I was wondering if anyone knows the average and /or mean age of the MLS fans attending matches? I am thinking that it is probably younger than most other sports.
It's not very clear, but the leagues are in alphabetical order: MLB, MLS, NASCAR, NBA, NFL, NHL. Fan Demographics Among North American Sports Leagues
Some decent stats there. I'm a bit confused on the Race/Ethnicity, Household Income, Time Spent on Internet per Week, and Internet Use Past 30 days as none of these add up to 100%... Race/Ethnicity stats add up to over 100%...while the others tend to trend below 100%...not sure what is up with the data...
Likely for some of the self-identifying demographic questions, respondents could select more than one category (for mixed race/ethnicity for example) or not be required to answer certain questions (about income for example). And the income categories list in this published portion of the data set doesn't include the +$75K range, so it is not inclusive of all possibilities that were likely asked in the survey.
Spanish/Hispanic is a sub-set of the three offerings. So likely it was a race/ethnicity question and then a secondary Spanish/Hispanic descent. So a respondant could indicate caucasian and hispanic.
An equally relevant point is that the study only includes MLS fanbase, without taking soccer as a whole into account. Potentially that research looks even better for soccer. That ESPN study from this year that put soccer as the 2nd most popular sport among 12-24 year olds just adds weight to that link (even if that link is from 2010). I know this thread is just about MLS, but its the demographic for the entire sport is relevant to MLS as well. If you give any of these studies to trends analysts, they wouldn't have to think very hard about what all this means. Which makes me worried about the intelligence of people who still claim that it will never catch up to the other leagues. Can you imagine a professional research paper eschewing empirical evidence based on emotive arguments like the "its just too slow and theres not enough scoring" and being accepted by industry journals and peers? The days the early pioneers of the game pined for are well and truly in the near future. I read quite a lot in the media about other sports like basketball, baseball, cricket and so on and how they project future growth on some vague grounds, like a sold out stadium, or good ratings for a particular event. Yet despite tracking the growth of sports around the world, I keep coming to the same conclusion: that soccer is the only sport that is growing at a very noticeable pace. I'm not saying other sports aren't growing, but their rate is almost negligible, or quite often, completely overstated by zealous spokespeople. Strange for a sport that has very few places on earth where it doesnt already enjoy widespread popularity, but the trends are similar across every country I track. The main trend is that soccer is popular among youths of countries where soccer is not traditionally the mainstream sport. Whether its Japan, the US, Canada, India, Venezuela, or Cuba, all the research points to the same thing. In Japan and the US/Can, that movement is already reaching the end of the first 20-year cycle, and the fruits of the labor are about to very visible in the 2nd 20-year cycle. If people still wonder why this is happening today, and why it failed for over a century, then the answers are staring them right in the face. Never before has the sport had an outlet for visibility outside the mainstream media as it does today. Actually, the uptake of cable television and internet is probably the single most important development in the history of US soccer. Sure, youth participation is up there, but without channeling that interest - as the internet and international sport on TV has done - is remains untapped potential in the face of apathetic national media. Those elements feed into, what is now, a stable domestic professional league. The tipping point probably won't arrive for another 10-15 years, but when it does it won't come with bells and whistles. Most people will just wake up one day and not know a time when soccer wasn't a relevant sport, which sucks for all the people that supported the game in the (painfully slow) growth phase. And, as with the growth in other countries with similar trends, their growth also appears entirely based on television access and internet as well. Even if you cite national team success as a reason, you can't really include that without television and the internet.
Just from what I have seen I would say between 24-30 for the most part. But you also have a lot of family's. I would say those are the two primary audiences. Adults with their young kids and the just out of college young professional type.