http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fox-sports-tv-soccer-world-cup-baseball-375943 Another article written to make us hopeful again, I guess. Anyway, I thought I'd leave this here for you to chew on: Also, as an aside, if you hated the way NBC covered the last Olympics, some of the panelists actually agree with you.
Half way in a 50 year evolution sounds about right. You have to keep in mind how quickly things change. My favorite example is that in the early 80s the NBA Finals was shown on tape delay at 11:30 because the network didn't want to give up prime time. By the 90s it was arguably the biggest sport in the country. Compare soccer to where it was pre-1990 world cup to now and it's an amazing difference. It's hard not to feel that soccer is approaching a tipping point now.
They have 162 games a team and have 30 teams. Yes, their average is higher also, but it's only in the 27-30000 range. That's still impossible for MLS, but just saying 70 million tickets are sold without taking into account the difference in both number of games and teams is deceptive.
Neither the total attendance, nor the per-game average attendance is what really matters. What matters is the total revenue from ticket sales, in other words the amount of money that fans are willing to spend on the sport. Baseball's far longer season doesn't dilute the fans' willingness to pay, game after game. MLB is able to charge as much per ticket as MLS does, despite the fact that it plays about seven times as many games as MLS. Baseball is still way, way ahead.
Baseball's ability to continuously sell so many tickets speaks to a very deep reservoir of cultural attachment to the sport. I know a lot of hipster soccer fans might want to ignore baseball. But more than any other sport in the US, baseball has a fandom that is passed down from generation to generation.
I agree with this statement. One thing that works in the favor of MLS is the league is set up to be on a hard salary cap with just DP's to get around it and MLB just has a luxury tax. With these ways of running the league, MLS has the advatage of being more balanced with teams having a better chance of coming back from a basement performance and reaching the playoffs is more consistent. As bad as TFC's 6 years in a row of no playoffs is bad, recently the O's broke their streak and the Pirates have a 20 year streak. That can really take a toll on paying customers.
To be fair Baseball's has managed to have parity despite its own rules. In the last 11 years there's been 9 different champions, and all the teams save three (Pirates, Royals, Blue Jays) have made the playoffs in that time period. You must remember despite having 30 teams MLB has the same amount of teams in the playoffs as MLS, and that only changed this year.
I was under the distinct impression that baseball has already been usurped as the national pastime. It is painfully obvious that soccer will become one of the major sports in this country. Whether it will become the pastime, or the national sport, is irrelevant.
So MLB has 25 times the amount of ticket revenue and 3.32 times the amount of ticket revenue per regular season game if you use the number of regular season games MLS has this season.
As crazy as it sounds the MLS and soccer in America in general is growing at a impressive rate. Kids are playing soccer from their youth but not only are more players sticking with it as they get older but more and more children are playing. America is in a critical period of recognizing soccer as an important part of its country and you may be surprised but it may catch baseball eventually. The MLS ticket sales have already surpassed basketball.
It doesn't sound crazy that MLS and American soccer are growing at an impressive rate. That's visible all around us. It doesn't even sound crazy that soccer "may catch baseball eventually" since "eventually" can be a long, long time. But I'm not expecting it in my lifetime.
Some years ago that sounded crazy and to some who experience the time when soccer was not very prominent probably would be surprised. Also internationals especially the elder ones never saw the US as a place where soccer was taken as serious as places in Europe. This is slowly changing, Some of the best players in the world are more and more showing interest in moving from Europe to America and also more and more Europe have become more interested in players in America something that was rare in previous times.
In regard to the best players in the world playing in America, PELE, Best, Cryuff and some guy named Franz Baking powder were here in the 70's. The foreign players that the MLS is attracting, well.....
Baseball is big in baseball markets (NYC, Chicago, Boston, to name a few) and probably always will be. But in markets with little or no MLB presence, it is dying a quick death. Your average sports loving kid doesn't give two craps about baseball these days.
Yea, that league owns MLS! There's no way MLS can compete with this super league. Why would Cristiano Ronaldo wanna play in MLS when he can play in NASL circa 1978?! MLS will die a miserable, lonely death while NASL 1978 will dominate forever!
Most american born kids cant player soccer small sided by themselves for a long time with just three players. But you can go to a hand ball court and you can do anything all you need is an imagination. You can go to a tennis court and player soccer tennis soccer volleyball even soccer basketball In baseball all you need is a bat and a ball and three players and a field. You can hit them out and the others field and you imagine your hitting a home run. You can do that for hours.
Sure. I've had a partial season ticket plan for the Nationals ever since they moved to DC. I'm a fan of baseball and have been since I was a kid.
I just saw the Yankees play just before the playoff. I sat in a box bought by my Sons company. Meals included you go get a all the food you want cooked the way you want free. It was great shak was there, and other celebrities. Even while your watching the game order off the menu with waiters. If you had to pay for tickets like this it would cost you 300 dollars a ticket. What lower income people can afford a ticket like this. No more guys running around saying beer here.
Few fans can afford tickets like that at any sporting event. The box seats at soccer stadiums in the US aren't full of regular Joes, either. On the other hand, the cheapest baseball tickets here in DC are $10 or less.