Louisville, THANK YOU! pic.twitter.com/icmlKwjAzy— Louisville City FC (@loucityfc) July 16, 2017 Record for Louisville hosting Cincinnati yesterday. Big showing for home crowd and traveling crowd and great for the league.
FC Cincinnati now flirting with possibly 20,000+ average for the season. I think they can pull it off assuming don't have terrible weather rest of the year.
https://www.socceramerica.com/article/74651/crowd-count-usl-tops-15-million-mark.html?edition=17672 The USL passed the 1.5 million mark in attendance as Wednesday's five games drew an average of more than 9,700 fans. FC Cincinnati's crowd of 20,058 at Nippert Stadium for its 3-1 win over Ottawa was higher than the crowds for four MLS games.
I wonder if USL will overtake NASL in attendance by the end of the season. The gap has been narrowing for quite some time.
If every team holds its current average the rest of the way, the NASL will finish at 4,441 announced and the USL at 4,277. (That's with one data point - Rochester's last home game - still out.) But USL's independents are at 5,713 at the moment (helped by Cincinnati and Sacramento, who have no equivalents in the NASL.)
Right now Cincinnati expects in excess of 20,000 for Pittsburgh match and possibly 30,000 for New York match. We should settle our average around 20,000-21,000 range. Not sure how much that affects the league number.
*FC Cincinnati’s crowd of 25,308 on August 5 against Orlando was not a DII record, despite what you may have heard. The Seattle Sounders’ crowd of 25,505 on July 28, 20028 is still the largest regular-season Division II crowd ever. It is, obviously, a USL record Saw this and realized Saturday also apparently marks a new D2 record over all.
Yes, that is a new D2 (standalone) record. Should have been more clear. Minnesota United announced 34,047 for a doubleheader in 2014 with Olympiakos against Man City in the other game on August 2, 2014 that remains the official record. If we are going to be consistent on such things, that's the record, even though no one believes that many stuck around for the United match.
Looking ahead to 2018 a little. I read that Sounders 2 will move to Tacoma and that perhaps another "2" is going to Omaha? Such moves should help attendance average. Besides expansion, any other attendance thoughts heading into 2018?
1. Can increases in 2017 be sustained in 2018? 2. How will expansion sides affect numbers? 3. Will more NASL sides move over to USL? 4. Will MLS expansion announcement help/hurt USL sides in contention? I do think the handling of "2/B" sides will be huge for the USL's floor of attendance. I could see a 1000 or so increase in numbers for many of those teams if they are marketed in their new cities. Montreal shedding its "2" team in favor of NASL to USL Ottawa helped numbers.
Half the teams in the league have completed their home schedules. Here is the year-over-year percentage increase in average announced attendance for those clubs. RGV +254% Orange County +150% Harrisburg +57% Cincinnati +23% Richmond +17% Portland +9% Col.Springs +8% NYRB II +7% Sacramento +0.5% Tampa Bay +0.3% LA Galaxy II +0.3% Ottawa -1% Saint Louis -7% Charleston -12% Seattle 2 -26% As for 2018, RGV isn't going to see another 254% increase, nor is Orange County likely to see a 150% increase again. Even if Seattle moves somewhere and "is marketed," their share of what will likely be a 544-game (or so) universe within the league can't move the needle much by itself (only maybe 33 people per game throughout the league).
You'd also hope that getting rid of Vancouver while adding Nashville, Fresno, Vegas will help the "average" as well. As long as more expansion teams pull in more than the average than not, you hope things trend the right direction ... just likely not as fast due to volume issues.