Soccer is on the rise in America. The best supporting evidence is the continued growth of Major League Soccer in a time of budget cuts, tightened purse strings, and economic uncertainty. The inaugural season consisted of only 10 teams:
1.) New England Revolution
2.) Columbus Crew
3.) Los Angeles Galaxy
4.) Tampa Bay Mutiny
5.) D.C. United
6.) San Jose Clash
7.) MetroStars
8.) Colorado Rapids
9.) Dallas Burn
10.) Kansas City Wizards
From these small and simple beginnigs the league has expanded and strengthened. The 2009 MLS season consisted of the following 15 teams:
Western Conference
1.) Chivas USA (Los Angeles)
2.) Colorado Rapids
3.) FC Dallas
4.) Houston Dynamo
5.) Los Angeles Galaxy
6.) Real Salt Lake
7.) San Jose Earthquakes
8.) Seattle Sounders FC
Eastern Conference
1.) Chicago Fire
2.) Columbus Crew
3.) DC United (Washington, D.C.)
4.) Kansas City Wizards
5.) New England Revolution
6.) New York Red Bulls
7.) Toronto FC (Canada)
The 2010 season will see the addition of the Philadelphia Union to the Eastern Conference, and the 2011 season will see both the Portland Timbers and the Vancouver Whitecaps enter the league.
MLS opened its inaugural season on April 6, 1996 in San Jose's Spartan Stadium. This event drew a crowd of 31,683 people. Since that date the average attendance has seen its ups and downs. However, in all actuality soccer is still in its infancy. To show just how ahead of the curve soccer is I thought it would be interesting to compare the average attendance growth of the Los Angeles Lakers (NBA) to the Los Angeles Galaxy (MLS) during their first 15 years.
Los Angeles Lakers
1960-1961: 5,045
1961-1962: 6,139
1962-1963: 8,396
1963-1964: 8,954
1965-1966: 10,316
1966-1967: 10,935
1967-1968: 11,154
1968-1969: 10,276
1969-1970: 11,787
1971-1972: 13,086
1972-1973: 13,808
1973-1974: 16,301
1974-1975: 16,216
1975-1976: 14,711
1976-1977: 11,567
LA Galaxy
1996: 30,129
1997: 23,623
1998: 21,784
1999: 17,632
2000: 20,400
2001: 17,387
2002: 19,047
2003: 21,983
2004: 23,809
2005: 24,204
2006: 20,814
2007: 24,252
2008: 26,009
2009: 19,379
2010: ?
When you compare the first 15 years of the LA Lakers and the first 15 years of the LA Galaxy you'll see that the MLS is leading in the sheer number of people attending the games. The Lakers have been in existence for over 50 years and their average attendance in 2007-2008 season was 18,997 while the avg. attendance to a Galaxy game in 2007-2008 was 24,252.
The Los Angeles Lakers are considered by most as the icon team of the NBA, a league that has been in the forefront of American sports for over 50 years. However, the Los Angeles Galaxy has consistently posted higher attendance averages in their short 14 year history.
The newest MLS team, Seattle Sounders FC, had an average attendance of 31,207 in their first year of existence. This is the highest average attendance in the league.
Although attendance numbers have declined over the past year, their are signs of positive growth throughout the league. The addition of new franchises in 2010 and 2011 will bring the game to 3 different cities, soccer specific stadiums are being build at a greater pace (will be discussed in a later blog post) and the growth seen in comparison with the NBA is encouraging.
Does it seem fair to compare the overall attendance of these two stadiums if the Staples center only seats 19,000 and the Home Depot center seats 27,000. If you look at it the Lakers have 99.98% while the Galaxy only have 89.82%. If you look into L.A. sports even more the Angels have an attendance record of 91.44% while the Dodgers have a percentage of 80.46%. While soccer attendance may look good they are actually down by 6.5% just in the last two years. Also it's not fair to compare it's growth to a sport that physically can't grow, It's not possible for the L.A. Lakers to have higher attendance. However if you compare it to the attendance of baseball it's much more convincing as attendance at baseball games have remained stagnant around the mid 80% range and soccer has stalled in the high 80% range. If Soccer can stay in a high 80 low 90 percent range I'd say it's doing well. But if it continues to decline as it has been, unfortunately this amazing sport has a bleak future.
ReplyDeleteInteresting stats, but I think Alex has a point. Besides most people watch basketball on TV nowadays... a nobody really watches soccer... I'm all for soccer... buuuut... ya know.
ReplyDeleteAlex that's a good point and their are a lot of x factors that come into play about those numbers, (how many sell outs, building size, ethnicity, etc.) but by just looking at the averages you'll notice that it took the lakers a lot longer to reach its capacity than it took the Galaxy. As far as the recent declines in attendance just look at any professional sport across America. Attendance is going down all over the nation due to the recession. Despite this though, MLS is adding teams and those expansion teams are selling out almost every game and have an increasing # of season ticket holders. Yes some of the teams have a decline in attendance, but their are a number of other teams that are increasing.
ReplyDeleteJust as a side note I think that the World Cup could do wonders for the league this year (especially if America does well). And Krit media coverage and overall opinion of soccer is one of the major roadblocks to it growth. I'll be researching and talking about that in future posts.
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ReplyDeleteOnly the future will be able to tell what's going to happen in the future. I agree that it will be interesting to see what happens to the sport in America after the World Cup. I hope it has the same effect that the MLS Cup had here in Utah with Real Salt Lake winning the Championship. While soccer may not be the #1 choice of sport to watch, there are few people that didn't watch or at least hear about how great that game was. Go REAL!!! But with the success of RSL, soccer knowledge and soccer "talk" has significantly increased, based on my friends posts on Facebook. It seems like Soccer is on the rise in Utah because of a championship and I'd assume that if U.S.A. can win or at least get close to winning the World Cup, it would have a similar effect on soccer nation wide.
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