In the three weeks covering July 3-July 24, here is the attendance for every match held in the United States between Major League Soccer, MLS/Sum Friendlies, the World Football Challenge, and the Gold Cup: MLS Matches Friday, July 3 San Jose Earthquakes at Real Salt Lake 17478 Saturday, July 4 D.C. United at Columbus Crew 14370 ------------------Chicago Fire at Colorado Rapids 19680 ------------------Houston Dynamo at Kansas City Wizards 10385 ------------------New York Red Bulls at FC Dallas 14327 ------------------New England Revolution at Los Angeles Galaxy 20609 Saturday, July 11 Houston Dynamo at Seattle Sounders FC 32404 ------------------Kansas City Wizards at New England Revolution 24137 ------------------Columbus Crew at Chicago Fire 18123 ------------------FC Dallas at Colorado Rapids 8128 ------------------Toronto FC at San Jose Earthquakes 9679 ------------------Los Angeles Galaxy at Chivas USA 23409 Thursday, July 16 Los Angeles Galaxy at New York Red Bulls 23238 Saturday, July 18 Houston Dynamo at Toronto FC 20172 ------------------Colorado Rapids at D.C. United 18248 -------------------Real Salt Lake at Columbus Crew 12922 -------------------San Jose Earthquakes at Chicago Fire 14228 Sunday, July 19 Chivas USA at New England Revolution 10997 Friday, July 24 FC Dallas at Real Salt Lake 18822 TOTAL 331356 MLS Friendlies Chelsea FC at Seattle Sounders FC 65289 AC Milan at Los Angeles Galaxy 27000 TOTAL 92289 World Football Challenge Sunday, July 19 America Inter 31026 Tuesday, July 21 Chelsea Inter 81224 Wednesday, July 22 America Milan 53600 Friday, July 24 Milan Chelsea 71203 TOTAL 237053 Gold Cup Friday, July 3 Canada Jamaica/Costa Rica El Salvador 27000 Saturday, July 4 Honduras Haiti/Grenada US 15387 Sunday, July 5 Panama Guadeloupe/Nicaragua Mexico 32500 Tuesday, July 7 Jamaica Costa Rica/El Salvador Canada 7059 Wednesday, July 8 Haiti Grenada/US Honduras 26079 Thursday, July 9 Guadeloupe Nicaragua/Mexico Panama 47713 Friday, July 10 Costa Rica Canada/El Salvador Jamaica 17269 Saturday, July 11 US Haiti/Honduras Grenada 24137 Sunday, July 12 Panama Nicaragua/Mexico Guadeloupe 23876 Saturday, July 18 Canada Honduras/US Panama 31087 Sunday, July 19 Guadaloupe Costa Rica/ Mexico Haiti 82252 Thursday, July 23 Honduras US/Costa Rica Mexico 55173 TOTAL 389532 TOTALS MLS 331356 MLS Friendlies 92289 WFC 237053 GC 389532 GRAND TOTAL 1050230
Excellent. Thanks for the info. I'd asked a related question in this post, but alas, I appear to have killed off the thread.
Btw, sorry about the formatting. This data took me maybe 10 minutes to compile, and then I spent close to an hour dealing with godawful BS formatting issues to get it to look as good as I could, and this sorry result is the best I could do.
Oh, it's readable. The three-week window will look even better once we can give it a start date of July 5 (three Sundays ago tomorrow): We'll lose a few July 3-4 MLS and Gold Cup matches, but will be adding all of this weekend's MLS games, Gold Cup final and two more WFC biggies. EDIT: I started to correct myself, but never mind. My ultimate point is: Overall July attendance will look pretty awesome.
This is great, but I'll bet it won't stop the bashers from continuing to say nobody cares about soccer. They aren't big on facts.
I noticed a little blurb about this while watching the AC Milan/Chelsea game last night. This is really impressive, especially for this sport in America. I definitely did my part on Wednesday.
I was curious to see how many people have attended a MLB game in the same time period. I was depressed to see the over a million people saw a game since Friday. I didn't get actual numbers, but the average attendance this year has been right at 30,000 and there were 46 games since Friday. That comes out to 1,380,000.
I think the baseball numbers are irrelevant to this incredible set of numbers for July. We will need to bring in the baseball/basketball etc numbers into the discussion when we try to measure at what position soccer is relevant to the big 4. For now the discussion centers on the fact that these numbers are amazing for SOCCER, a sport that was an after though only a few years ago.
UPDATE: Here's the numbers for July, with a week more MLS action, the last two WFC games, and the GC Final: Code: MLS 406322 MLS Friendlies 92289 WFC 336813 GC 468688 GRAND TOTAL 1304112 One more game to go in July, that being the MLS All-Star game.
This is very interesting, that more people have attended MLS games in July than have attended World Football Challenge games. Granted, MLS is a lot more games, but it's still interesting.
Here are the final numbers for July: MLS---------------406322 MLS Friendlies-----112409 WFC---------------336813 GC-----------------468688 GRAND TOTAL----1324232 Since there are a few "summer of soccer" matches taking place in August too (like the 93,000 that saw LA-Barca), I'll work those in for a "Summer of Soccer" total. Here it is so far: MLS----------------478651 MLS Friendlies------205546 WFC---------------336813 GC---------------- 468688 GRAND TOTAL----1489698 1.5 million in the month from July 3 through August 2. There's one more "summer of soccer" game to go, I'd say, which is Barca-Seattle on the 5th. Another 60k+ there will give you about 1.56 million.
Real Madrid I believe also plays a match or two coming up. Additionally weren't there CONCACAF Champs League games played over the past couple months? I know many are in other North American cities, but I'm sure a few were held in US.
Also North American Superliga in July games probably got 5k-10k in attendence EDIT: ok, Wikipedia says 8,026 attended a CONCACAF CL game at RFK on the 28th. Additionally 7,215 were at both Superliga matches last month. That makes a total of 1,512,154 total attendence.
CCL just started, and I did not include either it or SL in the "summer of soccer" numbers, but I could add them in.
Superliga Stats: http://web.superliga2009.com/stats/ 12 games, total attendance 86,948 They have the final yet to play.