In response to the comedic Times style section article last week, Richard Florida put together some research to get some actual analysis behind whether the "thinking class" has any actual connection to soccer and particularly MLS. http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2014/04/where-and-how-soccers-surge-america/8951/ The analysis is an extension of Florida's idea of the "creative class" which one may or may not totally subscribe to. But in the context of the "hipster's love soccer" argument, it's of particular interest. This is right in my academic wheelhouse, and I love it, there's some really juicy numbers here and I intend to read the full study this is based on. The method the researcher (Patrick Adler) used is particularly innovative, at least for me. Dubious chart design aside, the numbers suggest that there certainly is a correlation between the two: In contrast, the connection between attendance and numbers of immigrants is much less indicative: Which makes sense to me. While people often point to latino and other various immigrant populations to justify expansion and team success, many of our more popular teams, as well as soccer interest in general, is very white. To what extent is the skewing of these numbers by Cascadia indicative? or does it in fact distort the picture?
The range shown in that "creative class" graph for the big 4 + MLS is just over 1 percent. It seems unlikely that is statistically significant and, even if it is, it is so small that it is not practically significant. There is also substantial overlap between the cities for the different leagues, and attendance differences are often simply due to how large the stadium happens to be due to high numbers of sellouts. For example, last year 16 of the 32 NFL teams had attendance at 99% of capacity or higher, 16 of 30 NHL teams had 98% of capacity or higher, and 10 of 30 NBA teams had 98% capacity.
This table clearly lines up with how many teams each of these leagues have in NY and LA metro areas. NHL 5 MLB 4 NBA 4 MLS 3 (more like 2 with how pathetic Chivas USA is) NFL 2 Throw in Miami, another immigrant hub, and you have: NHL 6 of 23 (26%) MLB 5 of 29 (17%) NBA 5 of 29 (17%) MLS 3 of 16 (18%) NFL 3 of 32 (9%) NHL is definitely skewed because of that. There's no way in hell hockey is the most popular sport with immigrants to the US. MLS has a very big Latino/immigrant Latino fan base, as a percentage of gate, it probably performs the best of the 5 leagues.
The study isn't claiming to measure popularity with immigrants, it is comparing the popularity of the sport to the percent of immigrants in the city. It also isn't clear how Canadian teams are being treated. If they are included, that would heavily skew the NHL because a number of Canadian NHL cities have very large immigrant populations (and very high NHL attendances), even if the people going to games are mostly not immigrants. Which just shows how questionable it is to draw any conclusions from the study (or at least from the article).
I'm not sure what the point of the table is, but regardless it's a function of # of NY/LA teams in the league.
The table is of limited usefulness, for all the reasons you stated. The only claim it makes re: immigrants is: I think this is basically true. Soccer success may come from immigrant communities, but Cascadia, RSL and SKC show that is is totally feasible to attract "mainstream" culture to the game if you do it right.
Hmm, so now Seattle has invented mainstream - what will all the hipsters do? One aspect of the immigrant data that people forget is that not all immigration comes from soccer loving countries - many east, southeast and south Asian countries are not exactly soccer hotbeds.
South East Asia is definitely a hotbed, minus the Philippines. The passion for the game in South east asia is only matched by West Asia (Middle East) the way I see it. We're still talking about hundreds of millions of people. Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia all have soccer as their number 1. In East Asia soccer is incredibly popular too. Really its only South Asian countries (and by that we mean basically India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan) that has soccer as a distance second to cricket. But even in those countries its a very popular sport, especially Bangladesh. I'm curious to know about the Asian nations you think are not soccer loving nations. They don't have the history of the game like Europe and South America, but there is not a single country in all of Asia where soccer isn't the first or second most popular sport. Saying that they are not soccer loving countries is a bit like saying we don't like baseball because its not as big as football.
I think the assumption is that SE Asia isn't that interested in the sport because they suuuuuuck at it.
This article is misleading because it connects the immigrants' love of soccer to MLS. That's plain wrong. Many immigrants (from certain nations i.e. Latin American nations) probably support soccer more than all the aforementioned leagues - it's just that they don't support MLS. There is a difference. All you've got to do is spend some time in an ethnic enclave in New York and see soccer is popular, just not MLS. Plus, the residents of the urban metro are not defined. Are they recent residents? Have they been born in said Metro area? How long have they lived in the metro area? Soccer is not so much an "urban, creative" sport as it is an "upper middle class, suburban white" sport. A lot of these upper middle class suburban kids grow up and move to urban areas (mostly, New York's hipster scene and to lesser extents a few West Coast cities). Go into the inner cities, do you see many of those kids playing soccer?
FACT: Source - SKC Front Office. In 2013, the average age of a paying SKC Season Ticket Holder (not counting the luxury suites) was 26 years old. This is in a stadium that drew 105%+ of capacity for the season, and now has a Season Ticket Holder wait list of 7,000+ Note that 26 is also the average age of the SKC roster. There is some serious age/lifestage (not lifestyle, lifeSTAGE)/identification synergy in the stadium between fans & players - which in my opinion greatly contributes to the fantastic atmosphere. ANECDOTE 1: Last SKC home game an older longtime KC area couple (late 30's early 40's?) and their parents (70's ) attended their first MLS/Soccer game using tickets from the family of 4 STH who normally sit behind me. (I never met these people before). "We heard it was great, so we had to check it out". Other comments I heard: "wow - this stadium is nice", "this crowd is so young, not like a Royals game", "this is something KC can be proud of" The remarks are typical of new people that I often encounter in the seats around me. ANECDOTE 2: Co-worker in his early 50's wants my advice this week on how to get his family of 5 into their first SKC game. "I heard it was great, and the kids friends say we all need to experience it" The formula I've seen work here (and I've been a STH since 1996/MLS 1.0): (Rebrand+New Stadium + Passionate owners) + Focus on LOCAL + Youthful energy/Supporters (including Cauldron) = Great Atmosphere/Experience + showcasing pride of city -> (leads to) word of mouth -> (leads to) more fans trying the experience for first time and loving it -> (leads to) rapid growth of interest around the city. But numbers can be used (consciously or not) to falsely tease out causality where it didn't happen. And I would argue that is the case from this "doctoral student's" study....where there is plenty of motive to force fit some dramatic "aha" conclusion/story to justify the effort. "Hipster", "creative class", "immigrant" etc. Those are merely "after-the-fact" categorizations and may be great subjects for post-mortem academic/statistical debate - but in my experience here in KC, it had very little or nothing to do with cause and effect on soccer's rise in popularity here. The key is to have passionate owners, a great environment, and tapping into local pride/community. SKC owners focused on that and purposefully cast a broad net without going into "micro-targeting". The results speak for themselves. I see this formula repeated in POR, SEA, RSL (with prior owner) with success. And in areas like New England, Chicago, CUSA etc. I see this formula not followed and there is less success. Maybe it's just that simple.
This is what happens when you deal with averages. How does the author explain Kansas City then? A big NASCAR town, and a big soccer town. Where, incidentally, the world class soccer stadium is right next door to the world class NASCAR track, they even share the same parking lots! So is KC a knuckle dragging neanderthal unenlightened "working class" NASCAR loving town, or a "creative"/thinking class cool hipster town that loves soccer? I would argue that we are neither. We like sports, and when it's presented professionally, we attend them with passion. Period. Let's not break a community up (whether it's KC or the USA) into tired stereotypes that the red/blue politicians like to divide us on, and then force some conclusions that only serve to add more fuel to an unnecessary fire.
FYI, I simultaneously started a thread about the original NY Times article, which was technically not about the increasing cultural capital of soccer in America, but of the EPL. Talking soccer is becoming highbrow
Actually, the article shows that Immigrant numbers do NOT correlate with MLS attendance, which I think jives totally with what you are saying. People regularly suggest that high immigration means greater success for a local team, this shows that may not be true.
Not to mention the Islanders have terrible attendance. The Ducks and Devils are usually in the bottom third for attendance. While the Kings tend to sell out or come close to that in recent years, their arena has a lower capacity than many teams. This tends to put the Kings in the middle of the pack. So I'm not really sure how much NY and LA actually help that statistic. Based on the numbers, if I had to guess, I'd say the Canadian teams were included in the study.