European Attitudes to American Soccer

[DanS]

Imran, the fact remains that for the 10th year in existence, an average of 15,000 attendance is pretty damn good. It beats the history of all other pro leagues in the US handily.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The other pro sports were established in an era without television and where people did not drive massive distances to see a team play. It's a flawed comparison.

[Az]

plus, football is already a well-established game around the world for a long long time. with the other leagues ( bar hockey, perhaps ), with baseball, american football, and basketball, you were starting the entire professional sport, basically.

[DanS]

We've got all sorts of pro sports in the US. There's always room for one more. You mention hockey, but there's also NASCAR which has taken off in the last couple of decades, and is one of our largest spectator sports. In the 90s, the sport more than doubled to "oh ****, that's huge" levels.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Soccer has been around for a while in various leagues. It's never really taken off. This is our best showing for a sustainable leauge (though the best showing for soccer in a season was in the last 70s in the NASL days and the NY Cosmos).

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

and rules that are so confussing not even the refs no them all...

The rules are fairly simple... especially compared to American sports.

That was his point.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by DanS


I would like to see the attendance figures Europe-wide. There used to be a site on this, but I can't find it now.

http://www.fussballtempel.net/uefa/zuschauerschnitt2003-2004vereine.html

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Az
plus, football is already a well-established game around the world for a long long time. with the other leagues ( bar hockey, perhaps ), with baseball, american football, and basketball, you were starting the entire professional sport, basically.

They weren't any more established as professional sports than soccer was when they came around.

[reds4ever]

Will America show an interest in a sport they are sh1te at? It's doesn't seem in the American mentality to me?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Not true at all. Soccer has had professional leagues in the past in the US.

The American Soccer League went from 1922-1932
The North American Soccer League went from 1967-1984

The MLS came around in 1996.

[Dauphin]

From the outside perspective, its seems that most Americans see football as a woman's and not a man's sport.

[DanS]

Interesting.

The top MLS club, the LA Galaxy, would be #74 on that list.

It seems quite possible to me that in the future, the MLS of a couple dozen or 30 teams would have averages scattered from about 25 - 92.

The superstars would end up in Europe. We could keep most of our very good players. Our national team would dominate.

[Imran Siddiqui]

25? We are not going to have a team averaging 40,000 a year in our lifetimes. If we are lucky in 20 or so years, we may have LA average 30,000.

As for national team dominating, another . Come on, let's get serious now. We've made one Quarterfinal and suddenly we are going to dominate in the future?

No wonder Europeans look down on Americans who make such wild and inaccurate claims.

I'd be utterly shocked if we won a World Cup in my lifetime.

[DanS]

We are not going to have a team averaging 40,000 a year in our lifetimes. If we are lucky in 20 or so years, we may have LA average 30,000.

I think we'll have at least two teams averaging 40,000 in our lifetime. The Home Depot Center holds 27,000, so that is an upper limit for a while. On the other hand, we build stadiums for pro teams every 20 or 25 years in the US, so there is ample opportunity for expansion.

These are not out-of-this-world projections. Demand need only follow population growth for all of my projections to be golden.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I think we'll have at least two teams averaging 40,000 in our lifetime.

You are on drugs. You know that.

The Home Depot Center holds 27,000, so that is an upper limit for a while.

And they don't even fill that! In soccer-mad LA!

These are not out-of-this-world projections. Demand need only follow population growth for all of my projections to be golden.

Latinos who come to the US follow the Mexican League or other Latin American leagues over the MLS. As I pointed out, look at Dallas, which has abyssmal attendance.

It just won't happen. In 30 years, we may have a 20 team league, with an average attendance of 20,000, with our biggest teams drawing an average of 30,000. That's optimistic, however. But beyond that? I don't think it goes much further... if it reaches that level at all.

You are acting like people looking at Chinese economic growth rates and projecting them into perpetuity and thinking they'll be some uber-country. It won't happen.