Soccer is growing, you hear it here all the time. For those that hold this view, is there an explanation for these mostly declining rating numbers?
the first two where you see 1.4's where not only the first ever in this country, they were HUGE DEALS. advertising to which MLS wishes it could do now. obviously you lose the hype the decline in numbers is a drop which has to be done. just like in the animal kingdom. there is a rise, until the population has to plumet before it can rise again. heres to a mighty future
The first two in DC sold out, 56k each, foxboro had what like 62k in attendance. thats a huge cut into the viewers
Cool... Atleast there is are solid explanations for this, thanks That explains the decline (not really, but...), where is all the growth I have been hearing about?
Since I became a fan of MLS sometime around 1998/1999 the most hyped game I"ve ever seen was Freddy Adu's first game. I had all my non-soccer playing friends actually talk about the game and show some interest in it. I think the ratings for that game we around 1.4. MLS needs more hype, the question is how to go about getting it.
Even if the ratings are stagnant, the attendance is above 15K per game, and getting the stadiums in place means we're making progress. Once MLS becomes profitable, that's when it will start moving upward.
It's kind of a chicken and the egg question. We need the media to get the word out and treat soccer seriously (as they did in Freddy's case) in order to build hype and curiosity among non-soccer fans. BUT, it seems like we need more hype for soccer just to get the media to take the league seriously and report about it. It's hard for people to get hyped about a soccer league they often dont even know exists b/c of lack of media exposure, but why would the media pick up a league that many people dont know exists? Obviously, I have no real answer, seems like a conundrum to me.
We need to do something here that will make media want to cover us. Apparently, they are just not going to do it out of the goodness of their heart. Create a league where the games have more of those elements the DC United game and people, including the media, will take notice. Then, we might also see some growth in the leagues popularity, not just its infrastructure.
This almost singlehandedly disproves your point. With all of that (mostly free) promotion, 1.4 is the best we could do? MLS is not a significant TV product, and we should not expect it to be anytime soon. And that isn't such a huge insult to the league (though obviously TV could generate big bucks if we could be a pruduct they find attractive). The NHL isn't a very good TV product, either, but they have some of the best 'butt-in-seat' revenue of any league (filling out small stadia pretty well, at very high prices, 40 times a year). Let's just concentrate of filling the stadia, and then worry about TV. It may come at that point, or it might never come, but either way, we'll survive as long as we sell tickets.
I agree with filling the stadiums ofcourse, but the question is, with whom? Now, we just sell tickets to whomever, in order to manufacture a crowd and earn revenue. When your business plan is such, you have to sell these seats every single game. I can see why MLS does this, it's the easier sell. Conversely, if your plan was to actually earn fans, you would only have to sell them one time. Fans like us here, we do not need to be resold game after game after game. We buy without being sold. I can see why this league doesn't actively try building this way; it is the harder sell. A harder sell for sure, but a much more valuable one. It is how this league and the sport is going to grow.. FOR REAL......
I think the point you guys are missing when you analyze these numbers is the fact that MLS is only in 10 markets. Other than those 10 markets, how many people in the rest of the country even know there is a soccer league and if they do how would they know when MLS cup is? The league gets 0 media coverage in markets without a team. I dont think you could really expect to get much more than a .8 rating until you have at least 16-18 markets in the league. Think about it, Some of the biggest markets in the country don't have a team(Philly, Houston, Detroit, San Diego, Seattle and Atlanta) just to name a few. I wouldnt get hung up on these numbers for another 10 years. For now concentrate on expansion, building SSS, and getting solid fan support in each city with a team.
Well taken points. I didn't fully consider how small MLS was forming an opinion on the rating. It is a terrible rating and could be better, but your post puts it in perspective. Still, I don't see much evidence of this fabled GROWTH that I hear about so often. I ofcourse know the league is expanding in terms of teams, stadiums and cash flow. MLS has proven to be somewhat business savy. What they have not proven, to me anyway, is that they have a clue on how to grow the sport. After 9 years and about 1,500 games, they have made remarkably little progress in this area. In many cases, even taking steps backwards. Hopefully someone will come along and show them the way.
It used to be almost twice that (1.4) in the first two years and it was only ten markets then. The fact is the numbers for this event have gone down over 40% since the first year. That is an indication that less people are interested in the product. It means there are people who were into the product then that are not now. We all know that stadiums and financial viability should be priorities but they shouldn't be the only one. At some point people are going to have to admit that the product on the field is uncompelling.
The New England Franchise is and example of what this league is about right now. They are concerned mostly with reducing costs not chasing down more revenue. Too many moves in this league are about reducing costs only. Look at the move to Napier by the Fire or the Move to Southlake by the Burn. If teams are experiencing growth why would such moves be necessary? The motivations in this league that are inspired by the way it is set up seem to be backwards.
The Fire move was out of necessity though there is at least a little wiggle room with whether Naperville was the best spot. Soldier Field wasn't an option as they were busy downgrading-- er, I mean upgrading it. In fact the Fire move being out of necessity is probably why they got away with it and the Burn did not.
In a league with terrible revenue streams, I can see trying to reduce costs. No TV revenue, little merchandise sale and selling only 15,000 tickets a game (well not really, as this number also includes the tons of tickets that are given away. I was party to one event where METRO gave away 1440 tickets, but anyway), so keeping costs down is integral, obviously. What I don't understand is your point; why don't they try to 'chase down revenue'? Selling tickets in this league is akin to bangin your head against the wall. It is sports, not a play. You need to create repeat business. Not one off sales. Create a compelling league that fans actually want to watch and build a base first, then build up the infrastructure around it. Not the other way around.
As you can attest, I have expressed my opinion, ad nauseam, on how I would make the league more compelling. What would you do to make people take notice?
Porland - 0.6/1.4 Share That was behind CBS's coverage of golf at a 2.4 rating and 5.4 share, and NBC's car racing at a 3.8 and 9.4. Fox had NFL at that time, with a 9.4 and a 20 for the game.
A couple of things here. First, it was a new league so you had the curiosity factor at play. Second, all sports across the board have gone down in ratings since 97 so theres no reason to think MLS would be different from say the NHL or MLB in that regard. Even the mighty NFL's ratings are down 10 percent since 99. With the internet and 100's of cable channels people have many more options than they did in 97. I agree they need to put a more compelling product on the field but to think you will have these huge ratings once you have a final with David Beckham playing for LA and Zidane playing for the Metrostars I think is mistaken. Soccer is still a niche sport in the USA and it still needs decades to grow a real fanbase and break out of that category.
I agree with this in part. BUT, how do you explain the lack of growth? Sure the numbers are not going to be huge, but where is the improvement? The upward trend? Forget where the numbers are for a second, why are they not getting better? I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, but I am just curious how the soccer is growing crowd answers to this.
Trying to dissect this issue on the scant figures available is pointless. 1. Anything below a 1.0 is basically equal to a 1.0 because of the margin of error to the best of my knowledge. b. Just giving the overall rating only looks at that figure and ignores the demographics and huge others amounts of data that are only available toTV people and advertisers. iii. If ad time was sold - which I don't believe since I think sponsors get everything - the number is only important relative to what advertisers were promised. Do I wish the ratings were higher? Sure. But I personally am happy that despite low ratings, new investors and new sponsors are coming to the league. Their interest is more important than Nielson ratings for me.
The decline in the ratings has been almost entirely due to novelty. Since '98 or '99, ratings have been stagnant (within the margin of error as monster points out). However, I actually agree with some of the points expressed here by some people who would expect me to reflexively disagree with them: 1- that a relatively boring style has developed over the last couple years that can, in fact, drive fans away (I just think it's a style issue and not a talent issue). 2- that the short term cost-cutting solution is not always the best one (the caveat there being there's a difference between investing and throwing money down a hole). 3- that the die-hard fans are man-for-man far more important than the casual fans, because they do come back, and because they generate the atmosphere that is so important to this game that sometimes it almost surpasses whatever's happening on the field ---------- As to solutions, we get tougher. on point 1: Part of this might with luck cure itself. DC United won the championship with one of the least boring and defensive styles in the league (from 8/11, the point at which they 'turned it around', they went 9-2-4 and scored over 2 goals per game) . Even Paul Gardner expressed grudging admiration for it. (Columbus, by contrast, had 8 wins and 10 ties in their much-vaunted streak). Tim Hankinson is fired, Greg Andrulis is hopefully a dead man walking, leaving the number of really defensive coaches cut in half. Expansion will also, by throwing new defensive players together, probably tilt the balance between offense and defense more in the offense's favor. But the league could help. They could restrict the signings to mostly offensive-minded players (Fewer Vaalikaris and Simutenkovs. More Christian Gomezes and Damani Ralphs, or even Andy Williamses, the inconsistent but exciting types). They could also adopt Eric Wynalda's idea of distributing bonuses (including to the coach) for winning (and only for winning) games. And individual teams could establish the precedent that how your style appeals to the fans is a strong second to your final record in terms of whether you keep your job (coaches are naturally a risk-averse breed). By that standard, I personally would sh--can every defensive-minded coach but Gansler (he's the only one with a real record of success, winning an MLS Cup and an Open Cup this year). Maybe you're more tolerant with a Bradley, since at least Metro scored a lot of goals (give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that no one could have known both Galvan Rey, Eddie Pope, and Johnny Walker could collectively suck). Point 2- A lot of expectations were disappointed at the very beginning of the league. In retrospect, they could have done some things better, perhaps like phasing in the American player requirements (there just weren't enough good ones, no matter how much you paid them), and perhaps having each team with a "cap exempt" player to get the playing level good enough early on to make fans come back. However, there was gonna be a big dropoff no matter what, that's just the nature of the novelty effect (look at the attendance in the first year after the first six weeks or so of the season). You could do more modest versions of that now, but it's always difficult, and rarely worth the effort, to make yourself a second chance at a first impression. Paying money for stadia is also one of those short-term costs the league decided to cut when they founded the league. When Hunt was basically forced into it, however, a funny thing happened: it justified itself and then some. First it gave that second chance at a first impression (with the quality noticeably better by this time), and second it led to a permanent fan increase (they came back). That was a watershed moment in the history of the league, and this is why this is one of the few nuggets of 'conventional wisdom' on BS that I actually agree with. Stadia are not a panacaea, but are more important and more straightforward than anything else, and should come first, before we talk about spending lots of money on promotions or new talent. (Plus, new stadia vastly alter the incentives for things like promotions and spending money on talent, because the marginal revenue for each additional fan goes way up when you cut out all the middlemen). Point 3. I'm pretty satisfied with how DC treats its hard-cores (even moreso after the victory rally where I got to see Kevin Payne up close, walk the pitch at RFK and get a Ryan Nelson autograph). We get deep discounts for tickets, the GM and staff obviously respect us, and most of the in-stadium issues are, until United gets a home (which I am now finally satisfied AEG is working hard at) are beyond United's control. I hear that's also generally been the case in Dallas and Chicago at least. I also know this is not how it works everywhere. I've listened to fans in NE and Colorado say this is not the case. I've heard LA acts basically like it has already hit the bigtime (that's very unfortunate). SJ had some GMs that respected the fans (Johnny Moore), but they've had a revolving door at the position, and would probably benefit from the stability. What I'm saying is it varies vastly place to place. I think an "MLS Constitution" (a series of best practices strongly urged for GMs around the league) might be helpful, but other than that, I really don't know. Chivas's owner seems attuned to the fans and very populist, so perhaps he'll teach the Galaxy a few positive lessons. -- One thing I can tell you is not the solution: Television. TV revenue will be an effect of the league's growth long before it becomes a driver for it. That''s just the history of professional sports. TV launches leagues that are right on the edge of the big-time into the big time. We're just not close enough yet.