Yes, they did have a couple of nice games! Still wasn't any better than FTL the year before or Silverbacks and NC in '14. The quarterfinals seems to be the "line in the sand" for MLS clubs. No club outside of MLS has made the semis since 2011. Even though they had entry to the USOC which directly awards a birth into said competition. But you know, gotta put action into your team to make that happen ... That, we agree on. You do realize that that exact example (adult leagues all over the place have pro/rel so no people aren't foreign to the concept here in America) has been used several times, right? Funny, because you literally asked for what percentage I thought it was contributing ...
Mad March? No, It's Momentous March if planned changes go through Michael Lynch March 1, 2019 — 7.17pm
People who play adult soccer and some die-hard soccer fans < The huge number of people you have to get to buy tickets. That's key. You or I might still be willing to pay to watch our relegated team (even then I'm not paying the same amount) but Joe and Karen sports fan probably doesn't know what pro/rel is and won't be willing to see their teams. Relegated teams in England see a 20% drop in attendance. I'd imagine in the US a 50% drop is not out of the question.
Just curious why? This isn't meant as some gotcha genuinely interested. My counter would be American's do watch lower division sports in massive numbers we just call it college sports. Even within college sports you see good crowds and rabbid following for midmajor programs. Kind of a side point is I'd love to see how much of a link there is between attendance and on field success in MLS. My Hypothethis is there is NOT as much a link between the two as there is in other leagues. But would be interesting to see either way.
I think the answer is "It depends on your time frame". If you are looking within a single season, the link is pretty tenuous. If you look between one season and the next, the link is a little less tenuous. However, the big link comes across multiple seasons. If a team does poorly year after year after year, then their attendance is going to drop (Chicago, Philadelphia, Colorado, etc), while the opposite is also true (Sporting KC, FCD, etc). I think the biggest driver isn't necessarily whether a team isn't doing well, its whether or not the FO seems to be trying or not. The Chicago Fire are perennially bad and the fans are turning against them because it just doesn't seem like the FO is even trying. RSL has been bad for the last 4 years and while their attendance has been dropping, it's still pretty good because the FO seems like they are trying to get better, they just aren't very good at it.
It seems slightly more complicated than that, though. NYRB has been pretty successful and their FO seems to be 'trying', yet their attendance is less than San Jose and roughly equal to New England. Orlando has shown neither, yet they ranked 6th in attendance last season (we'll see if that continues, though). What I think is really unclear is whether or not the truism of "attendance will drop commensurate with division" would actually hold. Nobody is watching MLS on TV to speak of, so the demand for soccer is what shows up at the gate. Would that change tremendously if the opponent was from Indianapolis rather than Minneapolis? Would Bridgeview, Houston, and Frisco really draw less than they do now? I honestly do not know the answer to these, but I really don't know that our traditional assumptions really apply to soccer in the U.S.
Dunno if this is true, but if so that's not necessarily a bad thing. It means that the crowd shows up, while they have no clue or feelings about the opponent. Seems to me perfect in case of relegation.
I'd have ask why we think the attendance wouldn't behave the same? We already see a similar proportion between D1 & D2 as we do in other nations. We also see similar increases when a team moves from D2 to D1. It's not about where the opponent is from, it's about the perceived level of play. USL is still markedly weaker than MLS. I see little reason to suspect that US teams would retain support more effectively than elsewhere. Probably less as the more casual fan in a decent sized market has other options.
It’s definitely complicated.. However, a couple of things to consider here. 1. San Jose was still benefitting from their new stadium bump and they rode Wondo’s drive for the scoring record hard last year. However, this season they dropped to 16k in the 2nd home game. Weather reportedly played a factor in that drop, so we’ll see if that continues going forward, but the fact that it was a factor and it wasn’t an issue in prior seasons should be cause for concern now that the new stadium bump has worn off. 2. Despite Kraft’s inattention, New England should be an attendance leader. Back when the league first started, New England was one of the league leaders in attendance and even at their worst, they still only dropped down to 12k or so. Average 18k could just represent New England’s floor. 3. New York is interesting.. Prior to moving into Red Bull Arena, neither the Metros, nor Red Bull could be accused of trying. Red Bull in particular didn’t give a crap from the time they bought the club until they moved into RBA.. There is also the whole rebrand that drove a lot of fans away. There is also the transition from a high spending club, to a club that middle spending club. After the move to RBA, Red Bull splashed A LOT of money on not just DPs, but recognizable DPs. Now they don’t have a recognizable DP. There’s also the arrival of NYCFC and, of course, marketing themselves as a NY club, while being located in NJ. NYRB is also one of the bigger abusers of distributed ticket count vs actual attendance account. I think we can all remember games where the Red Bulls claimed a sellout or near sellout, but the Red Bulls symbol in the seats was clearly visible. Three concepts for you to consider here.. “Expansion franchise”, “new stadium bump”, and “Kaka”. This is only Orlando’s fifth season in the league and fans general give teams a 3-4 season grace period. Orlando also didn’t open their SSS until 2017, so in some ways, their grace period got restarted as a result. Kaka was the highest paid DP in the league and that masked a lot of issues with the club and it wasn’t until he wasn’t replaced that the realization sank in that the club wasn’t going to be a big spender.. We also can’t forget that Orlando had the appearance of trying.. They are already on their third head coach, after all. So, realistically, it wasn’t until the start of last season that people even realized they weren’t really trying and that was only after they lost Kaka and Larin and replaced them with Justin Meram. I think we can draw some pretty good conclusions from the clubs that moved to MLS from the lower divisions. They all experienced significant bumps in popularity when they moved up. While we certainly can’t say how big if a drop there would be, I think the increase in popularity of the teams in the move up can be used to draw some conclusions about what would happen if the teams moved back down.
So I have always taken this as conventional wisdom and never bothered to question it, but tonight I decided to investigate this a bit. Using English clubs' attendances between promotion and relegation you see fairly wild inconsistencies. Regardless of which division they're in, you basically see NO variation in attendance for Aston Villa, Norwich, West Brom, West Ham, and Birmingham City. You get wild variance for QPR, Hull City, and Fulham, but you also see this for these teams from year to year within the Championship. Teams that had not been in the Premier League for some time definitely saw a boost in attendance at promotion that the more yo-yo clubs don't seem to see: Swansea, Leicester, Cardiff, and Wolves (although Wolves saw a bigger year on year increase their promotion year). Like the first group, Bournemouth saw no change in attendance, but for entirely different reasons. Of the latter group, Swansea and Leicester had fairly consistent attendances in the Championship, and Swansea has really seen no drop to speak of this season. Cardiff is historically more like QPR. It's interesting to wonder if attendance has more to do with the club than division: that is to say, a club's draw is largely independent of their current division, but a second division team naturally finds itself in the second division. I realize that kind of comes across as stoner logic, but since there doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern to support the prevailing assumption, it's an attempt to explain the evidence.
Yup. It's something the anti Pro/Rel crowd (mainly Yanks) donot get. Divisions are merely one continuous league chopped in orderly parts of plus/minus 18 clubs for schedule reasons. So clubs that yoyo the treshold simply are where they should be and their fans know that. When clubs that normally donot get high up the table suddenly have a long streak of grabbing points, the bandwagon effect is likely. That happens within the divisions themselves like the EPL or Championship and of course with unexpected promotions. Edit: It also is a testament against the closed system. Clubs in the European situation are in the table partly as a result of the economic/population situation of their location. When things in that respect change it can impact your standing as a club in positive or negative ways. So clubs can rise or fall in that continuous table as an adaption to the circumstances. This is also an argument against the level playing field systems. They're artificial. It's like redistributing income from a supermarket in London to a small supermarket in a village in the countryside. What the closed system does is moving clubs from a declining economic place to the most viable economic site. I prefer the open system also because of that. Clubs that rise have a binding with the location, not an owner going after where the money now is.
The absolute top end supported soccer pyramid in the world sees 20+% drops in attendance upon relegation from the top tier (sometimes it takes a season). This is in the unquestioned and far top end outlier in the world football. It is perfectly rational to think that here in America a club would see significantly more than that fall off upon relegation from MLS to USL. I don't feel your counter applies, or would make the argument you want it too because college sports = the cultural tie/thinking that soccer sees around the world. We have actual minor league/lower divisions in our sports here that we can point too. College sports and the fervor surrounding them isn't at all the same as professional sports. RSL pulled 14K for the 1st leg of their semi-final against SKC last year. What exactly do you think they're going to pull when El Paso comes calling, or New Mexico, or RGV ? ? ? If they pulled 50% of that semi-final playoff, that'd be a GREAT avg attendance for a D2 club at 7K. It'd still be a 62% drop from their 2018 avg att. The BEST att in MiLB last season was 8980, which would be still be a 28% drop from CLB's MLS worst 12447. Just my opinion on it, but I do feel that parity measures have helped mitigate this. Many MLS teams play USOC matches at secondary venues ... The HOT NEW TICKET IN TOWN last year, LAFC, only drew 8750 for their quarterfinal against Sacreamento (regional team, etc etc). Chicago drew 3.3K respectively for WED night USOC quarterfinal matches against the best USL team the last two years (Louisville). The BEST USL team in the quarters of a trophy/CCL berth producing tourney couldn't get 4K to a mid week game ... I don't see too many going out to see Hartford come to town. There absolutely IS a MAJOR/everything else divide in how sports is viewed here. Actually, the soccer fans DO get it, thank you. What you and many in the pro/rel camp don't get about US (and we ain't all Yanks) is that our sporting culture recognizes the divide at each section of that pyramid. The top "orderly part" IS better than and contains MUCH better talent, clubs than the "2nd best orderly part" ... that's a fact. Stating that DOES NOT go against what you've stated here, call you incorrect, or try to make the connected pyramid something else. It is revealing something about OUR sporting culture and perhaps something that many of you simply don't recognize, or think about due to how ingrained the process is for y'all. The fact that all of the divisions are "connected" doesn't make the TOP division any less significantly better than the 2nd, or magnitudes better than the 3rd etc.
When USOC games are between two MLS teams the attendance is no better, so I'm pretty sure you can surmise something else is at play there. USOC honestly tells us nothing.
According to Wikipedia, Kroenke is the third richest owner in the Premier League after Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Roman Abramovic. Shahid Khan isn't far behind.
I have a feeling that the US would be more like Italy, where most Serie B clubs attract less than 10k. https://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/ita-serie-b-2018-2019/1/
How much of that has to be attributed to lousy stadiums? Even some Serie A clubs have stadiums unfit in comfort for modern times. The moment such a club improves the stadium the numbers go up, I've been told. Didnot check it. Guess the stadium situation in the USA is better.
The other USOC Quarterfinal match ups (all MLS VS MLS) were 6,431 (HOU hosting SKC) 7176 (Philly hosting ORL) 17898 (LAFC hosting) POR. Those are all significantly better than what CHI drew with THE BEST D2 team coming to town. In the Round of 16 all of the MLS VS MLS match att SAVE ONE (the absolute disgrace that HOU pulled with MIN in town) beat that CHI vs LOU match. MLS clubs enter in the 4th round now. Last year there were 4 MLS vs MLS match ups in that round. They avg'd 10,772 (CLB 4992 really hurt) ... there were 6 matches where MLS clubs hosted non MLS teams and avg'd 5460 (ATL 9742 really helped) which is a 49% drop off from MLS vs MLS to MLS vs NON MLS clubs. LAFC went from 7500 and 8750 VS USL clubs to 17898 VS an MLS club. You'll have a game or two here and there but yeah, MLS vs MLS matches draw better than MLS vs USL (or other) clubs on a pretty sizeable scale. I feel the comparison holds because the mitigating factors (day of week, time, fixture congestion, etc) are all equal for the MLS club fan bases. IMO I feel we'd be much like ... not a real close knit bunch like Italy but much more stratification and extreme differences in numbers. Honestly, more in line with the Championship where you've got "zones" in att numbers (not saying we'd be anything close to the actual att numbers, but the tiers of stratification). A small group of overachievers at the top, a middling group, and then the falling off.
I took Brescia as an example as Notts beat them at Wembley in the last European cup final contested by a team from Nottingham. OK, it was the Anglo-Italian Cup, contested by D2 teams from each country. The last time Brescia managed to avoid relegation from Serie A, they averaged 15,000. In their last 2 relegation seasons they averaged around 10,000. Over the last few seasons they've challenged for promotion averaging around 7,800. According to my sources its not fashionable to support a Serie B club and younger fans will switch to their favorite national club in Serie A while their team languishes in the lower divisions. Obviously this didn't apply to Juve. That's what I was told.
Where do you get this? I only see them averaging ~9500 for one season in Serie A: https://www.worldfootball.net/attendance/ita-serie-a-2010-2011/1/ And that is an absolute aberration to the years around them (which are 3500-4500). The last 4 seasons are all over 7,000, but prior to 2015, 4K seems to be about the norm (outside of the one Serie A season: could this be visitors?). It's not like they've set the world on fire since 2015, either: they're top of the table this season, but 16th, 15th, and 11th since their attendance nearly doubled. Maybe there's something else at play here.
First of all, England is not typical. A few years back I did a comparison of many leagues from around the world and I believe only one club saw an increase after relegation. And yes, the particular circumstances of the club can also help. A Villa or a Newcastle are a historically large team that are going to sustain their attendances more easily than others. Even Burnley's history has allowed them to retain a relatively high attendance. With the yo-yo clubs, it's largely that the fans are so used to moving up and down that excitement of going up or disappointment of going down are pretty much blunted at this point. If that team goes down another level however, you'll usually see a drop. Additionally, if Swansea stay in the Championship for more than a couple of years, you'll likely see attendance decrease as the recent association with being an EPL club starts to wear off. I'll try and dig up the actual numbers but here is the full blog post (I warn you, it's looooong): https://wp.me/p5ioea-cW
FC Twente has been around in one form or other since 1926, Breda since 1912 in a country and in cities that they're more than likely the main source of sports entertainment. Now imagine if you were in a city in the U.S with a club that's been around for a lot less time and with pro sports teams in Baseball, Basketball, Hockey that you could spend your money on instead of soccer then you'll see how poor the crowds will be. In NYC it would be a death sentence, just look at the crowds the Cosmos pulled towards the end of the NASL and you'll see it was poor they couldn't even sell out a 2,500 seat stadium for the NASL final one season.