Excellent number from the Cosmos last home game of the regular season, same for Ft Lauderdale and the rest as well. A very solid weekend for the NASL!
I don't know if these numbers will translate to the future, but to me it seems a good thing that the last games had solid attendance numbers for each of these teams - last week too. Certainly beginning the season on a strong note is good, but ending that way is good too. Would seem to indicate momentum going into the Soccer Bowl!!! - and more importantly momentum for next year. Fingers crossed for today's game.
3085 In Edmonton today. Will be interesting to see the final 2014 NASL numbers, think they should have broken the D2 record for highest average attendance.
I can feel the sheer unadulterated giddiness in your post! Before you know it people will start using numbers to define what version of NASL this is… NASL 2.1 perhaps?
Kenn, As the attendance expert, how is NASL's attendance average relative to the rest of the world's second divisions? I believe I saw that MLS ranks 8th or 9th in the world in first division attendance, for example. Just wondering if you knew where NASL sits in that regard.
Found this to partially answer my own question: http://comparetheleagues.com/european-league-stats/second-divisions/ Compared to European leagues, NASL would rank 6th in attendance behind Germany, England, France, Spain and Italy's D2s. So probably similar overall to MLS's ranking relative to D1s. I would imagine Mexico, Argentina and Brazil's D2 leagues might be higher in attendance. That's a great sign for the growth of the game in this country.
The 2nd Bundesliga is red hot http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/...-bundesliga/2014-15/zuschauer-der-saison.html
I could find figures, but I'm not so sure about Argentina and Brazil. Both of their division 1s are ranked below the USA in attendance. Looking at the bottom of Argentina's D1 league, the bottom 5 have very NASL esque attendance figures.
Here are some East Asian D2 figures for benchmarking. Japanese J2 finished this weekend with the average of 6,589; individual teams ranged from 12,733 to 3,317. Chinese League One averaged 5,334; individual teams ranged from 13,254 to 1,383. Korean K League Challenge averaged 1,211; individual teams ranged from 3,197 to 584. (For the sense of context, the first division K League Classic averaged 8,064 this year.)