Sounders Attendance Is Really Something To Behold
by Jeremiah Oshan on Oct 10, 2011 3:26 PM PDT
in Sounders: Analysis
Email
Print
That the Seattle Sounders will set another MLS attendance record is not really news. In fact, they already have the single-season MLS attendance record. In the game against DC United, the Sounders broke their old record, which they set in 2010 when they broke the record they set in 2009. Sense a pattern?
A pretty loud exclamation mark will be put on this season's home attendance figure on Oct. 15 in what will be Kasey Keller's final regular-season game. It has been announced that 57,000 tickets have already been sold for that game. By the time the game rolls around, it will probably be closer to 60,000. While that won't be a single-game MLS attendance record, it will be one of the highest attended games in MLS history that will not require any kind of asterisk. (Side note: That's also the day of "Date with Sounder at Heart." Have you RSVP'd?)
In fact, it will likely be the third highest attended regular-season game that was neither part of a double-header nor played on the Fourth of July. Only the first ever MLS game played at the Rose Bowl, which drew more than 69,000, and David Beckham's first MLS game, which drew more than 66,000, will have drawn more.
Even more impressive is the realization that the Sounders are poised to draw more than 800,000 people to games this year.
Placed in context, those numbers become even more remarkable. Assuming a crowd of about 20,000 shows up for next week's CONCACAF Champions League match against Monterrey, the Sounders should draw about 830,000 people this year. That includes exhibition games at CenturyLink Field, as well as U.S. Open Cup and CCL. In total, that's 27 matches (Community Shield, Manchester United friendly, four Open Cup games, four CCL games and 17 MLS games).
- That figure would surpass all but two NHL teams' 2010-11 total, despite the fact that they play 41 home matches.
- It would also be more than all but two NBA teams' 2010-11 totals. NBA teams also play 41 home dates.
- Even if you only count the Sounders' 17 regular-season home games, the Sounders would outdraw 30 of 32 NFL teams.
The Sounders' projected attendance for regular-season home matches will be about 650,000 for an average of about 38,000.
- That average would rank them seventh among Major League Baseball's 30 teams.
- They would rank seventh in this year's Premier League.
- Based on last year's Serie A numbers, the Sounders would be fourth there
- They would have been 12th in the Bundesliga
If you look at where the Sounders are in MLS history, it becomes almost comical. The year before the Sounders entered the league, the Galaxy were the top drawing team with about 390,000 people showing up to Home Depot Center. That was the highest single-season total since the Galaxy set the MLS record in 1996 (462,656).
- The Sounders are poised to break the record they set last year by more than 100,000 people
- Even accounting for the two extra games, they'll draw about 2,000 more people per game than they did last year
- No team other than the Sounders or Galaxy have ever averaged more than 24,000 a game or drawn more than 380,000 people, something the Sounders have now done for three straight years.
108 comments
|
3 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
I think you're missing a match
I count 28, maybe 29 if you include the friendly.
2 Cascadia Summit
1 Community Shield
4 USOC
1 CCL Play-In
3 CCL Group
17 League
1 drubbing by Man Utd
oh, i counted 0 cascadia summit matches actually
only counted community shield and manutd
Editor/writer at Sounder at Heart, MLS editor SB Nation. Follow me on Twitter. You'll Never Yacht Alone.
by Jeremiah Oshan on Oct 10, 2011 5:51 PM PDT up reply actions
i'll add in a graphic that shows my math...
Editor/writer at Sounder at Heart, MLS editor SB Nation. Follow me on Twitter. You'll Never Yacht Alone.
by Jeremiah Oshan on Oct 10, 2011 6:06 PM PDT up reply actions
matches
if they play the open cup games at C-link instead of Starfire they could potentially have added another 80-100k fans through the doors. Don’t count the summit games those were pre-season to be rotated between the cities.
As the economists say, if something can't go on forever, it won't
The question is how long this trend can be sustained. The Sounders obviously have stadium capacity up to 67,000 but I doubt there’s demand in the area to reach that number in the near term. Somehow I don’t see us breaking that record again next year, at least not by much.
I was going to make a comment about how badly that would make us shatter what the Seahawks bring in
but then I realized we already beat out their numbers by about 120,000 just in our regular season alone. Granted, the merchandise profits and the per ticket costs are significantly higher then Sounders matches, but still. That surprised me.
Now with more pessimism!
There's no reason to think that interest won't continue to rise.
This is a big market, one with more recreational soccer players than any other. It’s also a growing market, one with lots of financial options. Sure, it can’t go forever, but is it so unlikely that the ceiling is beyond the 67k capacity? I don’t think so.
I was gonna argue that Seattle are fair-weather fans
and that we only care about teams that win. At least that’s me. I would then point to the Mariners, and Sonics attendance numbers. I would assume that a few seasons with the Sounders at the bottom of the table would lower our numbers.
But then I was wondering about the Seahawks. They still get a full house each home game without putting up that many wins. Does the 12th Man campaign have anything to do with that? or does football have that mass appeal?
I would have to say that is due to number of games
The Seahawks play 8 games at home. The mariners have 100+ game season with half at home. Plus the Mariners have been absolutely terrible since 2002. A decade of horrific play will erode even the diehard fans, especially when they are losing almost a hundred games a year. I can’t really say anything about the Sonics other than the more games theory holds up against football. I personally hate basketball, so i never cared anyways.
On the contrary, the Mariners and Sonics had to be bottom-of-the-barrel awful for a decade to truly turn the fans off
And still, the Mariners drew better than teams that were in the playoff hunt, and comparably to others. Arizona, Chicago, Cleveland, Tampa Bay, and others come to mind.
In fact, of the 9 teams that were ahead of the Mariners for the American League Wild Card spot, only Boston, LA, and the White Sox actually outdrew the Ms. For the circumstances, I think they’re doing just fine. Hell, they outsell the Timbers 81 times a year. Bill Bavasi ran this franchise into the ground, but people still come out to the park (unlike places like Minnesota, they don’t have the bump of a new park anymore) and the ratings are still very high.
There’s so much you can say about why the Sonics’ numbers were down, from the alienating of the fanbase by the FO (“Tradin’ away your fav’rite players without a conscience”) a league lacking in parity (especially now) and of course, the new ownership doing everything they could to drive people away. And you know what? They were sill selling 96 percent of the seats in 2005, the year before Bennett bought the team. I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to give him any money when he was going to move the team anyway.
by Agent_J on Oct 10, 2011 6:12 PM PDT up reply actions 3 recs
Bad attendance at Sonics games is a myth
it really only got bad once Bennett made it clear he was taking the team away. Even in the lean years under Howard Schultz though, the team drew well. The problem with the Sonics is they rebuilt KeyArena at the worst possible time, just prior to the arrival of big corporate money (ie big arenas with many suites) and sky rocketing salaries.
I miss *REAL* Four Loko
by B-Lot tailgater on Oct 11, 2011 8:14 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
You are spot on about the attendance and timing of the renovation
But KeyArena is actually okay suite-wise, it was the lack of club seating that hammered its profitability.
You will hear us on Brougham, you will hear us on Occidental, you will hear us on King. Our yachts are all around you, there is no escape.
Part of the decline in Mariners attendance
is due to the fact that all of the beloved players from the 90s all either retired or were traded away. They haven’t been replaced with players the community connects with. I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen when Ichiro leaves. They only had two seasons at .500 or above prior to 1995 and still drew pretty high attendance largely because of players like Griffey, Edgar, Buhner, Randy Johnson, etc. In fact, it can be argued that a lot of the interest in the Sounders has to do with the fact that there are plenty of players on the team that the community connects with.
Rosales, Keller, Montero, Levesque, Riley, Parke, Zakuani, Fucito all seem to be big fan favorites for various reasons. The front office has actually been very smart about getting them out in the community and the best thing about the win a date with a Sounder ads is that it allows the players to show off their personalities. I think the Mariners ads of the 90s helped in the same way and were much better than the current ones.
by Randy Meeker on Oct 15, 2011 12:49 AM PDT up reply actions
Away Support
Does anyone keep track of the numbers that travel? I’d reckon we’d be leading that as well.
I'm missing the significance of the Fourth of July.
Is there something special about that date, MLS regular season-wise?
A lot of teams have fireworks promotions on the 4th of July
They tend to get banner attendance for those days (which is a good thing), which makes it a good promotion, but a bit of an odd case.
Bundesliga > EPL -- why?
I always thought EPL was the benchmark for attendance, but the numbers show a Bundesliga is more supported in the stands…anyone know why?
by InternetCharlie on Oct 10, 2011 3:51 PM PDT reply actions
No the Germans have topped European attendance for years now
I don’t have a firm answer why, but if I had to guess it’s probably because Germany is one of Europe’s strongest economies.
I seem to recall reading that ticket prices for Bundesliga matches are much more affordable than in the Premiership
But that might not be true
Bigger stadiums too
Outside of a handful of English clubs, they actually don’t seat that many people.
This
Germany’s had a recent World Cup, which means lots of brand-new giant stadiums. The Premier League really only has two: Old Trafford and Emirates (Wembley is a national stadium, not generally used for club games). Most English stadiums have actually lost a lot of capacity in recent decades as they converted their standing-only terraces to seating. Sounders typically outdraw Tottenham Hotspur now, even though their season-ticket waiting list is several times as large as the number of seats.
by Fnarf on Oct 10, 2011 4:28 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Some numbers:
European clubs with 50,000+ stadiums:
Germany: 11
Italy: 6
Spain, Turkey: 5 each
England, Portugal, Scotland: 3 each
Armenia, Austria, Greece, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine: 2 each
France, Georgia, Serbia: 1 each
Complete list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_stadiums_by_capacity
by Fnarf on Oct 10, 2011 5:43 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
US Stadiums with 50k+?
Too numerous to list?
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
by Dave Clark on Oct 10, 2011 5:45 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
MLS clubs?
Us, BC, DC, Houston, anyone else?
Actually...
…at least according to wikipedia, DC’s capacity at RFK is down to 46K since 2005. New England can definitely do 50K+, though. Houston won’t be able to after their new stadium goes in.
I imagine that at least some of the SSS were built with future expansion in mind.
The idea of the Revolution getting 50k+ makes me laugh
We’d have to be in bizzaro soccer world where the NW is actually the NE.
The Revs have topped 50k this year
Against Man Utd. OK, maybe that’s cheating, but we’re counting our game against them.
RFK Capacity
Had to save capacity for the raccoons.
by Derek Young on Oct 10, 2011 10:41 PM PDT up reply actions 4 recs
Almost every club has one they can use
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
Use, maybe
But never feel at home in. And teams that have just built new soccer-only stadiums are going to be loath to go back to the big football stadium. Sporting Kansas City back in Arrowhead? I dunno about that.
Montreal will next year
For a while at least, until their stadium expansion is ready, sometime in the early part of the season.
Houston’s stadium tops out at 32,000. Their new one next year is 22,000. A number of clubs have made recent moves from oversized American-football stadiums with closed-off sections (like ours) to much smaller but better soccer-specific ones.
The Clink was built with soccer in mind, though
It’s got soccer-specific locker rooms, it meets FIFA sightline requirements, and, lest we forget, the first time every seat in the stadium was filled, Manchester United was playing Celtic.
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 8:12 PM PDT up reply actions
According to Wikipedia again YES
102 to be exact. But most of them are college football stadiums (including all of the top 14), and some of them are going to be crowned (high in the middle) like Husky Stadium, and thus unsuitable for soccer. Some are also going to be too narrow. Figuring out how many you could play soccer in is beyond me — but it’s probably more than half of them, I would think.
Though I’m guessing a lot of those rabid football towns wouldn’t let you paint our lines on their grass. The largest one I can see evidence of soccer in is Neyland Field, home of the Tennessee Volunteers, which was listed in our 2018 World Cup bid, though I don’t know if a soccer game as ever been played there. 102,455.
There are another four in Canada, all of which host some soccer and two of which will have MLS clubs next year.
They played soccer at Sanford Stadium in Athens, GA
During the 96 Olympics. They had to remove the infamous hedges in order to do it, and that was viewed as the worst possible sin anyone could have bestowed upon that field. The university vowed to never again allow that to happen.
I miss *REAL* Four Loko
by B-Lot tailgater on Oct 11, 2011 8:16 AM PDT up reply actions
My subjective impression is that there's a ton more parity in Bundesliga
In Britain, the attendance figures are something like 70,000 a game for the big 4 and 30,000 a game for everyone else. Bunesliga has more competitive parity and so presumably, more attendance parity.
Probably no one reason...
Germany’s population is a good bit higher than England’s. (~80M to ~51M)
Germany’s season is ever-so-slightly smaller because they have 18 teams rather than 20 in their top division, so probably easier to maintain a high per-game average.
Average capacity in the EPL is 37K/game and average capacity in the Bundesliga is 49K/game, so the stadia are somewhat larger in the Bundesliga as well, which definitely plays a role, with the EPL so close to capacity.
by ubelmann on Oct 10, 2011 4:07 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Also more competitive games from top to bottom
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
by Dave Clark on Oct 10, 2011 4:08 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
If that mattered the MLS would have a much higher attendance
by Graham MacAree on Oct 10, 2011 4:14 PM PDT up reply actions
While I won't say it is the most significant factor
It seems to be one. Leagues with more parity tend to have greater gate than leagues without
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
That argument seems to over-simplify the matter
MLS would have a much lower attendance without parity, I’d venture to say. There are other factors which keep attendance lower in MLS. (Quality of play, age of league, etc.) I haven’t checked, but if you look at, say, UEFA Champions League when it’s narrowed down to 32 teams, you likely get better quality of play than in domestic leagues, more competitive games from top to bottom, and higher attendance than most (all?) domestic leagues.
You get higher attendance at UEFA CL
Because the teams with big stadiums go through. Most clubs in the top leagues sell out, most of the time (no, not all). If their attendance is lower, it’s because they have smaller stadiums. It’s not like Bolton or Torino would suddenly start packing in 60,000 into their sub-30,000-seaters if they were in the Champions League.
MLS teams also, with a couple of exceptions (like us) couldn’t increase their attendance beyond the 18-22,000 mark if they wanted to.
Many of the MLS stadiums were built with expansion in mind
They could expand if their markets demanded it.
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
If that's true, then it makes our market look even smaller
And Seattle even larger in comparison. Many English teams are held low by too few seats; here, it’s mostly lack of demand.
Baby steps.
There’s no need to over-build when you can operate efficiently now. Perhaps it’s a lack of demand, but the attendance numbers are stronger than ever, and I feel the NBC deal will increase awareness, revenue, and attendance at MLS teams.
In Kansas City (home to the largest attendance increase by percentage and total numbers this year) there is already talk of expanding Livestrong Sporting Park—indeed the roof can be hydraulically lifted to construct a second tier—but it’s already a massive capital investment at 18K seating and only in its first year of operation. Better to pay off some debts and ensure that the numbers stay there, turn some away at the door now, and look at expansion a few years down the road.
Bloggin' at JoePasDoghouse.com
I wish it would stop being called the "NBC deal"
That’s like calling the matches played on Fox Soccer Channel “the Fox Deal” or those on ESPN2 “the ABC Deal”.
They will be played on Versus (now NBC Sports) with only a handful on NBC proper.
Sorry to go off, it irks me a little :)
there's a difference from both
unlike the Fox and ESPN deals, MLS games really will be on NBC.
Editor/writer at Sounder at Heart, MLS editor SB Nation. Follow me on Twitter. You'll Never Yacht Alone.
by Jeremiah Oshan on Oct 11, 2011 1:43 PM PDT up reply actions
4 Games.
FOUR.
In each year of the deal, the NBC network will broadcast two regular-season M.L.S. games, two playoff games and two national team games (Soccer United Marketing, the marketing arm of M.L.S., owns the rights to the United States national team). The NBC Sports Network will televise 38 regular-season games, 3 playoff games and 2 national team matches. The agreement also gives NBC digital rights across all platforms. NBC was recently acquired by Comcast.
by bmvaughn on Oct 12, 2011 1:45 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
As opposed to the FSC deal
which was never on Fox, or the ESPN deal which isn’t on ABC.
Also, will be on the NBC Sports Network
It’s clearly a deal with NBC
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
Interesting statistic (if my math is right)
Attendance of stadiums in last year’s UEFA Champions League:
Round of 32 average: 50,662
Round of 16 average: 62,727
Quarterfinals average: 65,883
Semifinals average: 79,334
Final average: 87,656
Winner: 99,354
I expected to find correlation but not THAT straight-up-and-down.
Teams with small stadiums cannot compete, period. It’s one of the drawbacks to European football; here in MLS, we have much more parity (maybe too much). The stranglehold the top (large-stadium) clubs have on the various leagues is getting tighter, too (adding in the billionaire factor).
The argument that we have too much parity has always amused me a bit
When the players take the field, we insist that both teams play by the same rules. So much so that officiating mistakes (or at least perceived mistakes) can be referenced for years after they occur.
But when front offices compete against one another, they are just playing a different sort of game, and it makes all the sense in the world to me that all the teams in the league should have the same financial resources for the good of that particular game.
American Sports: Communism for Billionaires
You can ply advantages in acumen and wealth in business and society generally, but in sports it’s somehow bad. That’s something I’ll never get.
It's not communism, it's good business
American sports leagues like the NFL aren’t the USSR, they’re OPEC—imposing constraints on one another so that everyone can make more money.
Say that somehow teams with the most money couldn’t figure out a way to use that money to make a better roster and teams always hovered around the .500 mark. Would it be better to allow some teams the advantage of a 12th player on the pitch for the sake of eliminating parity? Allowing some teams to spend three to four times as much as other teams makes about that much sense to me.
The difference is that you need opponents
If the Yankees don’t have anybody to play, it’s bad for the Yankees too. Even a duopoly like Barcelona-Real Madrid is bad for the game, because you can only play each other twice. Look at the state of Scottish football; it’s a disaster.
If the Sounders win the next ten MLS Cups in a row, I won’t be watching for the last six of them. I like a little competition now and then.
On the other hand, a system that rewards teams for not trying financially, like the way the Pirates and the Royals have been coasting on their wealth-tax payments for so long, is also a bad deal. But rich clubs will always have some advantage. There has to be a parity component even if it’s not absolute.
MLS’s parity is different than most, because the same guy owns more than one team, and almost all the salaries are paid by the league. I expect this to change over time as the league gets stronger.
MLB is not a salary-cap league
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 7:36 PM PDT up reply actions
This is true
But at the same time the Yankees can still spend as much as they want. That doesn’t promote parity.
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 7:40 PM PDT up reply actions
And it harms the league.
The Yankees are, of course, the enemy of all that is good and decent in the world.
Oh, God, I’ve been thrown off a Spurs board for saying that, I hope it doesn’t happen here too.
I think the question is what creates the best fan following experience
EPL is terrible because it has very little parity; you know the big 4 are going to dominate no matter what. NFL seems to have the amount of parity just right in this regard. MLS’ parity is so strong that it can be difficult to build dynasties or have much consistency in result from one year to the next. That makes it more difficult to create interesting storylines.
Realistically the Big Four is the Big Two + One
Arsenal’s in the bottom half currently, and hasn’t seriously challenged for the title in a while. Liverpool challenged seriously for the title ONCE in recent years, and hasn’t won the Premiership ever (last win was ’89-90).
It’s Man Utd vs Chelsea, Chelsea vs Man Utd, with the new boys, Man City, only on the table because their multi-billionaire owner has bought an insane fifty star players.
If you’re not a fan of one of those three, you can forget it. Finish fourth and play in the opening rounds of Europe, that’s the best you can hope for.
by Fnarf on Oct 10, 2011 7:16 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I don't really get the impression that MLS teams are being broken up left and right...
…because of the salary cap, at least. I think a big part of what makes it difficult to field a consistent team in MLS is the same thing that makes it difficult to field a consistent team in any minor league—your best players are always at risk of leaving for a better league. That and all of the expansion drafts in recent years have made it pretty difficult. I don’t know that you can really change that except by doing what MLS is doing—grow slowly over time so that your revenues eventually allow you to keep more and more of your best players for a longer period of time.
Big stadiums make them win
Or perhaps winning gets the clubs big stadiums?
I am guessing the latter.
Both, really
Big stadium = More money (ticket sales)
More money = big stadium
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 11:06 PM PDT up reply actions
Standing sections
Doesn’t the bundesliga allow standing only sections unlike the prem?
by PhootieD on Oct 10, 2011 5:59 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions 1 recs
Yup
http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/en/1-bundesliga/stadien/wettbewerb_L1.html
Not like the old days, though, thank goodness!
Could it have something to do with attendance in the second division
England seems to have more teams in their second division with much smaller stadiums than their counterparts in Germany. This is probably partially due to Germany having more large cities and secondary cities than England.
by Randy Meeker on Oct 15, 2011 12:55 AM PDT up reply actions
MLS Cup
How long until MLS realizes that a LA Seattle playoff game would be played in LA infront of 25k, instead of Seattle at more than twice that ?
They will be switching to three game series very quickly in my opinion.|
How many do they average next year if they win the MLS Cup
Footnote
MLS has used 3 game series in past
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
It should really be home and away aggregate scores at all levels of the playoffs
With the second leg played at the higher seed, meaning they get the advantages of extra time and penalties at home, if it comes to that.
by CarlosT on Oct 10, 2011 4:35 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Agreed
Though I would keep the final as a one game event.
I miss *REAL* Four Loko
by B-Lot tailgater on Oct 10, 2011 4:36 PM PDT up reply actions
I'd keep it at one if it's a neutral site affair, there's a case to be made for home-away otherwise.
But that’s far less of a concern for me than home-away in earlier rounds, reducing the number of playoff teams and keeping the conferences separate.
by Aaron Campeau on Oct 10, 2011 4:40 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I actually don't mind the new Wild Card round
at one game, and the midweek/extra travel. Teams that don’t like it should win more.
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
Well, it's a great format
For a league with 30 teams.
Seriously, ten of eighteen getting in?
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 7:43 PM PDT up reply actions
I view the wild card games as more of a "play in" game.
8 of 18 is more palatable (but still not great).
I wonder if the conference cross over will go away with the advent of the unbalanced schedule
Because crossover doesn’t make sense with an unbalanced schedule. A lot of stuff doesn’t make sense with the unbalanced scheduled, but whatever.
Conference crossover makes more sense with unbalanced
As it provides a better test for the teams from the weaker conference.
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
Or just more fodder for the better conference
But this whole weaker/stronger conference thing is what disgusts me about unbalanced schedules to begin with.
Well teams will always be better or worse
it doesn’t stay static.
And with the new Wild Card round there is no benefit to crossing over
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
Teams will be better or worse
But they should have their place in the playoffs determined by that, not by the level of teams they’re grouped with. This year, it’s pretty much guaranteed that at least one team in the East, if not two, will get straight into the playoffs over a better team in the West, which will have to do the play in round. And the only reason for that is they happened to be grouped with the sucky conference.
This happens in Euro qualifying
world cup qualifying, olympics etc. it isn’t rare or new.
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
If you want a parallel to WC qualifying
Then the West should get six spots in the playoffs. That’s how they do it for the World Cup. UEFA gets the most spots as the best confederation and one of the largest. They get 13 or so spots over the three or four that CONCACAF or CAF get with almost as many teams.
CONMEBOL sends 40-50% of its membership to the world cup, the highest proportion of any confederation. And they actually do play a home and away single table round robin, because it’s actually doable with 10 countries.
In any case, tournaments and leagues are different.
This time CONMEBOL gets 50-60%!
Only nine teams in the qualification tournament, with Brasil hosting (robs me of a chance to see Brasil play competitively in my city, but oh well. Fifth place gets Asia’s fifth place, winner goes to Brasil (last time, Asia’s fifth place was Bahrain and CONMEBOL’s was Uruguay, if that gives you any idea how that one will probably turn out).
You do all the work for us, Honey Badger, and we'll just eat whatever you find.
It's worth noting that MLS has been really unlucky in this regard in recent years
I can’t remember an era in pro sports where the conferences have been as unbalanced as they have been in MLS over the past few years
NBA, West over East in the early 2000s
2001-2002
2002-2003
2003-2004
and so on…
Fan of: Cardinals, Blues, Sounders, Yellow Jackets, Wolverines, Rams, and Blazers.
by ColinMacLeod on Oct 11, 2011 9:56 AM PDT up reply actions
I think they'll probably copy the NFL and go with 12 teams eventually...
…but I’d bet they’ll stay at 10 teams until they get 24 or so teams and might stay at 12 until they ultimately reach 30-32 teams. They like more playoff games, because more playoff games means more money, so if they are eventually going to have 10 teams in the playoffs, it suits them to make it a 10-team format as soon as they feel they can sell it.
Of course, I don’t think it’s just the number of teams that matters. For instance, I think one reason the NFL’s format works is that it’s really an 8-team playoff with an 8-team play-in round. No one wants to play that extra round. As long as the MLS format has that extra round, it “feels” more like an 8-team tournament to me, with 4 teams having to play in for the last two spots.
I think I actually prefer having a 10-team format where 6 teams get a bye to an 8-team format where no one gets a bye, even though I tend to be a small playoffs kind of guy. (As a different example, I think adding a second wildcard team in baseball could work if you made the two wild card teams play a one-game play-in the day before their Division Series. Then no matter what, the wild card team is going to have its rotation messed up for the Division Series, having home-field advantage for that one playoff game would be more meaningful because it could reduce your travel considerably, and I think there would be considerably more incentive to win your division than exists today.)
Home-and-away aggregate scores isn't a good idea in a system that takes regular season into account
Home-and-away aggregate only makes sense in a knockout tournament that doesn’t have an extended regular season before it, like a UCL or CCL. We have a ton of proponents of the Supporter’s Shield here, and with good reason: regular season results are by far the most accurate read you can get on a team’s strength, since you smooth out the variation that a small number of games can give you.
The problem of course is that determining champions by regular season is boring, and also doesn’t measure how well players perform in the clutch or under pressure, or at least it doesn’t do it as much as the average American sports fan would like. So American sports have a playoff structure. The thing is, American sports also recognize that regular season results are the best indicator of skill, so they’re willing to give that team a significant advantage in the form of one more home game than the team that did poorer in the regular season (the exception is football, which has low enough individual match variation that a series is unnecessary)
Really, we figured this whole thing out decades ago, and I can’t believe the eurosnobs got us to abandon the common sense solution to smoothing over individual match variation. Best of 3 playoff series just make sense.
The lack of recognizing regular season success is why mediocre teams on a hot streak toward the end of the season, like RSL ’09 and Colorado ’10, can hoist the MLS Cup. It makes the trophy mean a whole lot less, in my opinion, but the problems with the playoffs can be solved. Just have the teams play multiple games, so we can smooth over the effects of a couple of lucky or unlucky bounces, and reward regular season success, which is the best measure of team skill in the first place.
I wonder how players and coaches feel about best-of-3
That gets to be a lot of travel, and as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. Things could get pretty chippy after the fifth or sixth time (or more if you happen to share a CCL group or USOC game) you play a team in one season.
I kind of like the idea of home-and-home with aggregate ties going to the higher seed, but I’ve also heard such a system has had mixed popularity in Mexico.
No way ties automatically go to the higher seed
At most they get home-field for extra time.
I met a possum.
by s0merand0mdude on Oct 10, 2011 7:49 PM PDT up reply actions
And for our Record Attendance I'd Like to Thank:
1) That Seattle is an educated, worldly city who doesn’t close their mind to a sport just because it’s not in the mass media that often and has exposure to and respect for a game that isn’t played at a top flight in America but is still a great game.
2) The guy that stole the Sonics.
3) Pathetic mismanagement of the Mariners since Lou Pinella left.
4) The Voters who approved Qwest field – a world class stadium in the heart of downtown.
5) Sigi Schmid – for giving us a winner from day 1 and
6) That Seattle is an amazing sports city that’s looking for an excuse.
7) That the sounders have a bunch of likeable players who play hard and achieve.
by RalfZakuani on Oct 10, 2011 5:03 PM PDT reply actions 2 recs
You left off the Sounders Front Office
Who have shown since day one that while they might not always be 100% right, they are in it to win it, committed to building a long term “world club.” Portland claims its the “king of clubs.” — Sofa King. Seattle is proving to be the true holder of that title. And a growing list of other titles as well!
You also might have mentioned Seattle’s supporter groups, who got behind the new team in 2009, put on major membership drives, put up with what to old timers must have been a ridiculous influx of noobies… As well as put on probably the best TIFO displays in North America if not the world.
by luckystriker on Oct 10, 2011 5:07 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Append Adrian to #5
Otherwise, I think you nailed it. Probably helps that the Seahawks haven’t been great other than one game against New Orleans.
Don't forget the NASL Sounders
Without that legacy, there’s no way interest would have been as high as it was from day one.
Which is why the name was so important
I don’t think we would have had the same momentum as the Seattle Republic.
by CarlosT on Oct 10, 2011 5:28 PM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
God, remember that nightmare
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
I get blank stares when I yell: Go Seattle Alliance!
Nos audietis in somniis, Nos audietis in altum: You will hear us!
Something worth considering on comparisons to NFL, EPL etc
Is that until the 1960s, the NFL really didn’t average the 60,000+ we’re used to today. Occasionally a title game might have, but over all they were playing in front of 20,000 (and often less) to 40,000 . The AFL in the 1960s had crowds of 20,000 quite frequently except in one or two stadiums. The Dallas Texans inagural season averaged 17,000 in 1960.
If you take a longer view of MLS attendance and don’t automatically just discount Seattle as a fad, we could be at the start of a steady, long growth period for the league. I hope we are. The thing I am emphasizing is the NFL didn’t get to where it is today overnight, it took about 50 years.
You can say that about a lot of sports
You could walk to the gates and buy tickets for majority of World Cup 1998 and 1990 as well as European Championship 1992, 1996, and 2000. Even in 2002 World Cup and Euro 2004, there were certain games where you could buy tickets before the game, which was not case with EURO 2008 or WC 2006. I blame globalization and commercialization of sport as well as possibility of internet ticket purchase. For example, I was on Croatia – Turkey game during EURO 2008 and met bunch of people from England, Finland, USA on that game that purchased ticket well in advance through UEFA sale system without even knowing who will play in that quarterfinal.
What MLS has done is remarkable.
Only the J-League has been as comparably successful in generating fan interest in a new league in a saturated sports market.
Although we take it for granted, twenty years ago a successful soccer league in the USA and Canada would have been seen as fanciful as a successful NFL league in Italy.
Bloggin' at JoePasDoghouse.com
Fans
Let’s break the record again next year and bring in more than 1,000,000 fans!!!
So what happens when we outdraw Chelsea?
Do they still get to come here as the big stars in a friendly?
Sounders 'til I die
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanPosts on Sounder At Heart
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
