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ESPN dumping MLS Thursday night

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by poindexter, Jan 20, 2009.

  1. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Sometimes, yeah. Part of it is just that those are the first three channels I'll go to, so if there's a halfway interesting game on one of them I'm likely to stay put without ever checking ESPN. I'm far more likely to see an MLS game on FSC than ESPN.
     
  2. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    I'd actually watch that over a San Jose-Dallas matchup.

    And Boomer7: Adu and Beckham both fell flat because they sold a bunch of tickets, sold a bunch of moichandise, brought media attention . . . and then didn't dominate the league. The league can say what it wants to get people to be realistic, but when all that hype happens, it's very easy for critics to say "Hey, I thought this bozo would score three goals a game!!!"
     
  3. Boomer7

    Boomer7 Active Member

    The critics saying that weren't going to pay any attention to MLS or to soccer after the initial buzz wore off, anyway.
     
  4. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    I still contend that there is a skewed perspective of exactly what "successful" is. Last year's attendance numbers were good as long as you aren't expecting NFL or NASCAR numbers. L.A. averaged 26K. Kansas City averaged 10K. Throw out the high and low, and the attendance range for the other 12 organizations ranged from 20-13K a match.

    Sure, revenue comes from TV but the bottom line is MLS or any other sports league isn't about TV ratings. It's not a show. It's a sport that's played for the benefit of people to come out and watch.

    Those attendance figures are on par with the NBA and NHL. It was brought up earlier about basketball and hockey posting those numbers over more dates. Well, so what? MLS doesn't play as many dates but it sells the tickets for the dates it has.
     
  5. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Even among soccer fans, thanks to a Euro snobbery when it comes to the sport. (Of which I'm often guilty as well.)

    Also, the timing of the league is a problem. Who is going to stay home when the weather is nice to watch any sport? I'd wager most people who would be watching MLS are outside during the summer months. For example, if the game kicks at 7-ish, I've still got nearly two hours of sunlight here in the summer. As much as I love soccer, I'm going to be out on the deck rather than in front of the TV.
     
  6. Shoeless Joe

    Shoeless Joe Active Member

    I have to raise my hand to be counted among the guilty there as well.

    That goes back to my earlier post saying while TV ratings might not be what some folks want, people are actually going to the games. There is a story just out where the new Seattle franchise has already sold 18.6K season tickets. (Of course the guy writing it points out how much better that is than many teams along the lines of thinking that the league isn't selling.)
     
  7. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    And that's all you need to know. The viewers have spoken, through ratings: soccer sucks. We don't want to watch it. We're mildly interested every four years for the World Cup, but that's about it.
     
  8. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    What surprises me is how many of the soccer fans on this board don't follow the MLS. I like the MLS. The game looks great on HDNet.
     
  9. GB-Hack

    GB-Hack Active Member

    Dude, you're missing the point completely. You cannot compare a one-off broadcast to a complete season of coverage.

    I think the other thing that's missing here is nowhere do you see the ratings for soccer on Univision, Telemundo, Telefutura or Galavision included in these figures. You always get the rating for MLS, the World Cup, Gold Cup mentioned in stories, but rarely do you find the four major spanish networks numbers included.

    In 2007, when the U.S. played Mexico in the final of the Gold Cup, Univision had 5.34 million people watching. ABC got a 7.01 rating for the World Cup final in 2006, and that doesn't include the number that were watching on Univision.

    It's nice of you to come on here and say soccer sucks, but the evidence still points to the fact that people will watch if they think it's a quality product, and again it comes back to MLS not being perceived as a quality product.
     
  10. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member

    I follow MLS as well. I was at the final and am a season ticket holder.

    I don’t understand those that don’t follow MLS but will watch soccer. It makes little sense to me. I listen to the arguments and hear the explanations. Then, I think it is a bunch of crap.
     
  11. Boomer7

    Boomer7 Active Member



    It's a crappy world, then. When I went to Ireland a few years ago, you needed a microscope to find evidence of their "premier" league. But Malcolm Glazer's purchase of Man U was the lead story in the Irish papers and Premiership games were always on in the pubs.

    Now I understand that the Dynamo or Crew are better than Bray Wanderers, but I imagine there are plenty of other countries in which the domestic league's popularity can't hold a candle to that of the Premiership, Serie A, etc. I suspect a lot of basketball fans in other countries feel the same way about their domestic leagues vis a vis the NBA.

    MLS' main challenge is to convince U.S. soccer fans of the advantages of having a club you can support in person (even if it's not a glamorous SuperClub) rather than from across the ocean.
     
  12. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    The MLS attendance boom isn't hitting the US Men's team. These were taken last night, at Home Depot Center, for the game against Sweden.
    [​IMG]


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