just under 1300 tickets had been sold.
Edgar Centre manager Blair Crawford said Promo Sports, the promoter behind the Breakers pre-season tour, was extremely disappointed with sales and was unlikely to bring the team back.
The Auckland-based team played to a near full house in 2012, but interest had been slow this year.
Crawford said he encouraged the promoter to come back but he had to resort to discounting tickets to increase sales and cut his losses. A special deal - $10 for a child and $20 for an adult - was still running.
Otago Rugby Football Union general manager Richard Kinley said crowds to ITM Cup games at Forsyth Barr Stadium were about what was expected. Crowds had been below 5000 for all games.
A poor draw had not helped with games scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday nights.
The union did not budget for big crowds, so if fewer people than expected turned up it did not put a big dent in the union's budget.
