All three of Portland’s road games have been witnessed by sellout crowds.
But the stadia are small but its better for fan interest to fill a smaller stadium rather than leave almost 2/3 of the seats empty like the Cleveland Indians do.
Drawing 16,000 for home games is phenomenal. The Staples center only seats 19,000 for NBA games.
The game we call, "soccer," has been promoted in the U.S. as the "next great sport" for at least 40 years, and in the world of American sports, it barely registers. Although from all indications it is a fun game to play, unless you were brought up with it, it is excruciatingly boring to watch, and ironically, the higher the level of competition the more boring it is to watch. Just as a foreigner cannot imagine how a baseball fan enjoys watching a 1-0 game, the typical American cannot imagine why anyone would pay to see 90 minutes of action where there are only two or three potentially successful shots on goal.
If you would weed out from the audience the:
--> friends and relatives of the players,
--> cranks who only go because they hate American football, and
--> those who get compimentary tickets for one reason or another,
and if you consider the price of tickets vis a vis other real American sports,
"Soccer" barely warrants a footnote.
90% of the top American athletes who get into "soccer" as children gradually move to other sports that are more popular and offer at least a remote chance of eventually turning Pro and making a living. There are geographic pockets where this is not the case, but those constitute a microscopic portion of the U.S. population.
If it weren't for Title IX, adult women's soccer would not exist. If they precluded foreigners from playing, it would not exist. If the teams had to be financially viable, it would not exist. It may be a "beautiful game," but in relative terms, nobody's watching.
If they precluded foreigners from playing, it would not exist.
The same could be said about hockey and boxing, and probably even baseball. But what's your point? That American professional sports should not allow non-Americans to play? And, if that's what you're saying, why?
I used to like gong to indoor soccer matches at the Vets memorial coliseum on LI. I even went to more than a few games when the NY Cosmos were around. When Pele and Shep Messing were on the team. (I went to high school with Shep Messings younger brother Roy Messing who was a goalie in the indoor soccer league until he suffered a fractured eye socket and had to stop playing).
While I did enjoy soccer (indoor more than outdoor) gimme the NFL anyday.
For hockey purposes, Canada is "America," and Canadians are "Americans," and vice versa. It's not for nothing that the play both anthems before the games. Hockey is an odd phenomenon; it is VERY popular among a large cadre of fans, and they are willing to spend ungodly amounts of money to see their teams play. It is popular enough that if some maniacle billionaire xenophobe decided to create a league only for U.S. citizens, the league could be staffed with credible players enough to fill a dozen or so teams. And in fact, an all-star team from such a league would be competitive against comparable teams from Canada, Russia, or anywhere else. Not that such an exercise would be a good idea.
As for soccer, on the other hand, such an American league might be intramurally competitive, but it could not compete against analogous teams from such powerhouses as, say, Guatemala - let alone any real countries. Coming back to the current reality, however, in order for American professional soccer to have any credibility at all, it must recruit players from ROW - often players who are has-beens, never-was's, and never-will-be's in their native lands.
There is nothing wrong or undesirable for foreigners to play for U.S. (and Canadian) professional sports teams, but when all of the key players are foreign, most American sports fans will take a pass. Beckham being the exceptional International Glamour Boy who proves the rule.
[quoteFor hockey purposes, Canada is "America," and Canadians are "Americans," ][/quote] Don't tell them that.
And for boxing purposes, are mexicans, central and south americans, and carribean islanders (including Cubans) also "Americans"? I wouldn't think so.
You make a good point about marketing soccer to the American public, but so be it; if we have some willing to invest in teams and leagues, I'm perfectly willing to let them do so. I, for one, would never watch a golf match on TV or in person (although I enjoy playing it), or watch attend a car race (of any type) but I'm content to leave these contests (and the PGA, NASCAR, etc.) for those who like to watch. For some reason soccer seems to be the only sport which stirs up condemnation; it may be the next great American sport, or it may not be, but I can't see there's anything inherently offensive in it to stir up all the rhetoric
The highest professional soccer league in the U.S. is Major League Soccer (MLS), which began play in 1996. MLS initially fared poorly, leading to MLS folding two teams in 2002 for financial reasons. MLS has since rebounded, and grown to 19 teams today (16 in the United States and 3 in Canada) with further expansion planned. With an average attendance of over 18,000 per game, MLS has the third highest average attendance of any sports league in the U.S., and is the seventh highest attended professional soccer league worldwide
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
You know what Dave, for a bunch of home grown players who can't hold their own without foreigners, the US seem to acquit themselves rather well when the World Cup comes around these days...
Why is it that when Miley Cyrus gets naked and licks a hammer it's 'art' and 'edgy' but when I do it I'm 'drunk' and 'banned from the hardware store'?
I love discussions of this sort where I can just copy and paste what I said earlier and no more effort is required on my part :
Lord Jim wrote:That's an interesting article Scooter...
MLS certainly has their PR work cut out for them....
I had never even heard of the league until this thread....(I've never seen a single story about the San Jose team on any local news sportscast, nor have I ever seen an article about them in the sports section of the Chronicle....the mainstream sports media coverage, at least in this market must be very sparse and buried...)
It looks like they've got a hardcore fan base, but they're still going to have to do something about the availability of ad revenue time during the games before they see any significant national exposure or serious money...
I checked out their website, and also an article on Wiki:
Seasons presently run from March to December, with each team playing 34 games in the regular season
That's going to be another problem from a TV revenue standpoint; that's an awfully long season to play so few games....That's going to make it difficult to sustain the interest of a television viewership beyond that hardcore that are actually attending the games.
Also, while it's true they are nosing out Basketball and Hockey in attendance per game, Basketball and Hockey both have 82 game seasons. (Also the ticket prices for those sports are significantly higher.)
Here's an interesting graphic comparing pro Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey and Soccer on a number of criteria:
You can either double click the image to see it properly, or go to this link:
I'll admit that pro soccer has become a more popular sport than I was aware that it had become, but it's still got a long way to go to really hit the big time, and it's got some structural problems to overcome before that can happen.
Figures are over a year old Jim, watch them change over the next decade as soccer rises to it's ascendency.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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