The All-Encompassing Pro/Rel Thread on Soccer in the USA

Perhaps you should look at US attendances for NCAA gridiron football. Several (including my beloved Penn State Nittany Lions) draw over 100 K in attendance. What Premier League club draws this?

 

What city is Penn State? are there another 13 NCAA gridiron football clubs in the city? Anyway did you see my list of London clubs and their attendances? At a guess I'd say that Spurs, Arsenal, Chelsea and West Ham would all get 100'000 if their stadiums were big enough, but obviously none of them have a stadium that big so its guess work.....still I think if there was just the one club in London I reckon they would get 400'000-500'000 every game (if ever a stadium that big could be built). I base this assumption on the amount of spectators that go to the London stadiums as per the list I posted earlier.

I'm not sure what this has to do with my original argument though?

 

Same reason them finishing 18th and quallifying for the playoffs would hopefully interest me. Because it's part of the competition in a league that I am attempting to become interested in.

Burnley is 12 miles to the east Preston is 10 miles to the west. Bolton is 15 miles south and the Mega clubs of Merseyside and Manchester are less than an hour away.

So to keep with your Frisco analogy it would be like Denton having a USL club that gets over 10,000, Plano having a mediocre MLS side and Dallas and Ft Worth each having MLS teams with the support of Seattle or Atlanta.

 

Frisco has the Dallas Cowboys, the Dallas Stars, FC Dallas, the Frisco Fighters, the Frisco Roughriders, The Texas Legends and the Arlington Renegades. That's just the pro sports.

 

Dallas has 1.3 million inhabitants, Blackburn 117,000 - also despite what a lot of people 'that side of the pond' thinks there is more sporting options than just football in the UK! Also Blackburn has Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bolton, Bradford, Stoke, Huddersfield, Nottingham, Middlesbrough, Hull, Derby (to name but a few) all closer by than Austin is to Dallas and all in competition for eyeballs.

 

Let's not forget that Texas has a lot of high school football teams that draw 10,000+...

 

LA does have the Galaxy, LAFC, the Chargers, Rams, Kings, Dodgers, Clippers, Lakers, USC football and basketball, and UCLA football and basketball. Those are just the major sports.

 

Yeah because their priority is to make the most money for their investors NOT to create the best competition. Not to say they are intentionally making their competitions worse but if creating a better competition is at odds with increasing the value of their investments they are going to reasonably choose the latter. Which I understand, never said I didn't. But that doesn't mean that a closed league is better, just that it makes the owners more money.

I've used the hamburger analogy before. There is a local burger shack by the beach called Rocky's. Imho it makes the best burgers in town and obviously much better than Mcdonalds. But Mcdonalds makes a lot more money, and of course is not about to turn into a burger shack at the beach. But the fact that Mcdonald's isn't willing to change to being a burger shack at the beach doesn't mean they make better burgers. Just means their model makes them more money.

Same with pro/rel, the owners wanting to stick with a closed league makes sense. But doesn't mean that it's better, well at least for non owners.

 

I mean not really relevant but how many pro sports does greater (controversy including Merseyside) Lancashire have? I mean just football clubs in the league I counted 11 off the top of my head. That's before we talk about Rugby League, Basketball, Hockey and Lancashire County Cricket.

This isn't meant as some competition just pointing out what you already know that Blackburns catchment area is pretty narrow because they are surrounded by other clubs.

 

Centre County has 162 K people, to answer your original question.

 

A city with the population of 117k in the UK works so well when it comes to soccer because it is the most popular sport there. A city with the population of 117k here in the US with an MLS (or USL or lower league) team won't work. A big majority of those 117k people living in a city here in the US won't be into soccer like they are in UK. Pro/Rel won't make a person who isn't interested in soccer all of a sudden be interested in it.

 

As per the most recent surveys I've been able to find: 80% of British televised sports viewers watched soccer in 2022, and for the vast majority of those it's their favorite sport. Only 12% of of US televised sports viewers watched soccer in 2023.

Based on those numbers, a city of 117,000 in the US would have a similar number of soccer fans to a town of 17,500 in the UK. And statistically the city of Blackburn has as many soccer fans as a US city of almost 800k.

 

Man City. Man Utd, Everton, Liverpool, Burnley (Premier League)
Preston, Blackburn (Championship)
Bolton, Blackpool, Wigan, Fleetwood (League One)
Stockport, Morecambe, Accrington, Tranmere, Salford (League Two)
Altrincham, Rochdale, Oldham, AFC Fylde (National League)

Sale (Rugby Union Premiership)
Lancashire County Cricket Club (Cricket County Championship + One Day Competitions)

St Helens, Wigan, Salford, Leigh (Rugby League Super League)

It's 38 miles by road from Blackburn to Liverpool's stadium, 44 to Tranmere's, the longest distance of the teams in that list.

 

And to follow up on my last post, soccer has only reached that level of popularity in the US after a sustained, rapid rise in popularity over the last 20-25 years. When MLS started, it took a city of 2-3 million in the US to have a similar number of soccer fans to Blackburn.

 

Man Utd v Real Madrid at Michigan stadium drew 109k in 2014.

Edit: Well ackshully....

 

So anyway, this isn't a competition of 'average' attendances but it does highlight the point and the point is that promotion increases attendances, (of course it does), people scoffing at the attendance figures in Blackburn this season should understand that right now they are attracting about their all time 'average' attendance (which is 16'040) and in the 1990's before they got into the Premier League their 'average' tier 2 attendances were around the 8'000 mark.

Blackburn pull in impressive attendances for such a small town club, they pull in much higher numbers than 'other' similar sized town clubs APART from perhaps Burnley.......................who incidentally are also a small town club that throughout history has had top tier status and a small measure of success.

As another aside Blackburn Rovers play a LOT more home games every season than an NFL club, they play 23 home league games alone not including cup games. Last season Blackburn had a total of 420'193 paying customers which is only 73'964 less than the Chicago NFL team pulled in!

In anybodies book that is pretty impressive when you consider that Chicago has a population of just under 9 million which equates to around 80 Blackburns!

https://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance/_/year/2023

 

The only way soccer will grow in the USA comes down to the quality of the game.
Pro/Rel might fix that but if you still have the salary cap at 5.2-5.7 million. Pro/Rel will not improve the league if it keeps the same salary cap.

 

Comparing attendance figures is hilarious to me because every time that happens, one side talks about how many pro soccer teams England has compared to its population and the other side talks about the context of the US market with multiple top pro leagues plus college sports being quasi professional.

Guys we get it there are too many differences for a comparison to make sense.

 

Hmm, I'd say a Whopper meal from Burger King is better than a surprising number of more expensive "authentic" burgers I've eaten from local pub/grill type places.

 

There have been jokes about the Super Bowl being attended by 18000 fewer people than last year's Papa John's Trophy Final between two 3rd tier sides from England. They are just jokes mind you.

 

One of the things that really annoys me lately is pub food. Not content with repainting once characterful pubs with slate blue paint, slapping on some writing in a font probably called "vegan cafe 2009" to give the pubs a 'modern airy feel', they have a habit of creating what they call 'gourmet burgers'.

Almost without fail, these burgers are so packed with pepper and herbs, that you barely tell that there's any actual beef in them.

And they put rocket in them. Rocket looks like the stuff that grows between the gaps in your garden path, but probably tastes even worse.

Some even put Monterey Jack cheese in. Why? Monterey Jack is to cheese what Bud Light is to beer.

So basically they take a good pub, and a good menu, ruin both, and then charge you more.

 

I think there is a difference between growth of "Soccer" in the US and the growth of "MLS". They are obviously connected but not exactly the same thing. I agree that with you that I think the biggest thing holding MLS back at the moment is the quality of play. But even if MLS doesn't improve that you will see soccer continue to grow.

 

Then Rocky's is the place for you. The menu is on a white board with three options.

Single or double?
Cheese; Yes or No?
French Fries; Yes or No?

And you had better answer fast or you might not get bartenders attention for another 20-30 minutes

 

There are (or were) fish and chip shops in West Yorkshire where there were 3 things on the menu, fish, chips and cake (battered fish pate). For some reason this was more common in the mining areas.