When I lived in Mexico, my town was about 100K or less, we had a triving municipal league, they had the results in the news paper every week, we had multiple divisions and pro/rel. Here in Chicago the Chicago FIRE bearly gets a blip in the newspapers, College Soccer, ha, good luck finding that on the Tribune/Herald. High School Tackle Football is more popular than MLS in Chicago.
This is very interesting and makes sense, especially when fantasizing about potential promo/releg in the future of U.S. soccer.
well then you mean domestic league soccer is not that popular. That's different than saying soccer is not that popular in the US. The USNT is the most popular national team in the country. Just look at the World Cup ratings. Soccer has become the most popular national sport in the country. NBA world championships? Nobody cares. Baseball world championships? Nobody cares. its true that the soccer fan in the US has not accepted MLS. This is for a number of reasons. Some feel the league is too Americanized. Some think the play on the field isn't very good (I disagree, I think the top MLS teams would do quite well in the English Championship division). but a blanket statement that soccer is not popular in the US is just wrong.
fans of NASL. Do you think NASL could ever become stable enough where they could implement pro/rel between MLS and NASL. Would you want your club to be promoted or would you not want to be in a pro/rel system
You're using national teams as a measure of how popular soccer is in the US compared to other sports?
Unless they change the entire financial system, franchise system, expansion fees, minimum standards, and get the agreement of all the current MLS owners, pro/rel between MLS and lower leagues will NEVER happen. Stability is irrelevant when the league setup is so fundamentally different. However, if NASL owners come up with the funds, have a SSS in place, and meet all the other requirements, they can certainly buy a franchise. Much like Portland, Montreal and Vancouver have done.
You are kind of right, I meant to say Soccer as an spectator sport is not very popular in the USA, outside the National team competitions, like figure skating, is not popular until the winter Olympics come along. Imagine an american-football World cup (if other countries played Tackle football profecionally).
its as good a measure as any. there's a difference between a sports popularity and a leagues popularity.
Funny how the Mexican national team sells out everywhere they play in the United States and that they play more exhibition games in the United States than in Mexico. But then again, you're just really used to being wrong on these forums.
Disagree. Yes, most of the stadiums are bigger than the arenas NBA teams play in, but a number of MLS teams had a higher average attendance than their NBA counterparts in the same city, including the Galaxy outdrawing both the Lakers and Clippers. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304741404575564463288685240.html If MLS keeps up this progress and continues to average higher attendances than the NBA and NHL, I'm not sure you can say that soccer as a spectator sport in the country is unpopular.
In my original post, i compared it to Mexico in popularity, of course, soccer was pretty much the only show in town. We do not have this in Chicago, our local league is disorganized and broken down into ethnic leagues. The top league is the Metro league dominated by European immigrants. http://www.mslchicago.us/ Then there is Classa, A Latino league, and a small African league (I have been told). P.S. By average, NASCAR is the biggest league in the USA correct? http://www.jayski.com/pages/tracks-seating.htm
There is a huge difference between MLS/NASL/USL PRO being popular in the US and soccer as a sport being popular. The various pro soccer leagues in the US aren't the #1 leagues for their sport like the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. Also, a lot of people that are soccer fans in the US are fans of the sport from their country of origin and may follow that NT and league more than the USMNT and the leagues based here in the US. Look at how many WC2010 tickets were sold in the US. Look at the WC TV ratings in the US. Look at the ratings the EPL gets on ESPN. MLS and the other leagues may not be hugely popular. But, that doesn't mean that the sport itself isn't popular.
And this is the Issue, we can hate as much as we want on MLS, but the lower divisions do the same shit. With the shit that went on between NASL owners and the Owners of USL, do we really think that they will set their egos aside and negotiate a pro/rel deal? Hell no, that kills the golden goose in American Soccer. I think your numbers are high, but the point is what matters, D-2 and D-3 both have expansion fees.
The USL Pro expansion fee is no were near $750000 now. Im hearing its closer to $100K but negotiable depending on weather a club has paid PDL fee, stadium situation, and other things. MLS fee is well documented and every report that I have heard about NASL expansion fees put it in at 7 figures, inline with the numbers you have.
I'd like to see some type of NASL-2 with promotion to NASL-1, but only because it would be cool to see, not because it is particularly needed.
How sad that any discussion of pro/rel usually degenerates very quickly into abuse and sarcasm and name calling ["euro snobs"] by those who hate pro/rel. That's why I rarely participate in this forum. No, pro/rel isn't practical now, and may never be. But it is a worthwhile goal. Why do I favor it? Because I do. Go ahead, flame away. It's unfortunate that even though we are all soccer fans, we can't discuss our beloved sport with anything resembling civility.
No, because it only has one event a week for the Sprint Cup throughout its season, in comparison with eight games for MLS a full match-day, 16 games for the NFL's full weekends and even more for MLB, NHL and NBA. To compare NASCAR and MLS, though. NASCAR certainly gets big crowds, over 100,000 at many locations. However, if you take the average MLS attendance, 16,667 last season, and multiply that by eight games, which would have been a full match-day for the 2010 season, you have over 130,000 people attending MLS games on an average weekend. If you do the same thing for the NFL, which averaged well over 60,000 for this just completed regular season, and you have on average almost a million fans at an NFL game on a full match-weekend.
But to your original point, if NASCAR had an event in LA, it would out draw all other sports for that week. But if we go by weekly totals, then Baseball kicks ass in most cities, since they play about 3-4 games per week, in Chicago that can be 30-40K per game, for about 100+ per week/per team. The bulls is kind of the same, 2-3 games per week, so total of 35-50K per week. I would think Toronto may be the only city with a higher total weekly attendance than their NBA team
