this is england's championship division that is pro/rel with the premier league. http://itv.stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/D1/attend.html looks like what the mls will be like in the next 4 to 5 yrs. even some of the teams in the premier league look like avg attendance for mls games. so i think in that department the mls is suceeding.
A lot of those cities have very small populations, nowhere near the size of the cities that MLS teams are located in now or will be located in in the future. Not totally comparable really.
I was watching a game on setanta today(free preview this month for all you ish owners) and I saw a bunch of empty seats in one of the games, the only difference is the atmosphere there was 10x better than any stadium here. I think while the attendance might be similar the atmosphere doesn't compare to anything we have here.
So you're saying that MLS should mike up the supporter's sections - and that the supporters should not sing/chant obscenties so as to allow the supporters to be miked up in the first place?
I live in Sweden, and even in a small nation like this that's not nearly as passionate about soccer as much of mainland europe, and despite the awful quality of the domestic league, some clubs still match the MLS in attendances. I'm not really making a point here and it's certainly not an attempt to brag or anything, just a little useless info, since most comparisons to european leagues here are about england.
my biggest point is that where we are right now is a success and people should be happy that we have good support for our teams. yeah we might not sale out every game but people are going to games and thats what matters. A lot of people always want to compare the mls to other leagues and try and say we are inferior. im just showing a part of the mls where we arent inferior.
Home Depot Center holds 27,00+, Beckham home debut announced 17,000+, Looked like 14,000. PATHETIC!! L.A. Fans SUCK!!! Vamos United, Vamos Barra Brava!!
We have too much distracting crap that we need to get rid of first. All these damned pseudo-sports, many of which use sticks and/or helmets. And unfortunately none of them allow hitting other people with the sticks, which of course would be the only real point of having sticks in a sport. You got it good over there in Sweden.
i assume what you meant to say was "a lot of those cities don't have major league baseball, nfl, nba and nhl franchises to deal with, and since soccer is the only game in town in those cities it's not totally comparable really."
Heh. Imagine the most famous sport involving sticks and helmets, and then consider Sweden, do you really think soccer wouldn't have competition here? Still i know what you mean, soccer is pretty much un-challenged as a media-sport here these days, despite the Swedish hockey league being among the 3 best in the world while the domestic soccer league sucks horribly. (judging by player quality) The difference is that no one gives a crap about international hockey here anymore, while international soccer gets gigantic media coverage. Edit: Also of course there's a big tradition of soccer in this country.
I might be wrong here, but . . . I don't think MLS fans are even hoping for it to replace the European leagues. All MLS fans want is for it to have its own place in the soccer world and to be on equal footing with the other major sports in the United States. Basically, for it to be a "mainstream" American sport that people can look at you like you're an average sports fan (and not some crazy wannabe European) if you say that you are a big Red Bulls fan.
Hey it's already better than most european leagues. You just need to keep this up for a while without the league going out of business, even if it doesn't get any better, which it probably will. The part about becoming a mainstream US sport might be harder, but it's certainly going in that direction.
The same website shows my team is the 3rd most supported team in League 1 (a division below championship level). Although they have screwed up our stadium size which is 20,200 and not the 11,000 of our previous one listed. Still considering 2,000 seats are sectioned off to seperate home/away fans the capacity/average attendece ratio is still in the high 90 percentile Come on Swansea!
I fail to see the point really, considering that if you picked any of those places they'd typically have a team for rugby, ice hockey (ok, the league is a bit rubbish), basketball (and again), cricket, whatever else, too, plus the obvious thing of - its not like the rest of the world is some magical land where the only thing people ever think about is football, you know.
Plus, given this is a discussion about Championship attendances, competition from often local Premiership teams.
Woo Hoo. Argyle get a mention on the MLS forum. Just in case anyone is remotely interested, Plymouths population is around 250,000 so 13,000 average for home games is not too shabby.
to be fair, if it is Plymouth being talked about, they aren't exactly losing too many fans lured by the glamour of Torquay and Exeter. A more worthwhile question would be to ponder what Plymouth could draw if they made it to the premiership, or what an MLS club would get if stuck in the USL?
Over half of this year's Championship have a Premiership team within 30 miles. Fair point about Plymouth (and others such as Bristol, Norwich and Ipswich) - they really have no Premiership competition for fans.
Probably something around the 30,000 mark at maximum and not much more, the extra 10,000 would be glory hunters from Torquay and Exeter, but bear in mind neither is really passionate about local football, Torquay plays host to much more die hard Rangers/Celtic and Liverpool/Everton supporters than Torquay United fans, due to the demographics of Torquay and the recent Scottish and Liverpudlian influxes, and the rest tend to get drawn to the usual glory hunters teams, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea. Incidentially Torquay United drew 4k to an English Conference match last week, considering the talent disparity between that level and MLS level might we suggest Torquay is a much better potential MLS market than Kansas City, move the Wizards to Torquay and rename them the Tornados! (what the hell lets keep the Wizard of Oz theme )
As an aside, the 66,237 crowd which Red Bull drew last night was larger than any Premiership crowd this weekend. You have to go back a long, long time since that has happened for a regular league match. Not a typical occurrence obviously, but impressive nonetheless.
A lot of MLS teams are competing in markets with four or more major sports teams for limited dollars and attention. Something outsiders don't quite grasp about the North American sports market is how crowded it is. There's not one sport that dominates all others like soccer does in Europe. The RedBullStars (or whatever) are competing with two teams each in hockey, baseball, basketball and American football. Seasons all overlap. Same with the Galaxy, who also have to content with Chivas USA. No pro football teams out in LA, but there is UCLA and USC college football. The latter regularly draws 90,000+ per game, more than 99 percent of the NFL.
Lets not get caught up in that argument again. I completely agree with you but there is already a thread out there with similar discussion. To be honest, it keeps on going in circle with no one willing to concede any single fact without going back to square one.
I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. I was watching a replay of South Carolina's bowl win, wiping my nose with a Carolina Hurricanes tissue, and playing MVP Baseball on my other computer. What did you say again?
haha, ya, all my friends who are from Missouri say it sucks. I think the fact that they play in an 80k seat NFL stadium, with red seats really just kills the atmosphere. If they played in a 20k stadium, I'm sure their support would be much better.