For the last several years, Ben Wright has been organizing a survey to capture fans’ feelings about MLS. As someone who primarily covers Nashville SC, though, there was always a somewhat limited reach.
This year, I urged him to enlist other bloggers covering local teams to ask their readers to participate, too. Wright took that suggestion and ran with it, ultimately creating a survey that included questions submitted by more than 20 sites, including Sounder at Heart.
The results were impressive. The survey received nearly 3,500 responses with self-identified fans of 22 different MLS teams, as well as fans of a bunch of other teams weighing in. Selfishly, I was particularly pleased with the fact that nearly a 25% of the respondents identified as Sounders fans, almost twice as many as the second most well-represented team (FC Cincinnati). That equated to more than 800 responses to the Sounders-specific portion of the survey.
The results of the full survey were written up on SixOneFiveSoccer.com, but here were some of the more interesting takeaways from our portion of the survey:
We’re suckers for playoffs
It probably won’t come as a big surprise, but when asked to rank the relative importance of the various competitions in which the Sounders participate, success in the MLS Playoffs was easily the most important, with about 39% ranking it at the top and another 31% ranking it second. Perhaps a bit more surprising was Concacaf Champions Cup edging out the MLS regular season as the second most important and Leagues Cup edging out the U.S. Open Cup (which could be recent-success bias).
This was a bit different from what the general survey showed. Although it focused on non-MLS competition, U.S. Open Cup was deemed the second most important tournament after Concacaf Champions Cup and only by the thinnest of margins.
Mostly satisfied with 2025
Keeping in mind that this survey started before the Sounders bowed out of the playoffs in the first round, fans were asked to rank their satisfaction with the Sounders season on a scale of 1-5. More than 75% ranked it 4+ with just 2.5% ranking it 2 or less. Somewhat surprisingly, 92% of fans ranked the regular season 3+ despite the team finishing 10th in the Shield race, and nearly 75% gave the Sounders a 4+ in the Club World Cup even after they went winless in three games. Predictably, the lowest satisfaction level came in CCC, where 39% gave it a 2 or lower. The Sounders went out in that tournament in the Round of 16, getting pummeled in the second leg against Cruz Azul.
Off the field was a bit more of a mixed bag. When asked to rate the gameday experience in comparison to recent years, only 32% said it was better than previous seasons and nearly 20% said it was worse.
Similarly, fans weren’t particularly happy with the transfer strategy. The Sounders made a few notable moves this year, but once again declined to spend any money on foreign transfer fees and have now been outspent by all but one team in the league since 2021. We did not present any supporting information in the survey so it’s hard to say whether fans simply intuited that or actually knew it. Either way, they expressed a general dismay, with 42% giving it a 2 or lower.
The highest levels of satisfaction were seen with the coaches, who received a 4+ from 91% of fans. Just 13 of the 814 respondents rated the coaches 2 or lower.
Looking ahead
Respondents to our survey were generally pretty happy with not just the team’s performance, but the prospects for future success. About 77% rated the Sounders’ future as 4+ with just 5.5% giving it a two and literally none of the 817 respondents giving it a 1.
That doesn’t mean they just want the club to sit on their hands, though. In terms of offseason priorities, 37% would like to see the Sounders bring in at least one more starter and only 14.6% chose “retain as much of the roster as possible” as their top priority (but 11% did pick re-signing Paul Rothrock above all other options).
The big surprise here was just 11% picked “sign a U22” as the thing they most want the Sounders to do.
Perhaps the most consequential decision the Sounders will make about their future has to do with where they will play games. On that subject, fans seem to be sending a very clear message that they want it to be in Seattle. When asked how fans feel about the Sounders potentially moving to a stadium near their Longacres training facility, a whopping 35.5% said they would “likely stop attending games”, with just 4.3% saying that “As long as the Sounders have their own stadium, I don’t care where it is.”
Highlights from the league-wide survey
While I'd certainly recommend reading the full write-up, there were a few elements from the MLS-wide portion of the survey that I think Sounders fans will find notable.
- 48 states and 34 different countries were represented in the survey. Nearly 700 of the responses were from Washington, which was twice as many as came from any other state.
- Generally speaking, respondents were mostly pretty happy with the MLS Season Pass product (average rating of 3.42), but were very frustrated with the relative lack of shoulder programming. Specifically, they seemed frustrated that so many resources go into the 360 show when so few people seem to watch it (less than 10% said they make a point of watching it every week).
- Opinions on the calendar change are split almost exactly down the middle. About 38% like it and about 38% really don't like it, with the other 24% falling in the middle.
- The journalists who were most commonly identified as being particularly important to following the league were Tom Bogert (757) and Matt Doyle (613). Among reporters who are more locally focused, the most commonly named were Queen City Press editor Laurel Pfahler (125), me (100), SixOneFive’s Wright (99) and Verde All Day’s Phil West (68). That MLSsoccer.com was named as the most-read national outlet speaks to the way the league is still covered.
- Somewhat surprisingly, Bluesky (21%) was named as the most used social-media site, with Instagram (19.4%) and Reddit (19.2%) relatively close behind. Twitter, which as recently as a year ago was still the dominant social media site, came in fourth at 17.3%.
