Not so fast. In Seattle 46,065 tickets were sold for the NY Henry's coming to town and 64,140 tickets were sold for San Jose Earthquakes coming to town. With that inarguable evidence it is obvious that the Earthquakes are a bigger draw than Henry.
Because people knew that when they bought their tickets. Henry being suspended would have only suppressed sales in the last 3 days prior to the Seattle game. Henry was red carded in the 93rd minute of a June 19 game that started at 7PM and the Seattle game was on June 23.
True, but I am just guessing that there were not a lot of people that bought the game for Henry. I think the Man U triple pack thing sold the vast majority of the extra tickets. I didn't see them market the red bull game saying there would be extra tickets at all, but they might have if Henry was coming. I just don't think we had an Henry effect.
You cant compare 34 games to 82 games. The NBA plays more than double the games as MLS and more than 1 or 2 times a week. It's more commonsense than numbers on dictating which sport is where in the US sports world. Though MLS is growing.
Sure you can. MLS has better per game attendance. The NBA has better total attendance. See? That wasn't hard.
The title only needs a few more words to be accurate, which it does state in the body of the article. Those words are "now No.3 average attended sport".
I'm pretty sure the average per game attendance revenue is still substantially higher in the NHL and NBA than in MLS. Duke went from free to charging $5 for soccer games a couple of years ago and attendance is off by maybe 60-70%. There's a break-even point when you factor in concessions, merchandise and other ancillary revenues (offer not valid at RFK Stadium), but higher ticket prices does tend to decrease actual attendance. Fortunately MLS payrolls are only a few million a team and not tens of millions per team, so the extra revenue is not as necessary. But I think some of these articles are making too big a deal over it. It's nice to notice, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Who said it wasn't? Who are you arguing against? Fact: NBA/NHL play twice as many games Fact: NBA/NHL have higher revenue per game Okay, but get this.... ALSO A FACT: MLS has higher average attendance than NBA/NHL See the key is (this is gonna blow your mind) more than one statement can be true... at the same time!
Here's another fact. The CFL has higher average attendance and better ratings than MLS. Wake me when it beats that.
It's also important to remember, and this was mentioned earlier in the thread: the NBA and NHL are often playing to capacity crowds, so their attendance may be artificially low. Still though, it's encouraging for the long term finances of the MLS.
I'm sure the "bring up total attendance figures when people are talking about average attendance" crowd will step in and inform you that MLS gets about 5.5 million fans whereas CFL gets 2 million... guys where are you??
9 game schedule vs 17 game schedule + NCC In Toronto TFC>Argos In MTL Impact >Als next year 20 000 per mls game is about 40 000 per cfl game. als stadium seats 25k. team (franchise) values and revenue per year are higher for the canadian mls teams than cfl teams. avg fan age. mls is younger. participation - soccer wins easily national team - soccer wins again womens team - yep, a bunch of w-league teams and the national team is popular. hows womens gridiron doing? lfl scandal. total attendance in cdn mls cities. - mls will win again.
I found a used version of the textbook "Sport Economics" which Sunil Gulat uses in his infamous sports economic course. But anywho, the term for that is price elasticity of demand. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity_of_demand#Determinants It's interesting reading, anyone who posts in this sort of thread would do themselves a favor and perusing through a copy. It of course, almost totally ignores MLS and world soccer for any examples. But most of it isn't sport dependent and applies to any sport setting.
No one who thinks carefully about all this will jump to conclusions. However, we do want the casual, soccer-ignorant sports fan to make that jump. That's why getting a lot of extreme articles that make a big deal out of all this is a good thing. I want crazy stuff like the following to make their way into mainstream news sources: MLS kicks NBA into fourth place in attendance Wake Up: NBA Is Running Out Of Time To Sustain Its Popularity NBA booted as third-ranked United States sport by….MLS?
Do we? People usually catch on to over-reaching and false advertising. I don't want people to get the wrong impression.
You are right. We need to let the Jim Rome's of the continue to publish the real truth with no counter arguments.
Where is the lie in stating that MLS has a higher average attendance than the NHL or NBA? Every single article that mentions this fact also rightly mentions number of games difference, revenue diferences and tv ratings differences to give a balanced picture. I don't see where the lies are that you are referring to.
A curiousity question to those of you who follow MLS attendance closely: which teams BS about their attendance #s? Off the top of my head the stadiums that seem to have a lot of empty seats on TV but report higher sounding figures seem to be: Dallas NE Colorado? Columbus DC? (hard to tell as the stadium is so big)