There wasn't an obvious thread to talk about this in, so here goes: Three things have happened this summer: 1. MLS attendance has dropped significantly. 2. Confederations Cup happened. 3. Gold Cup games were 'meaningless' , but have taken up the better part of a month and pulled a whole bunch of players away from their teams. People on BS know most every detail that happens...what about the less knowledgeable fan -- the kind we're trying to lure to the game? They (poor slobs) went to a LA Galaxy game, looking for David Beckham and Landon Donovan only to find out that they weren't both there until ~July 15 (when the season starts in April!). Any other MLS team's best players have been playing for their NT for the month of July. I posted somewhere that the GC games were expensive and not terribly entertaining. How many people looked at that and decided that soccer was as entertaining as watching paint dry? Next year, we'll be watching MLS during the WC again....so the question is -- what to do so that all these different competitions that we're playing in are actually worth watching, and paying a lot of money to go see?
MLS is probably getting hit by the economy. I think baseball attendece is either stagnate or down by a small percentage. NASCAR attendence is down pretty significantly 20% for the Indianapolis race. Its not a good year for sports attendence.
I don't know that it's been a horrible season everywhere. Seattle seems to be settling in nicely with its fans. Down the road, future MLS Portland is growing the fan base in preparation to league entry. In both venues, games against foreign teams (and each other) sell out. Some teams just aren't very interesting to watch. A couple of the biggest attendance losers are... well, the biggest losers. I'm trying to imagine forking over money to see the Earthquakes or Red Bulls. The image just isn't forming.... Maybe there's something to be said for relegation. Some teams just screw up any marketing advantage they have. When a fan getting a lifetime ban for jumping on the field and yelling at Beckham is your biggest story, something is wrong in the marketing office. If they wanted to punish him, they should have given him a sky box. As to the overlap with internationals, the answer is staring us all in the face but we chose to ignore it. Do what every other league in the world does - schedule around it. Good Lord! I agree with Seth Blather twice in one post
I think Seattle is getting attendence from being the 'new, hip thing', great if they can sustain it. We'll have to wait and see. I mean the Colorado Rockies in baseball had some kind of crazy attendence records their first year.
Well, yeah, but they are putting people in the seats in a bad economy. And the attendance isn't a freak accident. They marketed VERY hard over a couple of years leading up to league entry to get those figures. People will pay if you give them a reason to. Even if Seattle loses attendance next year, they will still be near the top of the league. If you look at the biggest attendance losers, they play and market poorly.
This is the article that I read on attendance this year vs. last: http://www.mls-daily.com/2009/04/2009-mls-attendance-figures.html (I haven't quite figured those numbers out...There's a whole bunch of -25% numbers, and zero +25% numbers, yet the average drop is -6%?)These numbers were taken 9 games into the season, so maybe attendance has improved. Anyway, the article I was reading mentioned the weather and the economy. It didn't consider the fact that the best players for each MLS team were playing somewhere else. I hate to say that I agree with Sepp Blatter also, but the problem is so obvious that I guess even he can see it. I think that you could have said that it would have been a reasonable idea for the US to just not play in the Gold Cup...for all the posts about the US learning something, basically all we learned was that the players we had already are better than the bunch that played in the GC. Same problem as with the 2007 Copa America...we send less than the A team so we don't look our best, but we're still pulling players away in the middle of the MLS season so that those games look lifeless.
I think the 2009 GC was 100% more of a success than the 07 Copa. Of course the competition was weaker, but this team played 510 good minutes of soccer and 30 disasterous, brutal minutes. Everything but the last 30 minutes and the scoreline in the last game was good. As for the players missing MLS matches? Its not good but didn't this happen in 07 also? Was there a similar attendence problem?
I think we have to send a team to the Gold Cup or get sanctioned by the confederation. Besides, if we didn't play those games Bradley would still be sitting Copa America is another story. I just don't see the sense of going there without taking the A team. We don't get many chances for top flight competition and we squandered it. Better to just stay home than to reinforce other people's idea that the USA is second rate. It probably insured we won't see another invite for a while, too.
I don't know...when was the last year that players weren't leaving in the middle of the MLS season to go do something else to use as a baseline? My point is more of a 'sell the sport' issue...there's too many games with less than optimal squads because the good players are spread so thin. Other leagues don't have this problem -- the clubs stop when the NTs start and visa versa. Someone said something about AC Milan vs. Chelsea (another thread). I think that both of those teams have learned that if they don't RELIABLY put out a good product, less people will come watch them play...I think that the US soccer products might want to consider that.
I'm not sure you can say that the 510 minutes were against top flight competition in preparation for the WC. Maybe 180 were. We pretty much sucked for 45, played well for 45, and played even for the rest. The gold Cup is nothing to hang your hat on.
Nine home games into the season, so those figures are up-to-date. 6% drop is pretty significant since that includes Seattle. If you exclude Seattle's honeymoon games, MLS is averaging 14,319/game which represents a 13% drop in attendance compared to 2008. Pretty poor.