MLS is in no danger of turning into the NASL

Piggybacking on my previous post advocating for Austin, Texas to be the 20th MLS franchise (I'm assuming Montreal will be No. 19), I felt like it would be worthwhile to take a look at the last time an American outdoor soccer league went through a similar level of expansion.

The NASL was more than a interesting short-term experiment. At one point, the league boasted 24 teams drawing average crowds of more than 14,000 people. Yet four years after hitting those peaks in 1980, the league had essentially folded, fielding just nine teams and drawing an average of fewer than 11,000 fans in its final season.

There were numerous reasons why that league failed -- too many to explore in one post. Perhaps the most obvious of those reasons was the league's aggressive expansion. From 1973-78, the NASL went from nine teams to 24.

It got me wondering whether, in its current state of expansion, the MLS was at risk of repeating one of its predecessor's mistakes.

The quick answer, I think, is no. It's pretty clear that MLS has seen how and why unchecked NASL expansion contributed to the league's downfall. As we are regularly reminded, MLS is still not a huge money-making operation. But its steady expansion appears to be far more calculated, with expansion franchises such as Seattle, Toronto and Philadelphia enhancing the league's overall numbers rather than pulling them down.

Let's start by looking at the way the two leagues expanded. The NASL was in an almost constant state of flux. The roster of teams never stayed exactly the same from one year to the next. Even the number of teams in the league only stayed the same for three separate consecutive-year stretches and never for more than three consecutive years. 

New teams popped up and old teams folded or moved at a staggering pace. There were 43 separate franchises during the league's 16-season life, and that doesn't even account for the 13 franchises that moved or were renamed at least once (including the Minnesota Strikers which played in five different cities under five different names).

The reason for all the change seems simple enough to explain: Aside from a few teams with relatively large and stable attendance figures (that make the overall averages looks much better than situation actually was), many teams struggled to find an audience. During the league's peak attendance period (1977-83, when it averaged more than 13,000 fans during each season), there were multiple teams every year failing to average 5,000 and about a third of the league failing to draw averages of 10,000.

The Cosmos, for instance, averaged more than 27,000 fans every season from 1977-84, and more than 45,000 fans from 1978-80. Meanwhile, teams in places like Atlanta and Rochester, N.Y. never averaged as many as 9,000 fans in their 21 combined seasons. (For the record, the Sounders' attendance peaked at an average of 24,246 in 1980 and hovered around the 20,000 mark from 1976-81 before dropping off to just over 12,000 during the 1982 season.)

Expansion teams, while boosting the coffers of existing owners, did little to help the league's overall health. In 1974, the first year of significant NASL expansion, five of the six lowest attendance average teams were new to the league that year. Those same teams, in addition to other new teams, continued to represent the worst attended NASL teams essentially until the first massive wave of contraction in 1982 when the league sloughed off a third of its members. 

The MLS has been a modicum of stability, at least in contrast. Nine of the league's 10 original teams still compete, with only the Tampa Bay Mutiny falling by the wayside. Of the league's expansion franchises, only the Miami Fusion have failed to take hold.

While almost every franchise has moved home stadiums, only the Houston Dynamo have relocated cities.

Although the league will have grown from 10 teams in 2004 to 18 teams in 2011, the growth has been much slower and more deliberate. No more than two teams have entered the league in any one year and there have never been more than two teams with fewer than two seasons under their belts.

MLS attendance has been similarly stable. The league has averaged better crowds than the NASL at its peak in all but three seasons (1998-2000) and has averaged at least 16,000 for each of the past three seasons. While attendance has certainly had some level of fluctuation, it has never dipped below an average of 13,500 (2000).

No team has yet to equal the heights of the Cosmos (Seattle's average of just over 31,000 is an MLS record), but the struggles of even the worst attended MLS teams pales in comparison to their NASL counterparts. No team has failed to average at least 10,000 fans per game since 2005 (Kansas City averaged 9,691 that year) and only four teams have failed to hit that mark since 2001 (four teams actually averaged less than 10,000 in 2000), according to the MLS website.

More to the point, the expansion franchises have recently been the more successful ones at the turnstile. Four of the top 5 teams in attendance last season were at one point expansion teams. Although that appears to have been an aberration, since 2005 the expansion teams have at least avoided being the teams dragging down league-wide attendance averages (that honor goes almost entirely to charter member Kansas City). At the very least, each expansion franchise has drawn well its inaugural season before eventually settling into the middle of the pack.

I don't think I'm making any crazy predictions by saying this could be a record-setting year in MLS, eclipsing the inaugural 1996 season's league-wide average of more than 17,000. The New York Red Bulls will open their soccer-specific stadium. Tickets for the Philadelphia Union are selling quickly. And both will likely be dwarfed by another record-setting year of attendance by your Seattle Sounders. 

If anything, this seems like the perfect time for MLS to be expanding. Done smartly, there's no reason to believe the league doesn't have a bright future ahead of itself.

Note: Finding primary sources for almost my NASL attendance figures was tough. I was forced to rely on this post from Keen.com for most of my NASL figures. After initially failing to find primary MLS figures, though, a reader pointed me to this somewhat hidden area on the MLS site.