In the same way that gymnastics, swimming and track & field are 4-year sports -- i.e. no mainstream american coverage and interest except for olympics? I ask because I hear more and more comments like "don't really care for soccer but I like World Cup."
It's not really like any of those sports. If anything (and I really hate this comparison) it's like hockey, where you have a domestic league that is only watched by hardcore fans. Then, every four years, casual fans rally around the team. But it's not like gymnastics, where the only people who follow those gymnasts during the non-olympic years are their families.
For many Americans it is, that's where these big viewing numbers are coming from, all the every 4 years folks are checking in and joining up with the disparate soccer fans in this country, who spend the rest of the time watching their own league of interest and only tune in together for the World Cup.
So what? MLS will almost certainly get a little 'bump' from the WC and probably win over a few new fans. And it's not as if there aren't any other soccer events getting big attention. The Euro Cup and the Champions League have been getting better and better ratings as well lately...and that probabably translates into small but not insignificant increase in attention to our domestic league as well. I agree with the analogy to hockey...MLS will most likely remain a league which only appeals to die hard soccer fans and, when the team is successful, to a larger circle of sports fans in local markets. And that's fine--in a country this big, that's plenty to keep the league afloat.
Sorry but was it only in my house that the Champions League final was shown on FOX? Because I could swear that a European club competition final was shown on Fox. I'm just getting sick of this discussion. I'm sick of the whiny butthurt ********** insecurity of a lot of American soccer fans (you guys are like Sally Field - you LIKE ME, YOU REALLY LIKE ME!), and I'm sick of the whiny ********** insecurity of American sports fans who keep thinking that LeBron James would be better than Pele and Maradona combined even though no 6'8" soccer player has ever done jack-shit in soccer ever.
Amen brother! I hate comments like "MLS will only appeal to hardcore american soccer fan's." And "Soccer will be a niche sport in america". You guy's are worse than the haters. Grow some balls and quit being sniveling little fools. Last time i checked,MLS average attendance was 16,000 plus. That's close to NBA and NHL averages. I attended a Seattle Sounders game this april and there were 36K fan's at the match. The New York Red Bulls just moved into the best soccer stadium in North America. Have some confidence and enjoy the ride.
Well, yes, they do fill a lot of seats. But those people are pretty much the only people watching. MLS TV ratings are appallingly low. Even the MLS Cup Final only drew a .7 rating. That's 75% lower than the number of people who tuned into the Euro 2008 Final. FSC only gets about 44,000 viewers per game. Compare that MLS Cup number to the NBA Finals this year, which had almost 19 million viewers. So yes, MLS at this point is mostly for hardcore fans. And they're the ones that are filling the seats. Quite literally, no one else is watching. And I say all this as a life-long MLS fan.
It may not be much, but the growth of the Nordecke supporter section in Columbus has been through grassroots efforts to get people interested in the sport. But also, get interested in the mentality that yes, you CAN be involved in the match and not merely sit on asscheeks while the scoreboard or PA monkey tells you how to cheer like other American sports.
Is soccer a four year sport? For casual fans, yeah I'd say it is. But why are people acting like that's a bad thing? A decade ago it wasn't even on that level. More to the point being an every four year sport for the casual fan is hardly soccer's ceiling as a sport like it is for Track, Swimming, etc. It's a slow and steady climb when it comes to mainstream interest, and people on here really shouldn't let it get to them one way or another.
If we had a major tournament every 2 years, like a new pan-american cup (rather than the useless gold cup), there would be more opportunity for generating new fans, media interest, etc.. We should combine confeds with comnebol, or else we should have a new pan american cup to replace the gold cup and copa america.
right now it is but it doesn't have to be that way. Putting MLS aside there is enough international competition to keep the national team in the spotlight more than just during world cup years. There is the Gold Cup, Confederations Cup and Copa America(when he enter it) The Gold Cup is our Confederations Championship but it gets horrible publicity. Part of this is because FSC in my opinion does a really poor job with the competition. It also doesn't help that most of the games aren't even televised in english. I think the Gold cup needs totally new branding and a partnership with another broadcaster preferably ESPN. Say what you want about espn but they did an awesome job with Euro 2008 and have done an awesome job with this World Cup. Still the Gold Cup is not that intriguing of a competition when you consider there are really only two good teams in the whole competition - USA and Mexico and the rest of the teams aside from Costa Rica and Honduras would be considered minnows. When all but 4 teams in your competition are minnows there isn't going to be a lot of interest from the general public. That's why I think the USA should be a regular fixture in Copa America just as Mexico is. We should enter that tournament every time and send our best squad (unlike last time when we sent the b squad and went home 0-3). A tournament with the US going up against the likes of Brazil, Argentina, etc for a chance to be crowned champions of the Americas could be sold to the American public. Hell, espn got great ratings for euro 2008, just think what they could do with a Copa America with the U.S. i think it's very important for the sport in this country for the US to have an important tournament between world cups. Not only to keep American public interest between world cup but also the extra competition would only make the team better. I don't think the Gold Cup is every going to be that kind of cup. The Copa America has much more potential to provide this kind of interest
would love a pan american cup and yes the gold cup is useless but south america is not getting rid of the copa america which has been a competition since like 1917. i also wouldn't want to combine concacaf with conmebol for the simple fact it would make it more difficult for us to qualify for the world cup. (unless there was a guarantee that we kept the same qualifying zones)
If we do'nt combine, then there is no way we could send our A team to the copa america given club policies, focus on gold cup, etc... so that won't work
I understand the soccer/hockey comparisons aren't meant to be exact but it's still funny when the Champion's League final draws a worse rating than an NHL playoff game featuring a team from Montreal and people continue to insist that soccer has surpassed hockey.
It might be because the 2010 Stanley Cup finals featuring teams from the 3rd and 4th biggest markets in the country drew a 3.4 avg. rating, which ABC's average WC broadcast might beat. And while I enjoyed the CL final, teams from italy and germany don't attract support like teams from england or spain in this country, so a Man U-Barcelona final probably would have doubled the ratings.
so we're going to compare an annual event to the biggest sporting event in the world, which is held every 4 years? that seems fair. oh okay, so soccer is more popular when American teams are involved? Good, then... explain why NHL regular season games on a 4th rate channel like Versus get better ratings than the MLS Cup.
It's not just soccer. Any sport gets much better ratings when there's an American club/country is involved. I shouldn't have to tell an NHL fan that. Imagine one of the teams in the Champions league was an American club with similar budget of the other Euro team... First, NHL regular season average on Versus is like 300k, not much different than MLS regular season numbers on ESPN2 and Univision (probably more if you combined them which wouldn't be too unfair when judging popularity of the league given the mostly different set of eyeballs the two channels get). But no one is saying MLS is more popular than the $100 mil+ budget NHL with no major internal competition and with more than half a century worth of history, as the playoff numbers are much different and a lot higher for the NHL. You're talking about soccer's popularity (of which MLS is only a small part) in America.
But this isn't making sense. Are you saying an MLS match would have beaten that NHL playoff game? Because as far as I'm aware no MLS match ever has drawn that kind of number. I have no idea what you're saying. Hey, here in Detroit we get CBC... why don't I just combine those in with the NHL's ratings. Come on. I think we all know if the NHL was on ESPN2 in primetime it would average a lot better ratings than 300,000 people a game. And that average lies... the highest rated MLS games on ESPN2 are still well below the highest NHL ratings on Versus. First off, the NHL's profits are like $1.6 billion. Secondly... let me see if I feel you here: The NHL is more popular than MLS, but less popular than soccer. But when the most prestigious club soccer competition in the world gets beaten in the ratings by an NHL game it doesn't count because no American team was involved. So what would have beaten the NHL game?
No. In MLS' current state (i.e. 2.5 mil dollar salary cap) it wouldn't. But that's not because soccer has less fans than hockey (only that MLS has less fans than NHL). There are millions of casual soccer fans in America that don't think they have a high-quality league based in America with many of the best players in the world (i.e with American clubs in it like in NHL or NBA). Imagine the Seattle soccer scene in 2007. The Sounders were playing in the USL (with budget less than $1 mil) and were drawing less than 5,000 fans a game and who knows how low TV ratings. Does that mean Seattle had that few soccer fans? No. There were tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands more, that were waiting for better quality team in a better quality league. Enter 2009 and you see over 35,000 people going to the Sounders game and getting much better local and national TV ratings. But even that doesn't mean that's all the soccer fans Seattle has. There are many, many more that are waiting for even better quality team/league in America. Bring on MLS 2.0 or whatever with $5-10 mil salary cap and the numbers would increase proportionately. Same in Toronto and every other market in the US and Canada. If MLS was operating on NHL's budget, the support would be close to NHL's IMO, if not higher (although revenues would likely be less). CBC is not an American based channel and almost the whole country doesn't get that channel. And by the way, NHL was on ESPN networks for a while and we saw how it did. Even Mexican league soccer beat that easily at that time and still do. You probably mean revenues (although the actual revenues is higher than that). The operating income is about 200 mil total for 30 teams which is not bad but almost half the teams are actually losing money. Imagine that for a league that's been around for more than 60 years. And by the way, revenues and profits don't necessarily portray an accurate picture of the popularity of a sport. Five billionaires could spend $1 billion each following polo and the sport would have $5 billion in revenues. It wouldn't necessarily count as a very popular sport. That Champions league final maybe the most prestigious competition in Europe but it's not necessarily in America, among the American soccer fans. Again many of us didn't watch that because we don't really care about two teams from another continent, especially in a competition with no American clubs in it. The same way I wouldn't bother watching Panathanikos basketball club vs CSKA Moskow in the Euro-league basketball final. For any league/competition to have vast majority of the American soccer fans (and other soccer fans) following it has to be one of the best soccer leagues in the world (the way NBA and NHL are) and it has to be based in America with American teams competing. Until then I think world cup, with 700+ of the best players in the world, will provide the next best thing for the majority of them and they will follow that (and their 'local team' - USA) passionately for a month.
soccer is already more popular than hockey in this country. soccer is the most popular national team sport in the country. You don't see people in the bars rooting for the USA NBA team or the USA hockey team. Nobody cares about the national basketball, baseball or hockey teams.
Completely shitty post on your part. If you're gonna show a guy up with rolleyes posts, you'll want to actually be right next time. You won't want to read a comment about hockey that wasn't there. I know you wanna feel insulted, but first you might read the ********ing thread and figure out he wasn't talking particularly to you or about you.