Is interest in MISL really this low?

Actually there is, at www.letsplaysoccer.com. That's where most of the hardcores go. They're not around here much.

There aren't many of them there, either, but they are prolific, if memory serves.

 

There is forum off the MISL page as well.

http://www.misl.net/forum/

 

I used to be big into the Cleveland Force, held season tickets for a couple seasons. Then I just lost interest really. I like going to their games occasionally, I always have a lot of fun, but I don't think it's as exciting as MLS.

 

Decent atmosphere at that final. At least it was in the fourth quarter when they turned the music down and let the crowd make the noise.

 

Its sad for those of us who remember indoor's 'heyday' about 20 years ago...I like the product, when the skill level is at a certain level. Fans USED to go nutz too....I guess every generation has a fan-favorite hybrid that does well, and this generation's is indoor football...

 

I think that MISL filled the void from NASL until MLS came around. I could care less about indoor soccer, MISL or whatever. Send MISL and Wusa they way of the NASL.

Don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way out!

 

I think you hinted at the problem by mentioning lack of TV. How do you talk about games you haven't seen because they're not on TV?

Also, there seems to be a pretty big divide between indoor and outdoor fans. Since BigSoccer is primarity an outdoor soccer website, I doubt many indoor fans will post here. It's a shame, but there it is.

 

Why do you think that is anyway? I don't understand most outdoor fans are anti-indoor. I know they claim it "kills the game," but they're two different products. I don't think you can really compare them at all.

 

There are snobs on both sides of the equation. Someone in the MISL said back in 1984 that their product would sell even better (this was back when it sold pretty well) if they could call it something other than "soccer."

 

Exactly. They are two very different games and should be enjoyed as such. You can't bring your outdoor expectations into an indoor game and hope to appreciate the indoor game. And, as Kenn points out, vice versa. In fact, when attending Comets games when I visit my wife's family in KC, I find it better to go with a hockey mindset than an outdoor soccer mindset.

 

Why not go in with an indoor soccer mindset?

 

Ha ha. But you're right, it ain't hockey either, thank Jah.

I should have said "more of a hockey mindset".

I admit I am more surprised that indoor soccer has not caught on more than it has, especially up north where you can't play outdoor a god portion of the year and where they can appreicate the hockey similarities. Then again, it seems to me that the people who have run nthe indoor game are about as stupidly self-destructive as those who run open-wheel road racing in this country, so there you go. I suspect that the real window of opportunity that was missed was in the 1980s when the outdoor game went bust and when cable sports channels like ESPN were so desperate for programming that they were showing high school sports. Man, if indoor soccer had gotten in on THAT ground floor....

 

They did, actually. Indoor was on cable. It didn't do well enough to stay on.

 

That quote sounds more like the usual excuses than a legitimate explanation. My guess is that they didn't exactly try too hard to promote it. Which is not just the network's fault, but also that of the people who run the sport. I mean, look at the half-assed way the league promotes itself on FSW. I'm sympathetic to them and I cringe when I see some of those rebroadcasts (a month after the game has been played, mind you).

Also, why was indoor on USA Network and not on ESPN or at least local chanels?

I still think that, done right, indoor could have taken much better advantage of the cable revolution than it did.

 

And I would suggest that there could be other explanations, and that sometimes the simple one is the right one. It could just be that the product wasn't right. But there's always someone who wants to blame the marketing.

I agree, the MISL's FSW broadcasts are not exactly the best advertisements for the league that I've ever seen. But these people aren't those people from 1984, and while the league has the same name, it's not the same league.

Some have this revisionist history attitude that the original MISL was getting 15,000 a game everywhere, but, overall, indoor attendance, while higher on a league-wide basis then than it is now, wasn't huge leaps and bounds ahead. Some places like Kansas City and St.Louis really packed them in for a while, but other cities were getting a couple thousand a game. That interest expresses itself in TV viewership as well.

I believe the MISL did get some games on ESPN, but I could be remembering that wrong (I know the NASL did in its later years). Teams did have local cable deals. They were also on an outfit called FNN/Score, which did financial news during the day and sports at night, including a great low-rent sports trivia show called Time Out For Trivia that I loved when I was in college (if you're old enough to remember that and host Todd Donoho, you know what I'm talking about).

It just didn't work. At the end of the day, it's about people interested in watching. Soccer didn't work on TV then and it's not appreciably better now. Luckily, we're doing enough not to get kicked out of bed in this hundreds-of-channels universe.

 

I am not so sure it's just about the lack of interest on the part of Washingtonians and NoVas.

Frankly, it's about corporate power.

You see, Comcast no longer gives you WMAR in Baltimore if you are in a DC suburb. They have the weekly Blast show and go out of their way for more local highlights than Channels 11 and 13.

It's as if though there is a news blackout on all things Baltimore on DC-area cable.

And DirecTV does not give you any of the Balto stations.

Freaks.

Mind you, if there is actually decent parking in Balto, and if a good supporters section grew, then you might have something.

 

With two straight titles and a good crowd and (from what I hear) a great atmosphere for Game Three, the Blast certainly should be in a position to capitalize. I don't think indoor is ever going to get back to where it was when it was the hip, trendy thing to go to, and with recent situations like Harrisburg, Monterrey and Dallas, there is certainly reason to not be terribly optimistic.

I like the game, myself, for what it is, regardless of my feelings for outdoor. I hope the proposed Chicago team actually happens.

 

Well, I do agree with the guy you quoted earlier that there is no inherent reason that it could not have been more poplaur than it is now. I certainly do not think that an indoor league would now be challenging the NFL for sports supremacy. Hell, I don't, think MLS will ever do that. Still, some sports have built in limitations that doom them from mass popularity from the start and in my untutored opinion, indoor soccer is not one of those. In fact, as the man you quoted said, I'd have thought that it would be an easier sell to Americans than the outdoor game. Maybe if someone could give me a reason why the game itself doomed its potential, I could understand why poor business practices on the part of the owners and lack of or stupid marketing weren't the biggest of the many factors doubtlessly involved.

I know that. I was just pointing out how the marketing and presentation can be counterproductive. MISL's current TV presentation looks amateurish and just bad. And I have to question their decision to broadcast tapes of month old games and not live matches. That said, you can also be too slick and too obviously manipulative, ala the XFL.

Then again, both the XFL and arena football are trying to compete against the NFL. Good luck, guys. Indoor soccer did not have any soccer competiton in the USA after 1984. There was no NASL, no MLS, no FSW broadcasting the Euroleagues or MFL.

Yeah, I've met those who believe there was some "Golden Age" of indoor that never really existed. I'm not saying there was. I'm only saying there was a missed opportunity to make indoor at least twice as popular as it is now or perhaps achieve attendance and TV ratings just below those of the NHL. That doesn't mean success would have been guaranteed. Just that an opportunity was never fully exploited.

As for markets where the attendance sucks, that's the league's fault. Granted, sometimes you have to go where the money and the interest are but you'd have thought they'd have learned their lesson from the NASL, at least after 1984. If you're successful in Milwaukee or KC but not in Baltimore or Harrisburg, stay where you're successful and dump the places where you're not. It's not like the NFL, MLB and NBA haven't done just that. Can you say "Dodgers", "Jazz", or "Cardinals"? Of course, this all assumes you've been competent in those markets and your failure was due to a simple lack of interest and not your own strategic or tactical blunder in that market.

 

Well, like the NASL owners, the MISL owners spent outside their means a bit. They got all dot-com-IPO-giddy for a while, and eventually had to retrench. So, yes, they were partially culpable, but indoor soccer was a "fad" and when the "fad" retreated, even though the game was the same, the forces that started us to where we are today took over.

The game itself has an intrinsic basic popularity level, and it came close to reaching the ceiling of that popularity level, due in part to the novelty and in part to the show business aspects of it (look at any article written on the MISL in those days --- and I have --- the showbiz aspect is heavily mentioned, because most sports just didn't do that then). That intrinsic popularity level is lower now. They could do better now, sure, but you're not going to get 15,000 a game. Anywhere. There's too much competition, and too much ennui on the part of people you would try to sell tickets to.

I'm guessing it's purely financial. I don't think there's any way they could afford to do a live game of the week right now. But, a few years ago, they had nothing. Maybe they'll upgrade to it. That said, you're right, their current broadcasts do appear oftentimes to be the product of the high school A/V club.

No soccer competition. But soccer people didn't consider it soccer, and many still don't. They were going after (and are still going after) entertainment junkies. Now it's also soccer-playing youth and families. The wisdom of that can be debated - those who like indoor as a sport seem to hate to see kids running around not paying attention to the game, but I would imagine there are a lot fewer indoor hardcores than outdoor hardcores, so good luck trying to make a go of it with just them.

That wasn't going to happen no matter what you did. Even at its height, MISL attendance was about 4,000 a game less than that of the NHL, and once Gretzky caught on, it was over. And the NHL guys, while not yet generating the type of revenue they would starting in the 1990's (and not spending like it, either), still had a lot more money (and tradition, and blue-collar appeal) than the MISL guys did. It wasn't going to happen.

Well, it's all well and good to say just dump those unsuccessful places, but if the guy in Harrisburg wants to keep funding it (and he did, for a long while), you can either keep him around or have about a four-team league, because it's not like people were stepping up to the plate to put teams in other places.

I always say it's not like the people who ran the Kansas City Comets and St.Louis Steamers and were pulling 17,000 crowds regularly in the early 80's died and took the secret formula with them (in fact, KC was being run by the Leiwicke brothers). Many of the people who are running indoor teams today are struggling, partly because of their own inabilities, partly because they're not financed as well as they'd have to be to really make a go of it, and partly because it's a product that simply has a certain level of intrinsic appeal. And that level is lower now than it was in 1983, in my opinion.

 

True, but at the same time hockey, which I would have thought would have a much more limited appeal as a nationwide sport than indoor soccer, has exploded while indoor soccer has languished in the American sports basement. Obviously, the NHL did some things right that indoor soccer didn't do or did wrong.

Well, it certainly does not have an intrinsic drawing power now that it might have had if they'd played their cards right during the late 70s/early 80s when several factors combined to put the state of US pro sports into a limited but real amount of flux. I guess that's the bottom line of my assertion.

I guess even bad TV is better than no TV. Still...

A lot of Eurosnobs don't consider MLS soccer!

I get the same "hardcore" vibe in Milwaukee that you do. At Comets games, though, it's almost all families with kids. Probably because it's only marginally more expensive than a movie and certainly one of the few sporting events some families can afford.

The one disadvantage that indoor has is that it does'nt have the appeal to immigrants that outdoor does. Not that MLs has done all that great a job attracting immigrant groups.

You're probably right. Still, I can't help but look at the massive growth of hockey and wonder why indoor couldn't have done something similar, even if on a smaller scale. Both were very much trailing behind the NFL, MBL and even NBA in the late 70s. You can say "Gretzky" but there was more to hockey's rise than him.

Like I hinted at (not strongly enough, I guess), it depends on the situation. But a league has to have enough discipline to avoid shooting itself in the foot with bad situations, even if someone looks like they can foot the bill for a couple years. Again, though, it depends on a ot of factors. MLS wasn't afraid to pull the plug on FLA.

I agree with you about the current prospects for the game. There's a lot of competition out there for entertaniment $$$ and I don't see another potential siesmic shift in sports like we saw in the 1980s.

I also agree with you that it's not like the art of successful sports franchise and league management are dead and cannot be revived by anyone with the talent, knowledge and drive. Even with whatever inherent limitation indoor had/has, in the 1980s it had a chance to improve its position and it failed. I think a lot of that was due to missed opportunities and the owners actually doing counterproductive things. At this point, I wish the current incarnation of the MISL luck but I don't excpect much of an improvement in this crowded market.

 

The game of hockey also has working class appeal, which anything called "soccer" in this country is going to have to work harder to get. The NHL probably did some things right (though they owe a good part of it to Walter and Phyllis Gretzky of Brantford, Ontario) and also benefitted from its history and the money its owners had.

I understand that. My assertion is that they played their cards pretty darn well, and it got them a sport that, for a while, was very trendy and hot (before Arena Football and the growth of women's sports and minor league hockey and baseball and MTV and the internet and everything else) and then retreated in the public consciousness from exciting and new and worthwhile to something that was just there. There wasn't a whole lot to be seized. People lost interest. I'm actually amazed it's still around at the level it's at. We'll have to agree to disagree on this, and that's cool.

Maybe they did do something similar, and their smaller scale got them what they got. As good as Karl-Heinz Granitza and Branko Segota were, they weren't Gretzky. And if there's a lot more to hockey's rise than Gretzky, I don't know exactly what it was. He's not 100% responsible, but he had a very large hand in it.

I don't know how much more they could have done, that's all I'm saying. They spent silly money (not all of it wisely) and it didn't come back to them at the gate. Contrast that with Arena Football, which began while the MISL was still around, started small, retrenched a couple of times, and is now considered a success because they make money and they're on network TV with a deal that makes them money despite its low ratings. And they're at about 12,000 a game, give or take (I haven't looked recently).

Indoor soccer didn't have the financial wherewithal to make a quantum leap, couldn't go back and retrench like a startup operation could once it was like 12 or 13 years in, and basically is just kind of stuck where it has been for the last several years - with not many franchises, and a basic level of attendance between 3500-6500 for most of its games. You can make it work with those numbers, I guess, depending on what your definition of "works" is, but it's not going to get you to that Next Level or anything. It's like hospital food - it'll keep you alive, but it's not exactly something they're going to write cover stories on in culinary magazines.

 

True. It also had some things working against it. Until the late 1980s, for example, it was confined to the northeast USA and Canada and had no tradition outside that area. Also, the game itself takes a very specialized building and lots of expensive gear to play, thereby eliminating a lot of youth participation. How many pickup hockey games do you see around town on a Chicago winter day, let alone in Arizona?

They had Gretzky, sure, but indoor could have produced its own Gretzky, for whatever that would have been worth. The NBA was built on Dr. J, Magic v. Bird and MJ. Of course, now they're gone the league is struggling compared to its recent glory years, but nobody expects hockey or soccer or even baseball to overtake it. And Gretzky himself is the product of smart marketing, as was MJ. Yeah, he was a really good player, maybe the best in the world, but it's not like it would have been utterly impossible for indoor to create a star of its own. Not only that, but Gretzky is long gone and hockey continued to grow in his absence. No, there has to be more to the hockey story than Gretzky, as important as he undoubtedly was to give hockey an acceptable, unscary face. I just don't know what that something is.

But who knows, maybe hockey is the indoor soccer of the Oughts. I thnk it's strong TV package and savvy marketing, however, has given it the critical mass it needs to stay up and avoid the fate of indoor soccer.

If it was all that trendy, it would have gotten beyond 10,000 a game.

I guess my question then is WHY did indoor fall from grace? What made it "trendy" in the first place and why could it not hold onto its fan base once it had attracted them? Why couldn't they turn that "trendiness" into TV ratings? Both hockey and MLS have been able to establish themselves on the nationwide sports scene (MLS somewhat shakily, of course) since the early 90s. OK, both sports had more money (thanks, Unlce Phil!) but I just contiue to be amazed at the utter magnitude of the difference between the current popularity of the NHL or even MLS and that of the MISL.

To me, the game itself is sound and marketable enough to be a decent second tier sport on par with arena football. I just think that the people running it for much of the past 30 years simply have not done a very good job. Owners egos butted heads and leagues formed, splintered and died while teams came and went in bewildering frequency. At least the current MISL seems to have a plan or at least some credible operating guidelines. I guess we'll see. I'd consider them a smashing success if they ever got where arena footbal is now. I just think indoor had a chance once to get somewhere between arena football and hockey, but closer to hockey. If you disagree, that's fine. It would be boring if we all thought alike.

 

But, see, the leagues (or the hype machines, or whatever) made those guys superstars, but before that, they were actually created as players. We didn't create many really good soccer players until fairly recently, and even if we did, the fact he's a soccer player was going to be a hindrance to the starmaking machinery. I think a lot of the interest in Freddy stems from him being 14 instead of, say, 17 or 18. If he was 17 or 18 there's little doubt in my mind he'd be marveled at by those of us who follow soccer, but I don't think he'd be on Letterman and 60 Minutes.

I don't think the MISL could have just "created" a superstar out of whole cloth - not one that people would have sat up and taken notice of. The MISL had a lot of great players. I mean, some of the most talented players to lace them up in the last fifty years. Zungul and Segota and Preki and Granitza and those guys were amazing players, and they were very popular in the cities in which they played. I just don't think there was any reason to think they'd take that next step and be nationally famous like Bird and Magic and Jordan and Dr. J. No matter what the MISL did. Because they were soccer players.

I just don't see it, based on the above.

Perhaps he had such an effect that they can continue to ride that for a while longer. The NBA has more teams and higher attendance now than when Bird and Magic played, and NBA attendance was up without Jordan this year, do you think that diminishes their impact?

I've given you a couple - tradition, blue-collar appeal, and owners with money. Don't minimize the effect of the trendiness that Gretzky going to LA helped create.

Hockey's not going anywhere. They may have a different look soon, and some Darwinism may take over, but they're not going anywhere.

(Sigh).

It did, in several places. I don't know what the threshold level for The Trendy Effect is for you, but my thought is that one of the major reasons it reached 8,735 a game on a league-wide level is because of that trendiness. You must not have been around for it.

Because people get bored and move onto the next thing when it's not entrenched in their lives, like the NFL and other sports are. Indoor soccer was a dalliance, it was the hula hoop of niche sports. People moved on. Maybe it was too much entertainment to be sport, and too much sport to be entertainment after the initial "Hey, look what I discovered" stuff wore off.

Don't be amazed. It is what it is. Indoor soccer is a superniche sport. It doesn't have enough unique aspects to truly set it apart, it doesn't have the money necessary to try and throw at setting itself up as a true "major league," it has the burden of having the word "soccer" in its name, and it's not a new phenomenon. It's been more than 25 years since the MISL started, and almost 30 since indoor soccer itself came on the scene here.

You're trying to ascribe the majority of the difference to mis-management, and I'm trying to ascribe it to the product itself. They haven't done a great management job, but they didn't exactly give them a product that people have just gotta have, like gasoline or water or something.

I have a theory that it's not just talented players who go where the money is - it's owners and management as well. Having worked in indoor (and outdoor) soccer at the lower levels, I can tell you that there are a lot of folks who could do quite well and make a difference in the ownership/management area, but who soccer simply can't afford. Those people can go into other sports, make a lot more money, and not have to explain to people 50 times a day that, yes, there is a professional soccer team in town, and you should go, but you're shaking your head because you don't like soccer.

Unless you're really committed to soccer, it's easier to just go do something else. And there aren't a hell of a lot of people who are really, really committed to rolling up their sleeves and being overworked and underpaid for the good of the cause. Look at the turnover even at the MLS level as far as front-office staffs (well, you probably can't look at it, but, believe me, there's a lot of it).

Steve Ryan wants the MISL to be a 21-team league in the next few years. I don't think there are 13 more owners out there, or enough interest to make that happen (when the owner of arguably the most successful indoor franchise ever just walks away, that's not a good sign).

If in 20 years we look back at this period as one where indoor stepped back, took its lumps, and figured out some way to make itself relevant enough to continue to eke out an existence, and maybe begin to thrive again, that will be a good thing. But I wouldn't bet my lunch money on it.