A View of the Terraces — Respectable Attendance Figures in the MLS

One of the fac­tors used in gaug­ing the pop­u­lar­ity of a sport­ing league and/or a sports team is atten­dance.  While I have heard some, not all, MLS fans com­plain about poor atten­dance for MLS matches, I have never really taken the time to sit down and com­pare MLS atten­dance with atten­dance in other US sports or in other soc­cer leagues.  But, I have finally taken the time to look into this issue.

We shall start with the MLS, using fig­ures gar­nered from ESPN.  In 2008, the Los Ange­les Galaxy, despite its poor per­for­mance on the pitch, had the largest total and aver­age atten­dances with 390,762 through­out the sea­son and an aver­age of 26,050.  Not sur­pris­ingly, Toronto FC took sec­ond place with a total of 303,623 and an aver­age of 20,241.  The top five was rounded out by DC United with an aver­age of 19,835, Hous­ton Dynamo with an aver­age of 17,752, and Chicago Fire with an aver­age of 17,052.  Mean­while, the Kansas City Wiz­ards had the low­est atten­dance with a total of 170,769 through­out the sea­son and an aver­age of 10,673 per game.  But don’t let those fig­ures fool you, since one fig­ure I found indi­cates that capac­ity of Com­mu­nityAmer­ica Ball­park for soc­cer matches is 10,385.  Won­der how they squeeze in another 300?

So, the dis­honor of hav­ing the worst MLS atten­dance for 2008 actu­ally goes to FC Dal­las.  Despite hav­ing its own soc­cer spe­cific sta­dium with a capac­ity of 20,500, Dal­las only aver­aged 13,097 through­out the 2008 season.

Finally, accord­ing to ESPN, the unof­fi­cial aver­age atten­dance for all MLS matches in 2008 was 16,310.

Since the MLS is a sum­mer league, it is only fit­ting that we take a look at how Major League Base­ball did atten­dance wise in 2008.  Not sur­pris­ingly, the New York Yan­kees man­aged an aver­age of 53,069 per game and pulled a sea­son total atten­dance of 4,298,655.  The caveat being that the MLB has a much, much longer sea­son and larger sta­di­ums then the MLS.  The worse 2008 atten­dance in MLS was expe­ri­enced by the Florida Mar­lins who aver­aged 16,688 per game.  The Mar­lins must have had some decent atten­dance in the Spring, because I saw pic­tures of late sea­son home games with atten­dances that could be counted in the hun­dreds, not thou­sands.  The sec­ond worst per­form­ing team was the Kansas City Roy­als who aver­aged 19,986 per game.

Since the 2008/09 NBA sea­son is ongo­ing, we’ll take a quick look at atten­dance num­bers from the prior sea­son.  The team with the best atten­dance was Detroit, aver­ag­ing 22,076 per game.  Mean­while Indi­ana only aver­aged 12,221 per game and Mem­phis aver­aged 12,771 per game.  Sur­pris­ingly, the Los Ange­les Lak­ers only aver­aged 18,997 per game.

With this being Super Bowl week­end, I’d be remiss if I ignored the jug­ger­naut on the pro­fes­sional sport­ing land­scape in Amer­ica, the NFL.  In 2008, Wash­ing­ton took the honor of hav­ing the largest aver­age home atten­dance, 88,604.  While Oak­land only had an aver­age of 54,497; how­ever, the fig­ures for Den­ver and San Fran­cisco are not avail­able yet.  Of course, by only hav­ing 8 home games a sea­son and gigan­tic sta­di­ums, these num­bers are not that surprising.

In the larger scheme of Amer­i­can pro­fes­sional sports, MLS does have the lower aver­age atten­dances, but all the MLS teams aver­age over 10,000 fans per game, a respectable num­ber.  While there is room for atten­dance improve­ment, last season’s atten­dance fig­ures indi­cate that all MLS fran­chises have man­aged to secure a decent niche in their home cities.

Much as the NFL is the jug­ger­naut when it comes to Amer­i­can sports, the Eng­lish Pre­mier League is the jug­ger­naut of soc­cer leagues.  I’m sure nobody will be sur­prised to learn that dur­ing the 2007/08 sea­son, Man­ches­ter United had the high­est aver­age atten­dance in the EPL with 75,691, aver­ag­ing over 15,000 more per game then sec­ond place Arse­nal.  Round­ing out the bot­tom of the atten­dance table in the EPL were Wigan with 19,046 and Portsmouth with 19,914.  The over­all aver­age atten­dance in the EPL for that sea­son was 36,076.

Mean­while on the con­ti­nent last sea­son, Serie A aver­aged 25,115 per match, with Inter pulling an aver­age of 59,054 com­pared to Empoli’s 7,437 per match.  The aver­age atten­dance for Spain’s La Liga was only slightly higher at 28,920, with Real Madrid pulling a respectable 73,162 per match, while Lev­ante only aver­aged 11,134 per match.  Not sur­pris­ingly, Bun­desliga pulled the largest atten­dance amongst the big leagues of Europe, aver­ag­ing 43,679 per game.  VfB Stuttgart had the biggest aver­age atten­dance 105,520, while Energie Cot­tbus pulled in only an aver­age of 18,820 per game.

While it’s inter­est­ing to put these atten­dance fig­ures all in one place, due to the vari­ety of all the exter­nal fac­tors (sea­son length, sta­dium side, weather, mar­ket­ing, money, etc.), I don’t feel qual­i­fied to crunch them all together and make some grandiose state­ment about the future suc­cess or demise of the MLS.  How­ever, I believe I am qual­i­fied enough to look at these num­bers and get a sense that yes, on the whole, other sports in the US and other soc­cer leagues draw more spec­ta­tors on aver­age then the MLS; how­ever, the MLS’s aver­age atten­dance fig­ures are very respectable and sug­gest the exis­tence of a strong, devoted base.  As MLS teams move into their own sta­di­ums, increase their rev­enue, and expand their local mar­ket­ing, I sus­pect the aver­age atten­dance num­bers should rise across the board.  Who knows, despite the eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion, MLS might see gains because it often pro­vides the best bang for the consumer’s enter­tain­ment dol­lar, as I under­stand it the Hous­ton Dynamo will soon be offer­ing a spe­cial 15 games for $150.00 pack­age, basi­cally a bare­bones sea­son ticket package.

No related posts.

Tagged as: MLS Attendance