A bit late posting this, but the Australian A-League, which has been compared to MLS is in a bit of trouble? https://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/a-league-issues-run-deep-but-we-must-not-give-up
They're an expansion club (2018) that play on 4 different stadiums around a city that already has 2 A-League teams, 9 AFL teams and a rugby league team, that have already rebranded once. They don't have a stadium but play at four different venues. They are planning to build A-League's first soccer specific stadium if they last that long.
The Rising's new stadium is looking pretty good. Their old one is only 4 years old. In with the new: Out with the old:
That's too simplistic of a response tho. A-League has been struggling pretty much since it was founded. While Western United's attendance is really bad, the league has largely struggled as a whole. The Victory are the most successful and average about 20k a game and only a handful regularly average over 10k (Sydney FC, Perth, Brisbane, Western Sydney). But even then, that's just the symptom of a much larger issue. Until recently their federation was run with an iron fist by Frank Lowy and his family, the league's expansion process has been very questionable, and if you think American Eurosnobs are bad, you should see Australia's. Long story short, if you ever wondered what MLS would look like without Beckham and the successful expansions, look no further than A-League. It's a mess.
That's actually a low number for New Mexico. They averaged over 12k in 2019 as an expansion team. The Birmingham number is interesting because the combined average attendance of those two teams in 2019 was over 11k and the cities are about 220 miles apart straight down I-22. I'm wondering if they ran a deal for travelling fans. They played at Legion Field instead of their usual BBVA stadium which only holds 5,000.
I agree but I was responding to that particular article which was 100% about Western United. The wisdom of admitting a suburban club without a stadium to an already crowded market, in a league which itself is struggling, seems questionable at best.
Go read the article again? It's not 100% about Western United. Western United was just a starting point to explore other issues with A-League.. I mean, the title of the article is "A-League issues run deep but we must not give up"...
Keep scrolling down. There is an ad block conveniently located at what seems like a natural stopping point. Get past the ad block and it starts to cover a lot more than just Western United.
Last I checked Australia has a smaller population than Canada, so it's no wonder the A League will have financial issues. Even with their salary cap structure of about $2mm per team.
Perhaps, but the other football codes pack them in compared to A-League. The sport is also relatively popular in Australia, they just watch European soccer. But even outside that, the sport has a reputation problem in Australia. The belief that soccer players are weak and over dramatic is quite a bit worse than even in the US. To the point that a former national team player and the most prominent cheerleader for the sport wrote an autobiography named after slurs for females, homosexuals, and foreigners that is commonly aimed at the sport by fans of the other codes. Add in how the media seems to love putting out stories about “widespread violence” at A-League games while ignoring the worse violence at games for the other codes which causes families to be tentative about going to games.
I was about to add, complete with the ticket gimmicks of the early 2000 MLS era as well. Every ticket was $5, they were running a BOGO for a later game and also were giving away free tickets if you took a selfie with a giant traveling Legion branded ball and posted it to social media. And yeah, they played at Legion Field because it had rained pretty hard the prior week and the field they usually play on has horrible drainage so it was basically waterlogged/unplayable at the time. Also no name for the rivalry as far as I can tell, although they seem to go back and forth on social media about their BBQ. *shrugs*
The expansion newness will have worn off. I'd generally expect lower numbers than Year One. Legion Field is a significant downgrade in facilities from their usual stadium, and is in an awful neighborhood. Nah, Birmingham is all hipsters and yuppies, at least the soccer crowds are. The concessions at games are all craft beers and overpriced food trucks. I'd assume something relatively similar about the soccer crowd in Memphis, though I can't say for certain.
If you pay stadium prices for legacy beers, you are a fool. I'm not a hipster, I'll buy a bud light at the VFW, but if you want to charge crazy prices, you better not offer me bud light.
I followed the Victory for a while. Had a friend in another online forum (non-soccer) who was a Victory fan who lived outside of Melbourne. Got him following the Rapids and he got me following the Victory. Though as a Blackburn fan I had to swear the Victory off when they made their most recent coaching choice.