I don't totally agree with this article but the sports beat writers really see blood here. They have their knives out. Soccer just won’t sell in U.S. http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2003/sports/20030917011958.shtml Mike Lopresti Gannett News Service September 17th, 2003
Precisely. The author of the above article has severely failed to notice reality -- MLS attendance is growing. Slowly, indeed, but it's growing nonetheless. And MLS is doing a decent job of making fans of the millions of youngsters on the pitch today. Before long, those youngsters will be adults buying tickets of their own.
LoPresti is a notorious soccer basher who usually writes about bowling, NASCAR, wife-beating gridiron football players, etc. Ignore him. Here's a comment I made on NAS about the article:
Re: didn't read article Yeah, it was an article about soccer as a spectator sport in the US, in general. Shouldn't be here.
Re: Re: didn't read article Always have to come on threads even though you are wrong and act like you are right. Just admit that you did not read the article originally until I pointed it out. Who made you boss of this forum? Do you act this way all the time on this forum, a "know it all." Do you think just because you have over 7,400 posts that everybody is going to bow down to you?
Re: Re: Re: didn't read article Dear Republic of Texas' resident: Don't be so hard on Superdave. We have enjoyed one too many of his posts. And to write that many isn't that easy. We are beginners in comparison to his "soccer fanatic virtues.."
I don't think that anyone should be worried about an article like this. As one person pointed out here, every sport that we have here STARTED on a small scale. just 25 years ago, despite numerous championships by a Boston Celtic franchise, NOONE watched basketball seriously. my older friends say that you could walk up to an arena during the finals and buy a ticket at the door. A few years later with Bird, Magic, Erving, and later Jordan & Co., people were tripping over themselves to get to regular season games. This is a building process, and anyone with normal common sense did not expect this to happen overnight. The reason the WUSA failed is the same reason that the WNBA would have failed years ago if not for the NBA paying their bills ............ men, who control most of the money in this country, WILL NOT WATCH WOMENS SPORTS. Therefore, potential sponsors won't put their money into womens leagues, and the leagues will fail. It's happened over and over again, and nothing has changed. MLS will survive, and will eventually flourish.
Further proof of this statement was in the press today...ConAgra Foods withdrew its sponsorship of golf's Skins Games. The move is not expected to affect the men's Skins Game or the Senior Skins Game...however it does put the Womens' Skins Game in jeopardy as ConAgra had been the Womens' Skins Game's title sponsor.