But we don't have the luxury of having the most dominant and popular sport in the land. So you fans that come to games dictate where the top clubs go in recent times. In england your team gets relegated you're probably going to keep watching and going to games. In New York if my team gets relegated,I'll just switch over to the Yankees, Mets, Rangers, Knicks or islanders....
Or you can do what football fans, baseball fans, basketball fans and hockey fans do, which is to find a team you enjoy watching that's not literally in your back yard.
I'm not being funny but to me that just seems odd! This is what I mean about the differences between 'over there' and 'over here', to us the league champion is the best team, proven by performance on the field, over 38 games you can't argue the fact, however in one off games like the cup games for example in the odd occasion an obviously inferior team can scrape a win.
Elite or local. If I have to watch on broadcast/streaming, why not watch the best instead of guys who are just going to make it harder for my national team to qualify...
It's also a short view of history. Our "national pastime" featured a 7 game serios between 2 different league champions from 1903-1969. College football existed with the champions being "crowned" as the result of polls through the 20th century, professional football a single table champion early on, then 1 game between division winners. Even post merger of leagues, it was originally 3 conference winners and one wildcard, leading to a 3 game postseason. Hockey has always had 2/3rds of it's team's qualify for the post season, but when it was a 6 team league that was still a tidy 2 round affair. It's probably the sport most similar to MLS in that while it had 2/3rds of the teams in the US, most of the players were from elsewhere in North America and few people cared outside of the cities that actually participated. Sure, we can say "well, more eyeballs exist in the desired demographiscs that grew up with the current extended playoff world to keep casuals on the hook landscape" so let's cater to them, and I get that all sports are a business. Yet our favorite sport seems to not be reaping the rewards the other big 4 are.... It's a shame MLS hasn't been able to hook into the "fantasy" sports thing like the NFL. Getting Joe Boxwine in the Cleveland suburbs to suddenly care every week what the Denver Broncos team defense does, and the running back for the Atlanta Falcons, and having 24/7 highlights on ESPN, is like the 2nd greatest trick the devil played after convincing people he didn't exist Elite or local. When provided with neither, and it's easy to find the first, don't be shocked that's what people do....
No but you DO have options if you're not in a major city. College for instance has probably got you covered. My gist is that here in the united States stable entrenched soccer is a new thing a VERY new thing and all the other sports leagues (Which professional soccer leagues compete with for fans attention and money) have a monstrous head start in terms of money, tradition, and cultural significance. Pro/rel won't help change that fact, you need to exist for a long time to combat that advantage and pro soccer here isn't there yet.
It's all theater, hardcore fans want to tell you otherwise but if feyenoord had the success of say Sparta would you be as engaged? Now say there are 4 other sports that you like as much as soccer and they have successful and fun to watch games. You can't see why a fan may just switch off and watch something else until his or her soccer team "sorts it out"?
You forgot "Soccer" fans in this........a lot of soccer fans choose to watch teams from other parts of the World. There's pluses and minuses to both ways. On the one hand, being the most consistent team over a lengthy season shows a teams excellence. Excellence in all facets: roster construction, coaching, scouting, health, performance, depth, etc. There's also merit in a team's ability to "step up" and perform in a do or die, win or go home, winner take all playoff format. This shows excellence in health (short turn around), scouting & preparation (don't know next opponent ahead of time), coaching/game planning, depth, etc. We like to one about "playing for better draft choices" yet that isn't what teams are doing. Outside of MLB and the NBA pro athletes are paid based off of on field performance. Draft picks are a mechanism to help with the illusion of league parity. Seriously, if draft picks are the be all end all....the Sabres, Knicks, Oilers, Bengals, Lions, Jets, WFT, Timberwolves, Hornets. etc. wouldn't be consistently terrible for the last 10-20 years (longer in the case of the Lions, Jets, & Knicks).
Did you watch the game? New England didn't look like an obviously inferior team to me, and I'm a Union fan. New England beat us in every way. They deserved the win.
So, minor leagues again. I’ll concede that I’m exceptional, with regards to the fact that I don’t care about football, baseball, basketball, or hockey- but there are plenty of people in this country that only care about one or two sports. There’s a very “let them eat cake” vibe going on from those that live within a bounty of sporting riches.
You could equally argue that had to do with Philadelphia being idle for too long vs. the Revs playing. I would say it’s a combination of a lot of things.
I agree “playing for draft picks” is pretty isolated to basketball and baseball. I think football is only immune to it due to a few things outside the owner/GM’s control: the small number of games; the shortness of player careers; but mostly that with so many players involved in a game, bad teams are just bad with no coordination necessary from the front office. You still see teams that have given up come December, though. It’s not a given that they’d continue to fight under threat of having to play the Northern Kentucky River Monsters next season but my guess is that the FO wouldn’t be complacent about it. On the other hand, playoffs are fine. Crown your champion however you think will bring the most entertainment to your fans.
Following up on this, the concern about tanking is that it’s the FO equivalent of diving: it’s a wholly unethical means of trying to gain advantage. The problem is that with diving, there are penalties for getting caught whereas there is basically no disincentive for tanking and, in fact, it may be even easier to not even actively tank. Simply showing up every season may yield the best ROI for a major league franchise owner (which may also explain why you don’t see it in football).
The Union did look flat, and that has to have been a factor, but I don't know that it was enough of a factor to justify labeling the Revs as an "obviously inferior" team.
Well the vast majority of Manchester United and Chelsea fans are theater goers. Even a lot locals don't physically go and watch as most of the seats are taken by season ticket holders.
I saw a struggling second division Chelsea beat a European Champion Liverpool once, for 90 minutes Liverpool absolutely bombarded our goal, hit the post God knows how many times, Chelsea keeper (Peter Barota I think) made save after save with his hands, feet, head, ears, backside, whatever, they must have had the ball for 88 of the 90 minutes..........and yet a flukey goal on the break won it for the blues - now if Chelsea were declared as the Champions, and therefore best team in the country based on that one game it would have been an absolute travesty! If that game had been played a hundred times Liverpool would have probably won 99 of them! After all league games were played that year both clubs final standings were so very obviously a MUCH truer reflection of which team was the better team. :-D.
I show up to Thansgiving and my dad, who is not a huge soccer fan, is wearing a Crawley Town Red Devils t shirt. He started watching EPL this year when my son invited him to play EPL fantasy league. He scanned all the leagues and decided Crawley Town had the best name. No point to this story, just a Crawley Town shirt.
Crawley is where I'm now living, the club could do with whatever support it can get! Because it's a 'new town' developed after the last war to help re-house displaced Londoners it means most brought their London club allegiances with them. It's actually one of the smallest clubs in the pro leagues, small stadium (good atmosphere though), I have attended a few games myself but because I originate from the outskirts of London my true allegiance lies elsewhere.
There's also a very entitled vibe among certain advocates. It took a century to develop there but we want it now!! It took half a century to develop here but we want it now!! We want other people to bear the burden and take the financial risks but we'll complain when they make a profit. And all because: England!
Portsmouth went from FA Cup glory to biggest financial basketcase in English football in under 2 yrs. Features a cast so bizarre if you wrote it as fiction it’d be dismissed as too silly to be credible. Football Uncovered Ep3: https://t.co/pW9lLqID6K— Nick Harris (@sportingintel) November 27, 2020