Not a bad global position for MLS attendance, which has increased nearly 40% in the last 10 years. pic.twitter.com/ND3MR0iIV5— Subscribe to GrantWahl.com (@GrantWahl) October 23, 2016
The final numbers for the MLS season: MLS broke its record for average attendance for the third year in a row, finishing with an average of 21,690. It also set a record for most fans in a single day with 283,807 fans on Decision Day. Highest Average Attendance: ATT. COUNTRY, LEAGUE (YEAR) 43,300 (1) Germany, Bundesliga (2015-16) 36,452 (2) England, Premier League (2015-16) 28,168 (3) Spain, La Liga (2015-16) 27.059 (4) *Mexico, Liga MX (2016 Apertura) 24,245 (5) *China, Super League (2016) 22,644 (6) Italy, Serie A (2015-16) 21,690 (7) Major League Soccer (2016) 21,000 (8) Argentina, Primera Division (2016, estimate) 20,976 (9) France, Ligue (2015-16) 19,412 (10) Netherlands, Eredivisie (2015-16) *Season in progress. Source: http://www.worldfootball.net/attendance http://www.socceramerica.com/article/70872/crowd-count-mls-breaks-attendance-marks.html
The steady decline of Serie A has been insane. Shooting for the #4-5 spot is realistic if the teams with smaller stadiums upgrade capacity to a minimum of 21k and find a way to fill it regularly. The teams straggling at the gate like Chicago, Colorado and Dallas are all solid soccer markets that haven't lived up to their potential as MLS markets, so there's definitely room for growth.
Lots of marketing speak and somewhat rehashed stats, but useful: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markjbu...mong-top-u-s-pro-sports-leagues/#32398d156778 MLS Records Banner Year In 2016, Cements Position Among Top U.S. Pro Sports Leagues Merchandise sales up 21%, MLS sponsors total 20
So can ESPN and the like stop using the old line of "the 4 major sports in North America." If anything, the most dominant sport on the planet should always be listed some way when saying "major sports". But if they are talking leagues and records for the pro sports then recall that some cities go decades without a team, or have teams move and then a team returns so their records are all over the place in time. MLS is now 21 seasons in a row. Started in 1996 after the NASL starting in the early 70's and went away in 1985. Then there is the annual Lamar Hunt Open Cup that is over 100 years in sporting tradition here in our U.S. sports culture. So basically, many U.S. and Canadian cities have some soccer winner via the Cup competitions and or league winner via NASL and MLS stretching back to win the NFL and AFL had their merger in 1970. Combine this mindset and the latest numbers released for MLS on global positioning for average attendance, yeah, MLS and it's pro soccer records can be spoken of with pride as part of "the 5 major sports in North America" from this season on. Please take notice and thank you ESPN and the like.
Shouldn't season attendance totals include the upcoming playoff games? Particularly when comparing to other world soccer leagues that don't have postseason playoffs to decide their champion. This is when the most crucial (and presumably higher attended) games are played in MLS, in contrast to those crucial games being played during the regular season in Europe. I guess the same could be said about Liga MX.
Last year's MLS average attendance was 21,574 for the regular season (340 games) and 22,841 for the playoffs (17 games). The playoff average was 5.9 percent higher.
The term "four major North American sports" is also misleading because it implies hockey is on a tier above soccer, which isn't the case when you compare the TV ratings for ALL soccer competitions to the NHL and not just MLS. I can understand omitting MLS because the league hasn't been around 50-100+ years to lend historical context to cross-sport comparisons of records/accomplishments. It will likely take another generation of MLS entrenching itself in our sporting culture before that odious term expands to "big five" (or disappears altogether due to the next generation of sports media realizing how outdated and arbitrary that phrase is). However, I wish the media would stop conflating the phrase "four major SPORTS" with "four major LEAGUES" as if they're interchangeable. A strong case can be made that soccer is already ahead of hockey in the US, even if MLS hasn't surpassed the NHL. The problem is, curmudgeons who still run our sports media are so stuck inside their North American bubble that they probably think any match not played on US/Canadian soil and/or aired on an English-language network "doesn't count" when gauging soccer's popularity in this country. I personally think that once MLS crosses the billon-dollar annual revenue mark and cracks the top 5 globally in average attendance (both of which are possible when the league gets to 26-28 teams and has its next TV deal squared away), it will get tougher and tougher to continue to toss the term "big four" around.
Mike Francesa of New York City's WFAN not knowing that the area had two MLS clubs shows MLS has a long way to go. I didn't watch the video of Francesa's ignorance, but it was posted on BigSoccer somewhere if you want to look for it. Even 20 years from now I think MLS will get a tiny amount of attention on sports talk radio compared to MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL. Among fans in the United States and Canada, I think MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL will have all their teams have more fans than any foreign professional team in those sports (I'm excluding the NCAA). If you looked at the 20 to 30 most popular soccer clubs among people in the United States and Canada, how many countries would have at least 1 of those clubs? My guess is that Francesa and many other people in the media wouldn't care about MLS regardless of whether it ranked 100th or 5th "globally in average attendance" to use your words. I'm not trying to criticize MLS or say it doesn't deserve attention. I just think there's a long way to go.
some folks go to great lengths to be so woefully ignorant in regards to soccer or MLS. It's quite shameful. i can't imagine folks in MLB were so bitter toward the expansion and growth of the NBA in the 60s/70s
sports radio is a different beast because it connects to a much older audience and mostly different demographic than soccer. However even 10 years ago it was hard to find sports news let alone media in general who picked up soccer. But that the funny this about growing support and money. They change people's minds! So back to your question: will talk radio die before soccer catches on? well I don't know. Unless of course you include podcasts and youtube videos.
Every once and a while I hear the phrase "three major sports." If hockey isn't 100% automatic for being included I fear soccer still has a long way to go. But fortunately I've also seen evidence that MLS is slowly forcing itself in the conversation. I recall a Time magazine sports blurb from a few months back that included MLS alongside the other big American leagues. And just the other week I was reading an article in the local paper about back to back champions in major American sports, and the Galaxy were included.
We, us on BigSoccer, over the years have been able to witness this evolve over the many years our website has been going. There used to be the old guard of the Greatest Generation sports media and journalists still in the lead positions at their stations and presses. They did not hate on soccer as much as just flat out ignore it for many reasons. Mostly in that there was no league or cross country college soccer scene to cover. But they eventually retired. Then there are the Baby Boomer era sports jockeys and their absolute disdain for association football on all fronts. Using their odd logic to help sooth their fear of the most dominate sport on our planet like soccer is a communist sport made outside our nation, or it's boring or it needs to be Americanized or it's just for pu$$ies so no need to even bother. These myths got fed to the larger public over the recent decades until they grew into what many thought of when they heard soccer mentioned on radio or TV. These are the curmudgeons that you correctly identified Tom. Some have given up on their misconceptions of the beautiful game but sadly many others just fall back to that old line of "I just don't get it" when they have to talk soccer. They only thing worse then the older generations that are paid to cover sports and still hold to these myths are Gen X media men like Max Kellerman that still look down their nose at soccer and are still proud to declare they "don't get soccer" to this very day in 2016. You're Gen X amigo, c'mon man! I agree. Good stuff Tom. Baby Boomer NYC media type that goes long on intentionally ignoring the most dominate sport on the planet. Good on ya Mike! Correct. In our modern tech heavy world, more so with media and journalists of other stripes going long on the global community our world has become, there are the U.S. and Canuck sports folks that just work hard at staying ignorant of the beautiful game.
But even a later kickoff in New York might not have made a difference, anyway: Premier League telecasts in the US on the NBC Sports Network are down some 17% from a similar point last year. It is a surprising number, especially since the NBC Sports Group reported in May that Premier League telecasts had captured a record number of viewers for the third straight season. New fans were attracted by the tradition and pageantry of English football, not to mention that matches are decided in about two-thirds the time of an advertisement-splotched NFL game. https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/nov/08/premier-league-viewing-figures-usa-decline
An issue here is MLS counts tickets handed out, not scanned, which is fine if that's how they want to do it(calling half to 3/4 full stadiums as sellouts) but comparisons to other leagues which count tickets scanned is then ridiculous.
Ultimately, the Baby Boomers will die off and the younger generations will cover soccer like a normal sport, instead of it being treated like a leper colony.
And if I had to put money on it, it would be more likely that they went with Top 3 over going top 5, IMO.
The thing is, the term doesn't really make that much sense anymore. It was an artifact of the era of Network TV dominance, where there was this big dividing line between the sports with enough mainstream appeal to get Network time and coverage, and those without enough. Nowadays, there's a whole bunch of middle ground between the biggest sports and the 'niche sports.'
I just chuckle every time someone that gets paid to cover sports says "niche sport" when describing the most dominant sport on the planet.
We'll Never Die, We'll Never Die, We'll Never Die, We'll Never Die, Boomers Will Never Die, We'll Keep The Old Farts Flying High...
Volleyball is #2 no? They are definitely niche in the USA. I guess it depends on how you define it, soccer as #1 is undisputable and by world standards, American football is niche (a 12 billion per year revenue niche sport) http://www.top10zen.com/most-popular-sports-1584?page=5 http://www.totalsportek.com/most-popular-sports/ Edit: I guess I was wrong, Cricket is debatable the #2 sport.
A Deloitte UK study on the feasibility of pro/rel in the US yields some interesting data: https://www.pastemagazine.com/artic...e-study-commissioned-by-an-nasl-team-has.html If they only used UK staff to do it, I think they missed an opportunity to get a better US perspective on the sport here.
yeah but isn't cricket literally only sports obsessed by Indians and Pakistanis? played in England/Caribbean and Down Under but I believe it's only in South Asia where it's bigger then GOD.
The New York TV market has 16,278,300 people ages 12+. That's a little over 10 times the 1,622,600 people ages 12+ in the Columbus TV market, which is the smallest market in MLS (I didn't check the Canadian clubs, but I'm guessing they all have more than 1,622,600 people including suburbs). AFC Bournemouth is in the Premier League, and Wikipedia says that as of 2011, Bournemouth had 183,491 people, compared to an estimated 8,538,689 people in Greater London in 2014. That's 46.5 times as much as Bournemouth has. London has five Premier League clubs, but even if you divide the ratio by 5, London has 9.3 times the amount of people per Premier League club. I'm ignoring lower level clubs to be simple. Of course the Premier League doesn't have a problem with some clubs having many more fans and a much higher payroll than others. It is rare for an American TV market to have multiple teams in the NFL, NBA, MLS, NHL, or MLB. The populations I gave for Europe include everybody, so it's not an even comparison with the American populations. Wikipedia says the Netherlands has a little over 17,000,000 people, which is less than for the New York TV market adding in people younger than 12. I'm guessing that if people in the Netherlands were told that the New York TV market had more people than the Netherlands but only has 11 of the 142 (7.7 percent) teams in the NFL, NBA, MLS, NHL, and MLB, the people in the Netherlands would be surprised. The difference in market sizes could matter more in the United States than in Europe because American teams get money from regional sports networks, which obviously pay more to teams with more viewers. England doesn't have regional sports networks, and I don't know if any top leagues are in countries with regional sports networks. If a league has all its games on national channels and each team gets the same amount of TV revenue, it decreases the advantage of being in a big market. The NFL has all its games on national channels and has a salary cap.