Soccer the #5 spectator sport in Houston poll

Great find.

Couple interesting snippets of general interest for people who may not be particularly interested in Houston:

Re demographic change and fragmentation of sports interests:

Re Hispanics and soccer:

We've been talking about these trends for a while, but it's always good to see numbers.

 

Wow--Houston appears to be one of the final bastions of boxing fans in this country.

MLS is certainly already aware of a survey such as this.

Clearly, if owners and stadiums were not an issue, Houston would be MLS's top choice, hands down, even if Phlly and Detroit are bigger markets.

 

Actually, boxing does pretty well with the same latino demographic that drives up soccer's popularity in that market.

 

Fer sure.

And also the fact that George Foreman is a local celeb and very active in the community (when he's not grilling). There's a lot of pro/semi-pro and youth boxing in Houston with fighters coming in numbers from both the Latino and African-American communities. Foreman and his brother are also local promoters.

 

...or #3

And what's also interesting is soccer gets the 3rd most respondents (11%) in the "very high interest" category, only behind football (23%) and baseball (13%). Boxing got 10%, golf and auto racing=6%, tennis=5%, and basketball=5%.

It's just too dang bad we don't have a local MLS team that could have been put into the comparison hopper for the other poll question that involve the Rockets, Texans, Aeros, Comets, and Astros.

And one other interesting thing is that this poll shows that hockey, which is sort of the darling sport among many of the local sports radio talk jocks, is easily the most despised sport of all (other than horse/dog racing, which of course are just gambling events). I generally like hockey, but I do think it's gotten a disproportionately large share of media attention among sports pundits.

 

Re: ...or #3

I'd bet that Chivas could at least beat out the Aeros and Comets, and maybe even give the Texans a run for their money.

Actually, part of the reason that we don't hear more soccer on English-language sports talk radio in Houston is that much of that 44% is probably listening to Radio Unica (1230 AM) instead. Not sure how much more audience guys like Carl Dukes or Kenny Hand would get if they talked seriously about soccer.

 

What makes this pole so significant is that BigSoccer posters didn't have an opportunity to skew it.

 

Hispanics = Boxing fans.

 

But would this big Hispanic population turn up to MLS games. I think stadium location is key.

 

It's hard to really estimate accurately, but the stadium situtation would only be very helpful in terms of attracting many Hispanic fans. An MLS team in Houston would most likely play in either Reliant Stadium (the Texans' shiney new place) or Roberston Stadium (35,000 cap., wide grass field, on the campus of the Univ. of Houston).

Robertson is located in the East Side of Houston, which has a large Hispanic population. But Hispanics are very widely distributed throughout the Houston metro area. UH is next to a major freeway and not far from two others.

Robertson has also hosted many friendlies and Pre-Pre-Libertadores featuring Mexican clubs over the last few years. Those games draw well enough to bring the Pre-Pre and friendlies back for more on a regular basis. The recent U-20 match between the US and Mexico was also held there and drew pretty well, IMHO, for being held on the heels of a torrential rainstorm.

Most Hispanics in the Houston area probably also know how to get to Reliant. It forms part of a complex, Reliant Park (formerly Astrodomain), that includes the Astrodome and is just across a freeway from Astroworld (the Six Flags park in Houston). The Reliant Park campus also houses the old AstroArena and AstroHall facilities, which would, from time to time, host Tejano and other concerts, area hs and juco graduations, various community gatherings, etc. The complex is located relatively centrally and next to a loop freeway that makes it easily accessible from most parts of town.

Another likely factor favor of Hispanic support for MLS in Houston is that the local Spanish-language media may be very supportive.

On the way to the US-Mexico U-20 match, I had my radio tuned into one of the local Spanish-language sports-talk shows on which the host was cajoling his audience to get out to Robertson because they needed to support soccer in Houston. That station also had an on-site reporter who would call in from Robertson to tell the audience that the rain wasn't really so bad and that it's no problem getting out there and parking.

That was US-Mexico, but the local Spanish-language tv and radio stations have given some coverage to US and MLS games from time to time. MLS has gotten relatively good ratings in Houston, and I'd be willing to bet that much of that audience is Hispanic. I may be overly-optimistic, but I think the local Hispanic media would be all over an MLS club.

 

They should call the team the Houston Tejanos or something like that.

 

As long as they stay away from Tex-Mex culinary influences that would work.

Something that also works in Spanish would indeed be very helpful. It's just about sending the right signals. For better or worse, people draw some conclusions about your product based, in part, on the sort of image you project.

Then again, Dallas seems to be doing well enough with Los Burns.

 

Re: ...or #3

It just confirms what I already knew to be true: soccer is far more popular in Houston than hockey. And its not just Hispanics, either. You're absolutely right: far too many of Houston's sports radio "personalities" are from the Northeast. Consequently, hockey gets disproportionately greater coverage than it deserves, and soccer gets the short end of the stick. Interestingly, the only guy on 610 who likes soccer is Matt Jackson, a native Houstonian.