Portland Timbers and the Health of the MLS
by Ryan Gates on Oct 10, 2011 1:56 PM PDT
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PrintWe all know that MLS is expanding to a 19th member next year and that they are actively looking for a 20th member but is MLS still viable in its 16th year of existence? As a side note the NASL lasted 17 years and next year the Mayan Calendar ends so it looks like MLS will also only last 17 years. The easiest way to tell if the MLS is healthy is to look at finances but since MLS is not a public entity there is not really any way to get that information, so that leaves us with looking at attendance. Since attendance shows the how much "demand" for the product there is you can at least get a general idea about how well the league is doing.
First and foremost the most successful season for MLS was the first season in 1996 as the average attendance was 17,458 per game. Every year since then has been less with the next highest being last year at 16,532. However despite the high league average the first year had 22% of their games have less then 10,000 for attendance. This year that number has dwindled to 5.7% of the games (and we haven't had one since July, almost 100 games ago). Even better this year the 1996 average will finally be topped with the current average sitting at 17,575.
More after the jump
Those numbers are all great for MLS as they show that there has been a steady growth and not the sharp decline that many have predicted. However if you watch MLS games regularly you may notice that some stadiums don't seem to match the attendance figures announced. Not only does this happen in MLS but lots of other leagues as well. Usually a team will count all tickets sold and given away despite the fact that a lot of those ticket holders fail to show up to the game. Turnstile attendance figures are usually lower and sometimes significantly lower. For a good article about this practice click here.
With all these figures you can easily say MLS is healthy and that MLS is not going the way of the NASL. Now there is something really interesting if you compare the current king of sports leagues in this country, the NFL, to how the MLS is growing. The NFL really started in 1932 and has only grown from there. Most of you may or may not know in the 1930's the top spectator sports were Boxing and Baseball and the NFL was just like the MLS in the fact that they used Baseball stadiums as their stadiums and were renting or had owners who owned the baseball team and the NFL team was just a hobby. Just like MLS the NFL learned that using a stadium not designed specifically for your sport makes it difficult to have a great fan experience.
The NFL's average attendance in it's first year was 11,063 but if you read Craig Coenen's book "From Sandlots to the Super Bowl, The National Football League from 1920 - 1967" you will see that the actual turnstile attendance was 6,997. Just like the MLS in their early years the NFL ended up giving away a lot tickets. However every year from that year on the average attendance increased until in 1945 the attendance was 28,482 with turnstile attendance 25,408. The NFL hovered around that average for the next 15 years with slight increases every year.
What does the attendance in the NFL have to do with the MLS? Well the NFL's attendance slowly gained over the first 15 years as more and more people came to the game. However the jumps in attendance really took 15 years as a new generation came to love the game and as more teams moved away from rented stadiums to stadiums they own. Granted the NFL has a 60 year head start but if the MLS continues the growth and adds those generations of fans MLS will be doing amazing.
In other words the MLS is healthy and they are really doing well. Now if they can just the New England some new owners.
Some interesting information I found, Portland was the 5th fastest team to 250k road attendance,meaning people like to come out and see the Timbers play on the road.
Sources:
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Generational support is also a large part of why Cascadia launched so well
Rather than ignore previous fans/iterations of the sport, here we’ve embraced them.
I still would love to get those people that gave up on MLS after the 90s back in stadiums.
I am not a Supporter | I am not a Fan | I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
100% agree
My Parents were there in the NASL days and therefore I am a 2nd generation fan of the Timbers.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
One thing that would help get lost 90s fans
back is hosting the World Cup again and a broadcast partner that gives a shit. We get one of those next year.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 3:25 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
I know
My comment was a back-handed slap to FIFA.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 4:57 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
I would not be at all surprised to see the Timbers' road attendance be lower next year
The Timbers were a new team this year, so they were a novelty – new teams are fun to see. Next year Montreal will probably have the same bump.
In a league where the Sounders (and now the Whitecaps) can host upwards of 40K/game for big games, I put much less stock in aggregate league attendance numbers than I do in attendance per team, because if the Sounders wanted to they could sell 50,000 tickets for the bigger games on their calendar. I also like to see the percentage of games that draw less than 10,000 fans, and it’s good to see that number is going down as that is more indicative to me of overall league health.
Actually
the numbers don’t match up as to the “newness factor”. Most expansion teams actually draw less in their first year on the road. Portland and Seattle were two of the exceptions. I will have to drum up the numbers but I will try and get them.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Portland also had the fortunate circumstance to entering the league in one of the best years ever.
The other teams bested were not recent expansions for the most part.
Jag kom, jag såg, erövrade jag.
Here is the statement from Big Soccer
This is from edwardgr from Big Soccer who takes on the Attendance Thread:
…most of the teams that Portland is tied with or bettered by are the original teams, not the newer expansion teams. Now granted Portland gets big road draws in Seattle and Vancouver which helps their cause, but still most of the expansion teams have actually been pretty mediocre as road draws. So far at least.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Doh
Even contributing editors have reply fails.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
MLS 2.0 is more attractive
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 3:27 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
Good work
But I think with more numbers we could tell a better, fleshier story. I have no idea if those numbers are available.
Percentage of seats sold might be a useful statistic here. There were probably more NFL/football stadiums in the early days, but Seattle’s full great big stadium these days probably skews the numbers a bit.
How many sellouts have their been this year? How many outside of the NW or KC where a new stadium opened? How does that compare to previous seasons? I think viewing the league without the new teams and Seattle could be valuable as well. Obviously they are a part of the whole picture, but they are also outliers.
volatilelyle.com
Obviously, that's more than I would expect you to take on
volatilelyle.com
by almost awesome on Oct 10, 2011 3:09 PM PDT up reply actions
But you do have to define your terms a little bit if you go that route
As Ryan says in the original piece, there’s a difference between tickets sold and butts in seats. If a game is 97% sold out in advance, and the other three percent are sold as walkups, but only 70% of that original 97% show up, does that count as a sellout? It doesn’t look like a sellout, even though technically it is.
I think viewing the league without the new teams and Seattle could be valuable as well. Obviously they are a part of the whole picture, but they are also outliers.
This is why I don’t like overall league attendance numbers for MLS – you get 11,000 showing up in Dallas at a 20,500 seat stadium and a 36,000 capacity crowd shows up at CL, and you have an average attendance of 23,500, which paints a false picture of health at FCD (obviously they can’t fit 23K into a 20K stadium, but you get the point).
MLS more than any other league has to be looked at team by team.
This is true of all US sports
You can have 90k at a Cowboys game but only get 25k at a Bengals game. Same can be said of the NBA. Comparing the Blazers to say the Hornets who barely averages 14k and that was with the last third of the games with 8k tickets given away to not lose the lease.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
OK but the point still stands
Overall league attendance is a fairly limited metric when trying to diagnose the health of a league – it’s better to do that on a team by team basis.
Point is very valid
Not trying to combat your point as it is valid for all US sports leagues.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
The San Diego article mentioned is getting old now.
There is evidence of more teams not having to dish out tickets. Even original franchises like Sporting KC, LA, as well as newcomers in Salt Lake even directly saying that once they moved into a new stadium their freebies dropped significantly. [I’d search for the article but know that their GM or owner said it a year or so back].
Jag kom, jag såg, erövrade jag.
Comparing to the early days of the NFL seems really shaky...
What does 25K fans in 1945 translate into in terms of percentage of the population? This is all based off of my gut, but 25,000 people in 1945 seems a lot more impressive than 36,000 today due to the difference in the size of the population. I may be completely full of it though.
Community Manager for Stumptown Footy
That's a really tough comparison to make
In 1945 the US was just getting out of WW2, and if the NFL schedule was the same then as it is now “just getting out” is almost literal – the war ended in August 1945. I’m betting not a lot of people placed a priority on going to football games at that point in US history, but I could be wrong.
That's what I'm saying in regards to the historical situation.
That’s why I think getting 25K out to a football game in 1945 is a little more impressive than 36K to a soccer game in 2011. Another thing to take into consideration is that in 1945 what we think of as the NFL (one comprehensive, professional football league that spans the continent and crowns a champion) did not exist. The AFL-NFL merger that effectively created the large league we know today didn’t take place until 1970, and in 1945 there were several professional leagues (the Cleveland Browns were a charter member of the All-America Football Conference, for example). So instead of just “competing” with baseball (they didn’t by the way, different seasons) and boxing, the NFL was mainly competing against other leagues and college football.
Community Manager for Stumptown Footy
by William Duke on Oct 10, 2011 4:16 PM PDT up reply actions
What were the numbers for
college football, boxing, horse racing, and baseball during the 1930s and 40s? I would not be surprised to learn that crowds were impressive by any standard.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 5:01 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
70,000
At Yankee Stadium to watch a title fight and they routinely packed the Garden for the fights
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Baseball
Had 83 millions tickets sold in the 1930’s alone.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Wow
So while the NFL and inter-collegiate football are completely different animals now than association football, comparing early NFL to early MLS isn’t so left field.
Also, can we assume that average baseball attendance – adjusted for population growth – is actually doing worse now?
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 5:36 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
Not sure
Cause 2006 saw 75 Million total people. Of course they have 2400 games for the year between 32 teams.
While the MLS has 300 some games
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Also
Percentage wise the US had a population of 132 million and the total attendance was 9,823,484. Comes out to 7% of the population.
1 million saw an NFL game in 1940 so that means less than 1%.
Fast forward to 1996 and the US population is 265,189,794. MLB total attendance was 76,000,000. About 3%.
All of these numbers mean nothing because of baseball and the fact that they play 182 games.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Whatever numbers teams or the league release
should be taken in context of the fact that many private businesses do not report profits at tax time, whether they really have them or not, because Uncle Sammy reams you if you do. Instead it’s write offs, charity, profit sharing, reinvestment of profits, etc.
There are many ways to gauge fan interest now and league health. Attendance, sponsors, merchandise sold, supporters, TV both regional and national, and social media/Internet. Some are positive for MLS and others need improvement but you expect that from a 16 year old league.
NASL was enthusiastic first adoption of professional soccer but it had no foundation. It was casino capitalism and there wasn’t much development of American talent. It was a bubble destined to pop. The years without a league was the correction. MLS is on much more sound footing, partly because American soccer is more mature than it was.
What MLS has that NASL did not, besides soccer stadiums, is the Internet and its positive impact on fan/supporter culture and culture in general.
I’m less worried about MLS’ financial viability or fan interest and more worried about the macro economy. If the economy – still shit after three years now – takes another massive endo could the league survive that?
Could the Euro super clubs with loads of debt survive it?
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 3:51 PM PDT via iPhone app reply actions
If the economy is still in this much of the shitter in a couple years all sports will suffer
Sports are an optional expense, and if people don’t have the money to spend, optional expenses get cut first. This isn’t just true for MLS, though, every league is in the same boat as far as that goes.
What MLS has that NASL did not, besides soccer stadiums, is the Internet and its positive impact on fan/supporter culture and culture in general.
As long as that translates into money, it’s a good thing for the clubs – but if all the internet does is let people who never go to games talk about the team in lieu of going to a game or buying merch, or if it serves as a proxy for those folks who used to go to a game but can’t any more for economic reasons, that doesn’t help the bottom line any.
Good Points
But it’s up to MLS and the clubs to figure how to monetize their Internet presence or how to promote on it effectively (hint: embracing your supporter group really helps).
I think the Timbers and TA are a model on how to do that. It’s hard to imagine a sold out JW and 12,000 STHs without the Timbers good use of Internet and social media, especially when you consider the weak and often disrespectful coverage soccer gets from “mainstream media”. The Timbers are very much a digital media sensation.
Same for the TA. It’s hard to imagine their explosive growth happening in recent years or the birth of the 107ist without Internet or social media. And as mentioned many times, no TA likely means no MLS in Portland because general sports marketing studies had us ranked around 25th for MLS viability, behind Miami. So right here is an example of digital media being very productive for MLS.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 5:23 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
Watching Timbers and Sounders fans bitch on Facebook under MLS stories
makes me want to run in the other direction.
But yes, social media is a big part of our success.
volatilelyle.com
by almost awesome on Oct 10, 2011 5:29 PM PDT up reply actions
Me too
Can’t stand the drivel on Facebook comments. See this online comic for explanation.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
Online comic is wrong about anonymous posts
See FB.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 6:02 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
FB is the gated suburbs of social media
Twitter is the bar and our own SCUSA is the fight club underneath. SBN is like the guys who get together for video games. Mao and his podcast and the other blogs are the coffee shops of social media… smart, polite, and a bit neurotic.
People talk a little trash (or a lot) on these because they feel safe doing it. Unlike a real bar or suburb you won’t get punched or labeled as “that guy”. Trash talk has always been part of professional sports. So the drivel, while hard to read, shows that fans have passion.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 5:53 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
I don't mean this in a negative way and it's not a slam on you specifically, yepyou'reright
but I hate when people say “(X) would never have happened without the internet”. European and South American clubs had developed massive supporter groups since the mid-1900’s and did so without the internet – somehow, throughout time, people have managed to form groups and expand said groups without the use of the internet, so to say that the birth of the 107ist would not be imaginable without the internet is to undersell the draw of the Timbers and the TA in particular.
The internet is great, but it’s not like before the internet people never grouped up and did things.
You're right
TA certainly could’ve grown to its current size without the Internet and much of its success is offline. Imo it’s fair to say Timbers and TA have benefited greatly from digital media. Whatever the case may be, it’s hard to imagine MLS Timbers and TA without the Internet now.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 9:49 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
Let me add...
I don’t view the medium as what caused the Timbers sensation here in PDX. People did it. The medium is a tool that people use to share, communicate, create, and organize at a speed we’ve never had before. When people get passionate about something and use this medium to share their passion with others it can accelerate a spontaneous order that is beautiful and refreshing.
Hyperbole done, but I believe it. On to beer and sleep now.
by yepyou'reright on Oct 10, 2011 10:02 PM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
NASL numbers didn't get strong until AFTER Pele. Which sounds contrary to convention.
http://www.kenn.com/the_blog/?page_id=496
In short, in 1977, the year Pele retired, average attendance was below the historical high of 1980. And only 4 short seasons after the high did NASL dissolve.
There also was no “Pele” bump when he arrived in 1975. Average attendance dropped by 100 or so from the previous year. Compare that to the Beckham bounce which cause significant attendance numbers in the latter half of 2007.
Jag kom, jag såg, erövrade jag.
MEDIAN!
While the average can be skewed by plenty of LA and Seattle results, this year’s median is the giant of them all.
2011 [93%+ matches played]
Average: 17647
Median: 17493
All time highs
Average: 17352 1996
Median: 15096 1996
This median rocks! It tells us that there are more games consistently close to the average. In comparison to every other year, the median to average differed by several thousand indicating that the average was skewed by a limited number of top-heavy attendance figures.
Jag kom, jag såg, erövrade jag.
I forgot to mention that the no go below 10k streak was broken on Saturday.
The culprit is easily identified. NE Revolution.
The streak ended at 99 games.
Jag kom, jag såg, erövrade jag.
median a better indicator but....
In MLS we still have one club whose attendance drastically skews the average upward (I do not hate Seattle for that one) as their average is about 20,000 higher than the league average. On the other side of the table you have X clubs who have averages of 5-4K or so less than the league average (SJ at 11,900 CLB at 12,100, DAL at 13,000 and NE at 13,200). We need these franchises to get closer to the 15-16K mark. SJ could with the new stadium but the others I am not so sure of. In addition to these teams DC needs a new stadium as well.
Next year I think the average and median will both rise for the following reasons:
1. Houston gets a new stadium which should put them closer to 18,000 and not 16,500 or so 2. Montreal enters the mix and with a couple early season games at Olympic stadium they could pull huge numbers early before moving to Saputo where they should get near capacity (20,341) for most matches
3. Timbers likely expand to 20,323 or whatever it is for Houston this weekend
4. Sounders experiment more with expansion?
5. Vancouver expands BC Place to the 54K size for games vs. a couple teams?
Not to mention pushing close to eclipsing 6 million in total.
306 games this year. If single table, home-away, next year has 342 matches. Under this scenario an average of 17543 would be need to reach 6 million, or just 200 people game lower than this year’s average.
Your assumptions are reasonable.
Jag kom, jag såg, erövrade jag.
Unless that was an ironic statement I will have to disagree with you
Add that to the fact that the Krafts don’t really promote the Revolution at all and I think it’s fair to say they don’t really care – they know the Revs are good for about 15,000 fans a game and they’re OK with that because it’s basically free money for them.
Its to hard to really gauge how the league is doing based on these numbers.
Personally I prefer to use the media to judge how well a leagues doing. The media will not waste money on something they feel is worthless. But if you look at it ESPN is starting to show more and more soccer games. Plus if NBC or another large network start picking up games that tells me its heading in a good direction.
plus ive been noticing more and more Soccer plays on the sportscenter top 10
I know that seems like a dumb comment. But in the past i remember it had to be something flat out amazing to even crack the top10. But now im noticing European highlights, and MLS high lights consistantly making it onto that list. Thats another good sign.
I agree
I think the plays making it in to the top ten mean that ESPN thinks soccer will draw an audience.
Contributing editor to Stumptown Footy the Portland Timbers SBN blog.
It's also a very cheap, easy way to throw a bone to soccer fans.
volatilelyle.com
by almost awesome on Oct 11, 2011 4:28 PM PDT up reply actions
yeah, but if thats all it was they would have been doing it years ago.
They always put highlights up during special events (world cup, olympics, little league world series), but the fact that lately they have EPL highlights, and MLS high lights on regularly means its not just “throwing a bone” to the soccer people. I just remember ten years ago never hearing anything about soccer on tv, now they have weekly games, and they really market the Premier league games. There obviously is a desire for it or else they wouldn’t be pushing it now.
I also wonder how much Fox soccer channel has to do with this? I think its been a very successful channel, and espn is probably seeing how starved those soccer fans are and trying to tap into that market. One thing about soccer fans is that they are loyal to their sport.
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