The important distinction isn't so much butts in seats, it's tickets sold vs tickets distributed. The Tampa Bay Lightening used to announce attendance of 17-20k every night but were being paid for like 12-15k. But they actually had 17-20k butts in seats.
Their strategy was to get more people out who would become future fans and season ticket holders, and I like that strategy. It's also worked for them. But many teams just cook their numbers by "distributing" tickets to announce higher attendance numbers.
Colorado was famous for this in the NHL. They had the longest (or one of) active sell out streak until media and fans called them out for blocks of hundreds of empty seats in multiple sections every night. They claimed tickets distributed were 100% of capacity, but once they knew the jig was up they suddenly announced much less and ended their sell out streak.
Many teams do this to an extent, though, and I believe the Flames do, as our sellout streak went on for years in the 2010's when any regular attendee would tell you it's not even close.
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