We've only said that about size of crowds in lower levels: nothing to do with consistency or patterns between promotion and relegation. Despite your goto pat excuse that "England and Germany are different", the actual numbers (and we're not talking about total numbers - we're talking about variance from year to year) doesn't seem to bear that out consistently. Attendance seems to have very little do with what actual division a team is in. Yes, there is definitely a higher total on average in the top flight, but that actual variance might not be much different than what we see from year to year in the 2nd division. We see teams that draw the same across divisions/standing within the table and we see teams that draw wildly different numbers year in and year out. This inconsistency also seems to exist in MLS: we have the consistent draws (Seattle and Portland on the high end; Colorado and Dallas on the low end - consistently) and we have the teams that are impossible to predict year to year: New England, San Jose, and Montreal are all over the map.
When they were in Serie A from 2000-2005, they averaged between 14 & 16k until their relegation season, when they were around 8k. The following season in Serie B, that number roughly halved to 4k. It fluctuated between 4k and 5k during that entire Serie B stint. Upon returning to Serie A, their attendance doubled from the previous season to 8k. They were immediately relegated. The next season back in Serie B saw their attendance cut in half again. Their recent modest rally in attendance seems to coincide with their relegation in 2015 being negated due to Parma going bankrupt. Perhaps the relief of not being relegated after all, resulted in an uplift of morale. Nonetheless, their attendances clearly saw high proportional increases or decreases when promoted or relegated respectively. The only seasons in Serie A where they failed to break 10k in the 21st century, were years in which they were relegated.
I donot question the points you make regarding the States, but how much of that is the result of conditioning by the adoption of a closed system and the accompanying forced perception of lower quality overall in contrast to de facto one long ladder league in European countries, where clubs represent more or less the standing of their location?
This doesn't undermine my point, though: Brescia has pretty wildly erratic attendance numbers and it doesn't seem to matter what level they're in or where on the table they are. While their numbers might have doubled in 2010-2011, they were still the lowest in Serie A and less than 2/3 what they were when they were up for slightly longer. This really just tells me that they're a super-unfashionable club with a lukewarm following. The editorial style of their Wikipedia page seems to bear that out. They've spent more than half of their existence in Serie B and their best year ever was at the end of WWII. My point is that if this was a consistently good team that could stay in Serie A for 5 years (or more) at a time, they'd probably draw consistently around 15k, even if they got relegated for a year or two. But they are the embodiment of a mid-table Serie B club (their history totally bears this out) and thus their attendance and fan enthusiasm reflects that. I don't see how sticking Brescia Calcio or QPR or Colorado Rapids or some other basket case club permanently in the top division changes that they're really second tier clubs.
Or to look at this from the opposite direction: Swansea and Leicester draw pretty consistently at 15k and ~23k during their extended time in the Championship prior to their most recent promotions, respectively. Their averages raised to 20k and 31k respectively, but I would say what's even more important is that they stayed in the Premier League for a while (obviously ongoing for Leicester). The perception of the club raised. So what remains to be seen is what Swansea draws next season given that they'll likely finish mid-table. Stoke, as well, given that they're way more unfashionable and their attendance has already dropped like 5k.
PART 2 of 2: Part 2 will include how NPSL Pro & NISA should fit in, how moving towards a fully open system must address economic stratification between leagues I remember the conversations pretty vividly, but will have to try to not divulge a few things I believe were said in confidence... I'd never been a fan of the NPSL; I felt if you wanted to see something at that level, why not support your local college team? But there they were in the spring of 2013, a club that was going to join a new, ragtag 4-team South Central Conference and the regular season would involve playing the other three teams 4 times a piece. They'd signed a lease on a vacant 11k seat ballpark and I remember how many were wondering if we could get a crowd of "500-600 fans" while I remember thinking if we can't draw at least a couple of thousand to our season opener, why even bother with this? And then we did it; had to push kickoff back about 20 minutes to accommodate a crowd of over 3,200 fans. We averaged well over 3k per game in both our 2013 and 2014 seasons and won our conference both those seasons. But within months of our first successful season, we found we had competition. An Oklahoma City group that wanted to use their new USL Pro club as a stepping stone to MLS had bought sole USL territorial rights to Tulsa, leveraged a previously disinterested minor league baseball organization into making a business decision to become majority owners, and bought trademark rights to bring back yet another version of the Tulsa Roughnecks (how ironic that one of the A's owners had been the USISL indoor rookie of the year as GK for a 1990s-era Roughnecks squad). Like several USL expansion teams did on opening day this season, the Roughnecks drew a big crowd for their home opener in 2015... the crowd for the home opener this season was announced as 3,122. So, what to do in a closed system? I remember many conversations in both the offseason of 2013 and 2014. There was no D3 option for us to buy into USL even if we'd wanted to. I kept saying we had to at least double the number of games we played every season to remain visible in the community and effectively compete for fans. But the only options were to either get a new majority owner who satisfied USSF D2 net worth requirements and join the NASL or form some sort of new league entity out of the strongest clubs in the NPSL? Or just stay put, take the hit, and face the consequences, which is what we did... http://www.thetulsavoice.com/May-B-2016/Principles-of-play/ I know that NISA had tried to connect with both the NASL and the NPSL. But would USSF D3 net worth requirements force those aspiring NPSL clubs into making wholesale changes in their ownership and business model just to join a league? After Wilt and Wynalda left, will NISA actually put everything together the way it wants? Because I think it's just as important to address big gaps in different levels and the increased stratification between divisions as it is to set up some sort of Promotion/Relegation system between them. Preferably in an atmosphere where your club's identity is much more important than the identity of the league it happens to play in. One way to address those big gaps?.... find a middle path with the equivalent of the Pro Level D4 to address the gap between NPSL and NISA? And, for the record, an overwhelming majority of people who use the hashtag #ProRelForUSA understand that immediately imposing a Pro/Rel system without seeing some pretty big reforms in place will only result in its ineffectiveness and possible failure. 2 / 2
It's 100 percent the culture here. Pro teams here at least the truly successful ones very much represent their local area, its just as American's we only know a closed pro league. This country has by and large disregarded the sport of soccer/football and MLS and the now named USL have done yeoman work in not only making the sport survive but actually be somewhat healthy and stable so I'm very hesitant in seeing it change because a small vocal minority assume adopting a European model is the way to go with little more then wishful thinking as an action plan. I'm not saying that pro/rel won't work here but the "drop" as it were needs to at least be perceived as minimal or it won't work. I'd argue that once every single club has venue control at a minimum or a SSS ideally then we can think about it. Until then I'm fine with playing lower division teams in the US Open cup.
In regards to fans in the US and major or minor league I have a hypothesis. I will grant you that it is limited to one city in observation and I have no survey to back this up, but here it goes. I live near Seattle and attend anywhere from 2 to 6 Sounders games a year and about the number of Mariner games over the summer. I dont attend Seahawks games as I dont want to justify spending that kind of cash though if like to go. I also go to 1 Trail Blazer game a year. I like going to games. I also try and attend various minor league games in the area as well. What I think I observe from games is that the big 3 teams here (Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders) are that many people attend because it "is the the place to be." There is a bit of a status symbol to say you're going to or have season tickets the Seahawks. The Mariners may stink but being out in the beer garden or hanging out above the bullpens are kind of public gathering places. Sounders games are where you go to be a part of the atmosphere of songs, chants, and winning. The charge may come that these fans are 'plastic' but the main thing is they use their plastic to buy tickets, beer, and concessions. Maybe Euroeans are different, I dont know. But if the Sounders were relegated they would quickly lose that spot as the place to be. Some of those people would migrate to Mariners while others wouldn't come out because it's not a place to be. I dont think this a bad thing. Teams are businesses and need the casual fans to use their plastic. This is not to say that there are few 'true' fans. I'm just not sure the ratio of the these two types.
I think the drop is in part due to the forced level playing field without regard to clubs reflecing the standings of the locations they're in. So there are clubs in the closed league earning more than their standing justifies. A closed league lower you also see gravitating towards a more or less even earnings, but because of the level playing field for all considerable lower. In the open table the clubs more or less are where they should be with accompanying earnings. So incidentally moving up to the first or down to the second league relatively means nothing. The club is more or less in the cluster where it does belong.
I personally wouldnot as a rule label one kind of fan better. It depends on the behaviour of them. If a "plastic" (with no real and long ties to the club, but lately being drawn by their success and watching from afar matches on tv) fan would go about making known how fanatical a supporter he is, that would make me crinch. Is he simply there to enjoy the ride without would be fuss, good for you. The more the merrier I would say and who knows you eventually turn into a hardcore fan sticking to the club in good and bad weather. For most of us Europeans we have no choice in the club, it's with you from when you're born and it's not done to switch allegiance.
You can't get more unfashionable than Swansea. They're not even fashionable in Wales and there are only 3 cities of note. Edited: apparently Wrexham isn't a city. They're not even fashionable in Wales and there are only 2 cities of note.
This is totally true, but they played a nice style of soccer when they got promoted. They were trendy. Stoke has never been trendy.
I'm not sure how you're concluding that it didn't matter which level they were in. Their attendances objectively halved when they were relegated from Serie A (which incidentally they did play in for 5 years and did get around 15k per year but didn't maintain that during and after an unsuccessful relegation battle). Their attendances objectively doubled when they got promoted from Serie B to Serie A. There was a direct and consistent correlation. But Brescia are not an anomaly in this. Here are the figures I mentioned: The left-hand number is the club's average attendance the season they got relegated. Going to the right you have each subsequent season where data was available, or relevant. For the years following the initial relegation: Dark green cells denote a promotion. Light green means a promotion playoff was reached but the team failed to go up. Red means they were relegated. Yellow indicates that the number is relevant to the note in the right-hand column (where a note is relevant to a season with a promotion or relegation, there's a hatching with the appropriate colour). The reduction in attendance after relegation and increase after a promotion is very consistent.
I'm not saying Brescia are an anomaly or that promotion and/or relegation don't have an effect on attendance. But what your figures don't show is how "stable" the support for the club is at any given year: I don't think anybody would be surprised that if a club is in a turbulent period - highs of promotion/lows of relegation - that this would have an effect on the fanbase. What I'm more interested in is the longer term: what were attendances like on either side of this for 5 years+ (I'm not asking you to provide that, btw)? Are the crowd sizes volatile? Even in your list, there is still a cross section of clubs whose attendance is largely unaffected by the club's relegation. There are also some that take a definite hit on relegation, but seem consistent on the lower level in subsequent years. Are clubs with more mercurial fanbases more affected by promotion and/or relegation at the gate? Why aren't these clubs able to consistently draw similar crowds, even when their relative performance stays the same? Also, are these clubs more prone to being "between divisions"?
Sports culture, yes. But even then, the sport of soccer hasn't been part of that culture, either. We've never questioned the closed system because: 1) It's always been done that way. 2) It's just a game. Let's talk about what really is "100 percent the culture here" Things that we Americans are taught from a very young age to value no matter what political party we belong to: "Free enterprise." "Open competition." "Hard work is rewarded." "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps." "The idea that the little guy can come up with a brilliant idea, start a small business, and make it all the way to the top." America: socialism's sporting stronghold "Yet America struts around, priding itself on opposition to socialism and dictatorship. But its sports are both socialistic, even communistic, and dictatorial." For most of my lifetime, "socialism" has been a dirty word. And yet, we have a sports industrial complex that dispenses parity measures to the "haves" and passes off minor league status to the "have nots." And you know what? If England and Germany are "atypical," I want America to be atypical. I am an American exceptionalist and want American domestic soccer to be exceptional. And in order to be exceptional, I believe we need to embrace a more open, less stratified system, a system that includes promotion and relegation. https://soundcloud.com/5thstreetsports/5thstreet-soccer-3-19-2019
In my opinion we are taught that as an individual. In most if not all american sports it is the individual player that is promoted/relegated not the team. A young person excels at baseball in a youth league/travel team, then they move on to a high school/travel teams. The player continues to excel and they are recruited by a coach to play college or they are good enough to be drafted by a MLB team. They start in summer league, then A, AA, AAA, MLB. In hockey you move up various levels, in football the same, basketball as well. Our (american) system has always been to promote the individual not the team.
I thought this was the story of MLS (I originally wrote the MLS but I knew @kenntomasch would crucify me for that so I fixed it). Some guys in the free enterprise of the sports entertainment industry came up with an idea in the mid 90s. They put in the hard work and financial backing that allowed MLS to pull itself up from its bootstraps in the mid 2000s. MLS has been rewarded for their hard work in the open competition that is the sports entertainment industry. I dont know why people are mad at MLS.
Yeah, the patriotic buzz words can go the other way as well. Free market can mean a rival soccer league is allowed to compete, not that all soccer leagues are automatically tied to one central system dictated by an international organization.
Yet the "individual" seldom has much control over who he plays for professionally, especially in MLS. And yet a consistent majority of American soccer fans, players, non-MLS owners, and clubs in general want Pro/Rel in this country... and if you think it's because we American soccer fans are just a buncha "europoseurs" and "anglophiles" well... that couldn't be less true. "Those of us in favor must accept an open system is not a panacea, but all should see it’s our future. I support my man DC & those using intelligence and strategy, instead of insults and slander, to push for the more inclusive and compelling world of a true sporting meritocracy." -- Kyle Martino "If anybody wants to start celebrating a real pro/rel conversation they need to remember it started with one man - Ricardo Silva - a true visionary for the game this country is growing to love and understand -and thanks Mr Infantino for pushing the issue in the appropriate manner." -- Eric Wynalda