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

Salary caps, across the board 'levelling up', protection from failure..........to be honest with you it sounds quite Socialist to me, Reading are the masters of their own downfall, they don't have any more 'right' to pro league football than Maidstone United, if they are in freefall then they'll just have to do what Maidstone themselves (among others) have done in the past and 'suck it up'. My mate has been a Maidstone fan from when they were a pro league club in the 80's to when they were playing County football in the mid 90's and now still while they are a National League South club hitting the headlines in 2024.

I'm sure most Reading fans will stick by their club whatever league they play in........and those that don't aren't real Reading fans.

 

Well, this poster CLAIMS to want to hear things but refuses them and buries his head in ignorance when shown facts. This dance was already done, and SEVERAL people answered him. He just refuses to accept the truth.

That's a him problem.

Well they don't in an area equal to England. California is VERY CLOSE to the area of England, which is why I already compared England and California. Not sure how you missed that, but here we are.

51 racetracks? Cool ... there's 155 baseball stadiums JUST AT THE COLLEGE level. The number of basketball gyms or football stadiums is going to be greater. This is REALLY a bad way to try and act like there's the same amount of competition for sporting entertainment eyebyalls and dollars. It simply isn't comparable in England. It isn't. There isn't the number of outlets nor are there the number of highly popular outlets outside of Soccer. There just aren't.

This poster's problem is that he's just ignorant, period. I grew up less than 3hrs from the Mexican border and was playing soccer before any "American" sport (started at 5yrs old). I had access to and was actually flooded with Mexican soccer (due to living in a majority Hispanic populated area) and the South American National teams. Everywhere there were "pick up" soccer games/fields that I did in JR High and HS during the summers (couldn't play city after 6th grade and my school didn't have a program). I grew up with soccer and appreciation for it as an actual thing, not the "commie" or "inappropriate sexual slang" game.

With no respect at all, this poster is the exact thing he tried to paint me as; an ignorant fool. Despite TX being the "king" of football, soccer is, and has been, taken very seriously here for a long time. Just read the Clint Dempsey story if you need proof.

This poster is nothing but nonsense and ignorance and won't be replied to in any fashion from here on out other than that.

There is a 32,174sqmi area "triangle" in Texas (20Ksqmi smaller than England) that includes San Antonio, Austin, Dallas-Ft. Worth, and Houston. It has roughly 20.5M people in it. That area has 13 Major Professional sports teams and 27 non top tier professional sports teams. That doesn't even include MAJOR University sports.

NFL viewership averaged 17.9M PER GAME last year. Just doing 17.9M x 17 (game weeks) gives you 304M so then 91.5% of the population watched the NFL last year. When in truth it's more folks than that ... but your math is very bad. Just showing that even in your horrid example, English soccer viewing still isn't close domestically to the NFL (which MLS has to compete with for eyeballs).

And that's not including the people that actually went to the games ... which, if you want to talk about how much that is as a % of the total population, then college football has some bad news for you.

 

NOOOOOO 40 million people WENT THROUGH THE TURNSTILES last year, that 40 million is the total amount of times the turnstiles spun and 40 million is 72% of the population of England, 72% of the US population is 240 million, did the turnstiles spin 240 million times in the NFL last year?

Are you telling me that 17.9 million people per game went through the turnstiles in the NFL last year!! Cos if you are I say you're lying! Unless you can show me a stadium that holds 17.9 million people of course!?

 

California is 423,970km2 and England is 130,279km2 - are you mixing England up with the UK again?

 

Are you seriously comparing College baseball stadiums in the whole of the US to racetracks alone in
England? Once again you seem to fail to realise that the US has SEVEN times the population of England yet you STILL are comparing the whole of the US to a country 1/3rd the size of California!! If you want to compare 'like for like' then how about comparing the rugby, cricket, football, basketball, athletic clubs etc in England to that of 1/3rd of California? Alternatively we can compare Europe to the US if you like?

Fact is as an American you can't get past the 'they only have soccer' narrative that I hear coming out of there every so often...................and the reality of course is FAR from that! Next you'll be giving it the old - if only our best athletes all played soccer bollox :-D

 

If you can give me a valid reason as to how Blackburn Rovers have managed to play league games against Manchester United, Derby County and Notts County so many times if they are not competing in the same competition then I'd like to hear it?

SAME league just different divisions.

 

Notts County haven't played Liverpool in a league game since before MLS existed.

 

*sigh* and this poster doesn't read the entirety of what he quotes/responds too. The SouthEastern Conference gets more att than the Premier League per game. 77K (7.47M total for 97 games) per game x 380 (total Prem games) gives you 29.26M. That's 11% of the population going just to SEC football games extrapolated to equal a Prem season. Now, that's just illustrating something ...

The NFL drew 18.9M total people over 272 games. That's 69485 per game. Extrapolated to 380 to equal the PREM that's 26.4M going to just NFL games.

You can see how quickly this adds up just for the sport of football. You then have other sports drawing percentages/totals that are extremely high as well.

What's funny .... is that showing just how many folks (% of population etc) are going to football matches in England, shows the disproportionate popularity and support of football over all else in England (which what myself and others have been pointing out.

Oh right, following the bouncing ball isn't something this poster is capable of. I refer back to the "miles radius" part of the discussion with Blackburn/England and Carson/California

Reading is fundamental ... 155 is just in California *as an illustration of point.

Holy crap.

Except I'm not, but this poster can't read, nor follow context.

WTF does Europe have to do with Blackburn, England for local competition? Holy crap.

Except that isn't what's being said. As usual, this poster doesn't understand context and descriptive words.

 

No, because that "protection from failure" etc is of a very small number of very wealthy team owners with all the rest barred entry absent acceptance of a membership fee to join the cartel. At most, it's socialism for the cartel members, once they've handed over their membership fee.

 

Judging by the empty seats Bramall Lane isn't experiencing the thrill of pro-rel.

 

The Premier League and the Football League are run separately. They just have pro/rel between them.

 

Pro/rel advocates have a gripe with Cleveland and Sacramento being denied entry into MLS.

 

Sacramento wasn't denied entry. Their majority owner (i.e. their Whale) backed out of their agreement with MLS. Sacramento has yet to find another Whale to pay for their move to MLS.

 

I can see the proles objecting to that.

 

NEW CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FORMAT EXPLAINED ⭐️

That's that cleared up then. 🙃

Do you think these changes will improve the competition? 🤔pic.twitter.com/FNZX4lggWV

— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) March 4, 2024

 

Their average attendance this season is exactly the same as it was during last season's promotion season.

 

Super League without the name or EPL?

 

So? That's because they're currently in different divisions but the fact is they've played each other SIXTY THREE times in the league and because they can increase that in the future it is proof they are competing in the same competition.

Unless of course you can explain how they can have played 63 times and how they can potentially play league games again if they are not in the same league?

 

Actually you are completely wrong:-

2022/23 Sheffield Uniteds average attendance - 28,746
2023/24 Sheffield Uniteds average attendance so far - 30,694

 

Yes this exactly and that is exactly why all the clubs are competing against each other for the same ultimate goals. Its the same competition.

 

I'm not too sure what you're trying to prove here but really you are only backing up the point I'm making! Only 29.26 million people visited the NFL stadiums in a country that has 330 million people in it!

OVER 40 million people visited the English fooball league in a country that only has 55 million or so people in it!

I wouldn't include TV viewership if I were you because the Premier League is the most watched sporting league on the planet.

Soooo back to the original point I was making - an average attendance of over 15'000 is pretty impressive when you are a club competing with 91 other clubs in the vicinity, when you're town is only 100'000 people big, when the biggest clubs in the country are in cities less than 50 miles away, when you are in a country that only has 55 million people in it and when you have to play 25 or so home games in a season!

Despite all of the above Blackburn Rovers - a tiny town team had 420'123 people through its turnstiles last year, by comparison Chicago - a HUGE city, without 91 other NFL clubs in the vicinity, with a national total of only 31 other clubs in the whole Continental sized country & with a national population of 330 million or so pulled in 617'334 - which makes Blackburns attendance pretty remarkable when you think about it.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance/_/year/2023
https://european-football-statistics.co.uk/attnclub/league/blar.htm

Manchester United were the best supported English Football League club last season and a total of 2'289'641 people went through their turnstiles last season!! Over two and a quarter MILLION despite having 91 direct competitors on its doorstep, despite only 55 million people in the country, pretty impressive really. Philadelphia attracted the most bodies through the turnstiles of the NFL last season with 664'714.

 

The NFL outdraws the Prem.

 

They were enjoying pro-rel so much the stadium was a third empty after 20 minutes.

 

And yet they’ve been turning up game after game and likely will do for the rest of the season.

Basic rule is never leave before the end of your team’s game. I’ve seen mine lose by 7 and stayed. I’ve seen us relegated and stayed. Did I enjoy seeing us lose and be relegated? Of course not, but sticking with your team is part of being a fan.

 

The NFL used to mandate a 50 K seat stadium. Can the English Premier League say as much?