PDA

View Full Version : Attendance - MLS vs the world



CoachGT
09-02-2008, 10:30 AM
Did a little checking from a bunch of different websites to see what attendance figures are like here and elsewhere in the world. I recall someone posting somewhere on here that MLS is the fifth best attended soccer league and thought I'd do a little digging. From wikipedia, MLS is currently the 12th on the wikipedia table (if you believe it, and I do because the references they use seem to check out). If you add in the Mexican top league, which is estimated to have average attendance around 25,000 per game, then MLS drops to 13th - I gather Mexican statistics are tough to get. MLS falls behind two second divisions - the Bundesliga 2 and the Coca Cola Championship. The numbers below are for the last complete season (except for Argentina – the most recent numbers available are for 2003-04). The Argentinian numbers probably haven't moved much since their statistics were reported.

Here are the figures:
League / Per game / Overall attendance / # of games
Bundesliga (Ger) / 38,612 / 11,815,215 / 306
EPL (England) / 36,144 / 13,676,390 / 380
La Liga (Spain) / 29,124 / 11,067,120 / 380
Mexico / 25,000
Serie A (Italy) / 23,180 / 8,808,400 / 380
J League 1 (Japan) / 21,840 / 5,838,771 / 306
Ligue 1 (France) / 21,817 / 8,299,200 / 380
Eredivisie (Neth) / 18,732 /5,731,992 / 306
Bundesliga 2 / 18,140 / 5,550,840 / 306
Serie A Brasileiro / 17,461 / 6,582,976 / 380
Primera Division (Arg) / 17,363 / 6,667,392 / 384
Coca Cola Champ / 17,022 / 9,396,144 / 552
MLS / 16,770 / 3,270,210 / 195
Scottish Premier / 14,915 / 3,400,567 / 228

Kinda confused by 195 games, unless it includes the MLS Cup final.

As of today, MLS attendance averages 16,482 for 2008.

TFC attendance rivals the following EPL clubs, according to EPL published statistics on last year:

Wigan 19,241
Portsmouth 19,905
Bolton 21,068

And is a little behind the next three:

Reading 23,554
Fulham 23,670
Blackburn 23,917

Toronto averaged 20,130 over 15 dates in 2007, and has averaged 20,150 so far in 2008.

flatpicker
09-02-2008, 10:36 AM
I think it should be a goal of MLS to be in the top 7.
It's doable...

SilverSamurai
09-02-2008, 10:47 AM
Did a little checking from a bunch of different websites to see what attendance figures are like here and elsewhere in the world. I recall someone posting somewhere on here that MLS is the fifth best attended soccer league and thought I'd do a little digging. From wikipedia, MLS is currently the 12th on the wikipedia table (if you believe it, and I do because the references they use seem to check out). If you add in the Mexican top league, which is estimated to have average attendance around 25,000 per game, then MLS drops to 13th - I gather Mexican statistics are tough to get. MLS falls behind two second divisions - the Bundesliga 2 and the Coca Cola Championship. The numbers below are for the last complete season (except for Argentina – the most recent numbers available are for 2003-04). The Argentinian numbers probably haven't moved much since their statistics were reported.

Here are the figures:
League / Per game / Overall attendance / # of games
Bundesliga (Ger) / 38,612 / 11,815,215 / 306
EPL (England) / 36,144 / 13,676,390 / 380
La Liga (Spain) / 29,124 / 11,067,120 / 380
Mexico / 25,000
Serie A (Italy) / 23,180 / 8,808,400 / 380
J League 1 (Japan) / 21,840 / 5,838,771 / 306
Ligue 1 (France) / 21,817 / 8,299,200 / 380
Eredivisie (Neth) / 18,732 /5,731,992 / 306
Bundesliga 2 / 18,140 / 5,550,840 / 306
Serie A Brasileiro / 17,461 / 6,582,976 / 380
Primera Division (Arg) / 17,363 / 6,667,392 / 384
Coca Cola Champ / 17,022 / 9,396,144 / 552
MLS / 16,770 / 3,270,210 / 195
Scottish Premier / 14,915 / 3,400,567 / 228

Kinda confused by 195 games, unless it includes the MLS Cup final.

As of today, MLS attendance averages 16,482 for 2008.

TFC attendance rivals the following EPL clubs, according to EPL published statistics on last year:

Wigan 19,241
Portsmouth 19,905
Bolton 21,068

And is a little behind the next three:

Reading 23,554
Fulham 23,670
Blackburn 23,917

Toronto averaged 20,130 over 15 dates in 2007, and has averaged 20,150 so far in 2008.
I think the #195 means total number of league games, whether or not it includes the playoffs is a dif story.

mike_bouma
09-02-2008, 10:50 AM
Take THAT scottish permier league! ;)

giambac
09-02-2008, 10:55 AM
Take THAT scottish permier league! ;)
I didn't even know there was a Scotish premier league????????

Fort York Redcoat
09-02-2008, 11:10 AM
^:rolleyes5:

Cool to see the comparison. People are always comparing the quality to CCC and J league so its not unreasonable to expect to grow beyond that.

zeelaw
09-02-2008, 11:20 AM
I didn't even know there was a Scotish premier league????????
lol nice

Parkdale
09-02-2008, 11:23 AM
what I think is impressive is that we (TFC at home) averages just a hair under the league average for Ligue 1 (France).

v00d00daddy
09-02-2008, 11:25 AM
It's nice to see MLS up there but I think it's pretty well known that MLS attendance numbers are a little fudged to say the least.

jabbronies
09-02-2008, 11:38 AM
I didn't even know there was a Scotish premier league????????

ya it's made of two teams...a green team and a blue team...

jaahuuu
09-02-2008, 12:19 PM
Bundesliga (Ger) / 38,612 / 11,815,215 / 306
EPL (England) / 36,144 / 13,676,390 / 380
J League 1 (Japan) / 21,840 / 5,838,771 / 306
MLS / 16,770 / 3,270,210 / 195
Scottish Premier / 14,915 / 3,400,567 / 228

These comparisons aren't really fair. All those countries have populations far smaller than the US, if you look at it as a percentage of the population its completely different.

The population of Germany is 82,217,800, so just over 14% of the country went to a game.
The population of England is 50,762,900, so almost 27%.
The poplation of Japan is 127,433,494, so just under 5%.
The population of Scotland is 5,144,200, so just over 66%.
The population of the US + Toronto is 307,523,281, so just over 1%.

I didn't run the number for all the countries, but i'd bet that table would look very different if it was sorted per capita not just on number of tickets.

jaahuuu
09-02-2008, 12:24 PM
Kinda confused by 195 games, unless it includes the MLS Cup final.

13 teams (from last season) x 30 games per season / 2 teams per game = 195 games

Tintin
09-02-2008, 12:25 PM
These comparisons aren't really fair. All those countries have populations far smaller than the US, if you look at it as a percentage of the population its completely different.

The population of Germany is 82,217,800, so just over 14% of the country went to a game.
The population of England is 50,762,900, so almost 27%.
The poplation of Japan is 127,433,494, so just under 5%.
The population of Scotland is 5,144,200, so just over 66%.
The population of the US + Toronto is 307,523,281, so just over 1%.

I didn't run the number for all the countries, but i'd bet that table would look very different if it was sorted per capita not just on number of tickets.

Very astute analysis. I agree with you. It is not the average that matters but the place the game on average against other sports holds with the fans. It is fair to say tha for example football is the only game in Scotland and his up there in England.

RealG-TFC
09-02-2008, 12:54 PM
These comparisons aren't really fair. All those countries have populations far smaller than the US, if you look at it as a percentage of the population its completely different.

The population of Germany is 82,217,800, so just over 14% of the country went to a game.
The population of England is 50,762,900, so almost 27%.
The poplation of Japan is 127,433,494, so just under 5%.
The population of Scotland is 5,144,200, so just over 66%.
The population of the US + Toronto is 307,523,281, so just over 1%.

I didn't run the number for all the countries, but i'd bet that table would look very different if it was sorted per capita not just on number of tickets.

So>? In those countries football is the number one sport, if not it's the number two. In the US and Canada it's not.

I thought that was obvious.

CoachGT
09-02-2008, 12:58 PM
These comparisons aren't really fair. All those countries have populations far smaller than the US, if you look at it as a percentage of the population its completely different.

The population of Germany is 82,217,800, so just over 14% of the country went to a game.
The population of England is 50,762,900, so almost 27%.
The poplation of Japan is 127,433,494, so just under 5%.
The population of Scotland is 5,144,200, so just over 66%.
The population of the US + Toronto is 307,523,281, so just over 1%.

I didn't run the number for all the countries, but i'd bet that table would look very different if it was sorted per capita not just on number of tickets.

I thought about that, and started to think about attendance as a percentage of capacity, and then trying to figure it all out, it seemed like too much of a chore.

ensco
09-02-2008, 01:08 PM
Doing it per capita won't tell you anything other than that which you already know: football is number 1 in most countries, number 6 in the US and Canada.

What I would like to see is revenues, not just attendance, because attendance doesn't correlate with ability to compete for players. For instance, I bet it would turn out that each CCC club has total revenues that are something like 5-10x what MLS teams get, because of more games, higher ticket prices, and television revenues.

giambac
09-02-2008, 01:26 PM
ya it's made of two teams...a green team and a blue team...


Are you sure it isn't shirts vs skins???;)

AL-MO
09-02-2008, 01:31 PM
Are you sure it isn't shirts vs skins???;)

Alright stop trolling before you receive another infraction.

Broadview
09-02-2008, 01:35 PM
What I would like to see is revenues, not just attendance, because attendance doesn't correlate with ability to compete for players. For instance, I bet it would turn out that each CCC club has total revenues that are something like 5-10x what MLS teams get, because of more games, higher ticket prices, and television revenues.

I was thinking the same thing...it would be interesting to include in that table avg ticket price.

Other including other revenue might make things a little more mind boggeling though.

Nice digging there, Coach. It's pretty good to see things put in a little perspective like that.

bdiddy
09-02-2008, 01:56 PM
Trying to compare the attendance of clubs in the US vs those in England/Germany by a Per Capita basis while interesting, really doesn't do it justice.

United States is a much larger beast in size of a country (square kilometers) than England is, meaning more people are based in places where it's just not feesable to add those peole into it.

To do it properly you'd need to take the city populations, add those up then divded by the attendance numbers, that would be much more accurate.

EG. Toronto total attendance, about 302,250 for the year... approximate size of city 3 Millionish? That would put us at about 10% higher than that of Japan and close to that of Germany;

Bdiddy

ensco
09-02-2008, 01:56 PM
Nice digging there, Coach. It's pretty good to see things put in a little perspective like that.

I second that

giambac
09-02-2008, 02:10 PM
Alright stop trolling before you receive another infraction.
Just joking,

a little humour but I will retrack my comment.

profit89
09-02-2008, 02:15 PM
I think it should be a goal of MLS to be in the top 7.
It's doable...

So if the goal is to increase attendance, which is what we all want to see as fans i would assume, the question becomes what changes would bring that about, or should we just leave things the way they are and the numbers will increase naturally (without any interference) given the current state....

Fort York Redcoat
09-02-2008, 02:36 PM
The direstion has already been chosen or hinted. Expansion- NA's love bigger leagues. More competition. Then most changes already stated elsewhere. Dp's. higher cap. better pitches. better schedule. better league.

jloome
09-02-2008, 02:42 PM
I second that

Not really. There's not context, so there's no "putting things in perspective."

As ensco pointed out earlier, revenue would be much more telling..

1) MLS fudges attendance. Badly. By thousands per game, and they've been caught doing it several times. The latest was earleir this year in Columbus; search the Columbus Dispatch for the articles.

2) There's no national TV deal associated with these attendances. Paid ticket revenue is only one component of a football clubs revenue and not that large of one, either, anym more.

3) It's apples and oranges. MLS has bigger centres with one team, whereas in England some urban areas (almost every urban area is within 20 minutes of another anyway, due to the nation's size) they have five or six clubs. Manchester is a great example.

You can't just slot the "average attendance" number into a list because it's meaningless without considering the other issues.

CoachGT
09-02-2008, 02:50 PM
Just doing a little checking, hitting 22,000 on average would mean that the league would need almost 75% attendance at every game in the schedule for every team, or scaled back a bit, 68% capacity to hit 20,000.

That means that New England (with a stadium capcity of 68,756) and DC (at 56,692 in RFK) would have to average 52,500 and 41,500 per game respectively. That's tripling NE's attendance per game and doubling DC. Even with a solid base in Seattle, hitting 20,000 per game seems a long way away.

Beach_Red
09-02-2008, 03:04 PM
1) MLS fudges attendance. Badly. By thousands per game, and they've been caught doing it several times. The latest was earleir this year in Columbus; search the Columbus Dispatch for the articles.

All leagues, at least in North America, fudge attendance. Sometimes they even fudge it lower if players have bonuses attatched to attendance figures.

But, for the MLS to increase fans bases it's really going to have to poach from other sports. Sure, English cities have five or six teams within a few miles of each other, but American cities do, too, just spread out over NHL, NBA, NHL and MLB. Not to mention NCAA.

The most likely sport to lose ticket sales due to MLS popularlity is the NHL - especially if MLS can keep a high percentage of American born players. After that it's likely baseball - for a variety of reasons, I think.

The sports landscape in America is a lot different than in Europe.