Now that (nearly) everybody in the six primary outdoor soccer leagues in the US and Canada has had a home match, we can take our first comprehensive look at 2013 at attendance figures. I’ve added medians to the chart this time. (These are through games of Sunday, June 9 and, as always, corrections and additions are welcome.)

NOTES:

• Seattle’s crowd of 53,679 for their home game against Vancouver Saturday was a season high in MLS. (How many tickets did Vancouver fans get, by the way, anybody know? After that whole Cascadia brouhaha?) The Sounders are slightly behind last year’s final average, and league attendance is down. It projects out (if everybody holds their current averages) to a total attendance of about 5.63 million for the season, well off last year’s milestone 6 million plus. The good news is that MLS is playing to about 84% capacity and, at 17,435 a game, is still very healthy.
• Obviously, there are still issues with Chivas USA, but the Goats are still unlikely to reach the depths of Dragon Stadium Dallas or Miami. The real problems appear to be with established clubs that should do better (Chicago, Columbus and DC, specifically).
• Every team in the NASL except San Antonio (which would have been hard pressed to, given they moved to a more intimate venue) is up year-over-year in terms of average announced attendance. Carolina (up 57%) is the biggest gainer to this point (though their recent club-record crowd in an Open Cup match doesn’t count in these rankings, which track only league games), but Minnesota is up 43%, Ft. Lauderdale is up 38% and even Tampa Bay is up 20%. There have been smaller gains in Atlanta (where they’re near capacity anyway) and Edmonton (where new seats just went in, to underwhelming reaction so far). The teams, collectively are up about 8% and the league after 30 matches this year is about 22% ahead of last year after the same number of games. No Division II league has ever had all of its teams finish over 2,000 announced per game for an entire season, so if Edmonton can get there by year’s end, this will be a first.
• Orlando’s still setting the pace in USL Pro, with the Lions drawing 7,466 and 6,187 for a pair of 2-0 wins this weekend. They’re about 10% ahead of last year’s league-leading pace through 7 home games). Dayton drew a near team-record (they haven’t always announced all their crowds, but the Dayton Daily News described it as a record) 1,621 for their match against the Columbus Crew Reserves Saturday night. These MLS crossover games aren’t drawing a ton of interest (averaging just 3,004 for five matches at USL Pro venues) but MLS teams have been going deep into their benches and, in some cases, their academies for players to play in these things. Because the games count in the standings, I’m including the MLS Reserve Teams as one line item in the USL Pro chart, but the league average is actually slightly higher if you take them out of the equation (2,730 to 2,716).
• Portland is certainly (once again) Soccer City USA. The Timbers’ first team sells out every game, their U-23 team leads the PDL in attendance (thanks in part to some well-attended school/camp day games) and their NWSL team, the Thorns, is far and away the leader in the new women’s league. Most of the rest of the NWSL isn’t much to write home about, with the co-league-leaders Sky Blue FC (who don’t wear sky blue, I’m just sayin’) at the bottom of the attendance table. Three NWSL teams are averaging under 2,000 announced per game and former league leader Boston is just over 2,000. As the American, Canadian and Mexican federations are paying the salaries of their international players, NWSL teams should be doing much better from an expense standpoint, but if they’re not putting those savings into sales and marketing, I’m not sure this league will be any better off than the last two. Their median announced attendance through 35 games (2,855) is only slightly higher than WPS’ was through 35 games in 2011 (2,477).
• Fresno, Portland and Des Moines, the usual PDL leaders, are there again in the early going. A total of 10 PDL clubs are averaging over 1,000 announced per game, and a couple more are close. Then we have the teams that exist solely to give players an opportunity to develop, as in Bradenton, where IMG Academy announced a crowd of 15 – fifteen – for its May 29 match against Orlando. Meanwhile, FC Tucson had a club-record 1,015 for its showdown against Fresno on Saturday.
• Lastly, we have the W-League, led by Washington on the strength of a season-opening doubleheader with its big sister club that drew a league-high 4,027. Seattle – which averaged 4,333 last year when they had Hope Solo and Alex Morgan, is still among the league leaders, but at only a quarter of last year’s draw. (Meanwhile, Seattle’s WPS team, with Solo, can’t get 2,000 a game in the same stadium.)

Orlando City’s Dom Dwyer (left, courtesy orlandocitysoccer.com) broke the USL Pro single-season goal-scoring record Friday night with his 14th in a 2-0 win over the Phoenix FC Wolves. It’s a remarkable accomplishment, no question, but not a record-setting one for the level of play. In fact, Dwyer is less than halfway to the third division single-season record, which is held by a pair of guys you’ve never heard of.

In this, the first year of a new partnership between Major League Soccer and United Soccer Leagues, several players have been loaned by MLS clubs to USL Pro clubs to develop their games. None have had the impact Dwyer – a 22-year-old Englishman who was the 16th overall pick in the MLS SuperDraft – has had, though. He scored two goals in his first three matches, a hat trick against Antigua in early May, and surpassed Jhonny Arteaga’s 2011 mark of 13 goals before the halfway point of the 2013 season.

Now, it’s totally reasonable for USL and Orlando to consider 2011 to be the start of history – the schism between owners that led us to a split of lower-level teams and leagues resulted in the North American Soccer League and a newish entity from USL for 2011. They’re free to consider 2011 to be a new era and a fresh start and to track record performances from that point forward.

But USL Pro is still, at heart, the third division league that has gone by many names over the years, and Dwyer’s 14 goals are not even close to a record-breaking performance for the third division. Here’s a chart of the yearly DIII goal-scoring leaders going back to 1995:

Flavio Ferri, a Brazilian forward, scored 29 goals in 19 matches for the San Antonio Pumas in 1995 (the Pumas went 13-7 and lost in the first round of the playoffs) and was an MLS draftee, but never played in the league. He is currently the Vice President of the Long Island Rough Riders of the PDL, a team he played for in 1996 and 1997. Orrett Pendergast tallied 29 times for the Florida Strikers two years later (the Strikers went 10-8 and also lost in the first round of the playoffs), earning league MVP honors, and went on to play for the Minnesota Thunder and to briefly spend time with MLS’ MetroStars (without, apparently, ever getting into a league match). Other info on him is scarce.

Assuming Sporting Kansas City leaves Dwyer in Orlando for the remainder of the USL Pro season, he has a chance to get close to the record co-held by Ferri and Pendergast. He’s halfway there now, but if he keeps up his pace and Kansas City continues to languish mid-table in the Eastern Conference, he may be halfway gone.

Great story in the Vancouver Province today.

Latest attendance numbers for MLS, the NASL, USL Pro and the NWSL, through games of May 19:

• MLS should hit the 2 million mark in total attendance next Sunday, just slightly behind the pace set last year when the league drew six million fans for the first time ever.
• Chivas USA sits at an announced average of 8,059 after last night’s intimate gathering of 8,125 for its match against Real Salt Lake. I don’t know that the Goats can catch the all-time MLS low of 7,460 per game set by the Miami Fusion in 2000 or Dallas’ 7,906 at Dragon Stadium in 2003, but they’ll probably be only the fourth team in the last ten years to go sub-10k for the season (Dallas 2004, Kansas City 2005, San Jose 2010).
• Most NASL teams are up year-over-year, with only Edmonton (down 29%, but with a finally-expanded stadium available to them) and San Antonio down over the same number of home games from 2012. Just as happened in 2012, San Antonio’s numbers have gone down each game after their opener (though they’re now in a smaller stadium that they control, so they’re very likely better off financially).
• Missing attendance figures are prevalent in USL Pro, so what we can divine from the DIII numbers isn’t as robust as it might otherwise be. MLS’ Seattle Sounders, who are considering putting a future USL Pro team in a suburban location rather than align with an existing team, did draw 2,174 for their reserve team’s match with Orlando on Mother’s Day.
• Portland continues to set the pace in the National Women’s Soccer League, averaging 13,336 after three home matches (which would be the highest average for a women’s pro team since the WUSA’s Washington Freedom averaged 14,421 in 2001). Thanks to the Thorns, the NWSL’s current average (4,366) is ahead of the overall three-year WPS average (3,930), though three current teams are averaging below 2,000 a game. No WUSA team averaged under 4,249 for a season, and the WPS low for a season was magicJack’s 2,033 in 2011. Sky Blue FC’s announced crowd of 688 on May 8 is the smallest in the history of any of the three leagues, smaller than the announced 864 for a WPS match between Atlanta and magicJack on May 28, 2011 in Boca Raton, Florida.

The alternate timeline device in 2009′s reboot of the Star Trek franchise gave director J.J. Abrams license to take the series anywhere he wanted.

Unfortunately, he apparently wanted to take it to 1982.

(Spoiler alert – you might not want to go past the jump if you haven’t seen this one yet.)

Read the rest of this entry »

I love this moment, where a(n alleged) Cosmos fan shows he needs to brush up on current events. (H/T to Nico, originally happened here.)

I have an article published in this month’s issue of Stadium Journey magazine (though I didn’t write about stadiums, oddly enough). Thanks to a recommendation from my man Josh Hakala (whose excellent TheCup.us you should visit, especially this time of year), they asked me to write about the pros and cons of promotion and relegation (a topic I may have mentioned before) for their all-soccer issue.

I didn’t write it as prole bait, but I figure it’s going to end up drawing out the batshit crazy brigade. As you know (unless you’re one of the batshit crazy brigade), I’m not personally opposed to the concept – I just don’t think it’s realistic in America now, and maybe not ever. But despite presenting what I think is a balanced look at the advantages and drawbacks of such a system, I fear the “hostile media effect” is going to be in play here and the proles are going to be sure my bias is showing through. Which ( a ) would be nothing new and ( b ) comes with the territory, I guess.

But if they read it, it probably means they bought it, so that’s good. The magazine itself is a good read for anyone who likes to visit stadiums and have sports experiences around the country, so I encourage you to visit them and buy the print or electronic versions of the May issue.

Now that every professional (men’s and women’s) team in MLS, the NASL, USL Pro and the NWSL has had at least one home match, we can take a look at the attendance figures for each team in the various leagues through games of May 5. (As always, corrections are welcome.)

NOTES:

• MLS, which drew six million fans for the first time ever in 2012, is on pace to do slightly below that (if every team holds its average for the rest of the season), but at 17,272 and playing to about 83% capacity, its numbers are healthier than ever overall. There are still trouble spots (Chivas USA, obviously, but to a lesser extent, Colorado, Columbus and Chicago), but the bright spots are very, very bright.
• Starting the MLS season earlier than ever may be something they want to re-think (if it’s mathematically possible, given all the constraints). This year’s March average (17,803) was well off last year’s record 20,783 and below 2011 (19,225) and 2010 (17,992). The season began on March 2 this year, a week earlier than last year and almost two weeks earlier than the year before. I don’t know if there’s a strong correlation (I’d have to delve deeper into it) but those are the numbers. (Incidentally, the April numbers were right about in line with the last few years.)
• Things are looking up in the early going in the Division II North American Soccer League, with strong showings in Minnesota (though not quite as strong as they wanted), the newly-rebranded United FC is 25% ahead of the former Stars’ numbers from a year ago, when they opened at the Metrodome and then moved back outdoors. They’re playing all but one of their Spring Championship matches indoors this time around.
• In fact, every NASL team but Edmonton (where new stands are finally being constructed at Clarke Stadium) and San Antonio is up year-over-year and the league itself is up about 5%. (In the Scorpions’ case, they couldn’t match last year’s numbers no matter what, as their lovely new yard has a much smaller capacity than the high school football stadium the team played in last year.)
• Orlando continues to set the pace in USL Pro (though their MLS chances took a hit late last week). The Lions drew club regular-season records of 9,140 on April 19 and then 9,589 eight days later (and had bad weather kibosh what could have been a couple of other great crowds). While mainstays Charleston, Richmond and Wilmington will be fine, there are troubling signs in Los Angeles (as usual) and Tampa Bay, while Phoenix has lost half its audience (and its club president) in its first month of play.
• Incidentally, the league numbers you will see for USL Pro throughout this season will include the “crossover” games against MLS Reserve League teams. There have been three so far, with Salt Lake drawing a high of 8,263 for their game against Phoenix, Portland getting 1,803 for VSI Tampa Bay and Colorado getting 307 for Harrisburg’s visit. Without the MLS Reserves, the USL Pro average is 2,614 at the moment.
• The latest attempt at women’s pro soccer, the NWSL, is 14 games in and Portland, Washington and Kansas City have drawn healthy (in Portland’s case, super-healthy) crowds. Boston’s off its former league-leading pace, but the big disappointment was Seattle, which drew just 2,618 for its inaugural against Sky Blue FC Saturday night. The Sounders Women (a different club altogether) led the W-League in attendance last year thanks in part to a star-studded roster, but the Reign is finding the going a bit tougher so far. Saturday will be Western New York’s first Saturday home game with Abby Wambach in the lineup, so we’ll see what happens there.
• And, in case you’re wondering, the PDL season began over the weekend, with the Victoria Highlanders drawing 1,804 for their home opener, a 3-0 win over Kitsap. But LA Misioneros reported 100 for their match against Fresno and the awkwardly-named OC Blues Strikers FC (the former Pali Blues) drew 40 for its opener against Ventura County. The W-League season starts this weekend.

Several months back, I wondered what effect the NHL lockout was having on attendance at games in the American Hockey League, whose 30 teams are all affiliates of NHL clubs. Now that the AHL season has ended, we can look at how all 78 minor-league clubs fared at the gate from the time the lockout ended until this past weekend.

You’ll see four columns for each team in the table below. The first is each club’s average home announced attendance as of the last day of the lockout (through games of January 18, 2013). Next is the average home announced attendance for all games from that point until the end of each team’s season. Then there’s the team’s final average announced attendance for the entire season. Finally, the percentage in the fourth column is the difference between the average for games during the lockout and for games after the lockout. Teams are ranked here by how big a “hit” they took (how much their average dropped) when the NHL returned to play. A positive number, obviously, indicates an increase in attendance post-lockout.

Sixty-one of the seventy-eight minor-league hockey teams saw an increase in their average announced attendance once the NHL lockout was over, ranging from the negligible (Rapid City, two people per game) to the profound (Columbus, Greenville and Milwaukee, all up more than 50%). Every league was also up, from the seven percent of the Federal League to the 26 percent of the SPHL.

Some individual markets saw steep declines, including Hamilton (did the return of the Leafs, and their first trip to the playoffs in nine years, make an impact there?), San Francisco (with the Sharks in nearby San Jose), Elmira and Rochester (both near Buffalo) and Bridgeport (the closest minor-league market to New York) all off by 12 to 23 percent.

I wouldn’t attribute all of this to the return of the NHL, and different markets may react very differently. There could be any number of reasons above and beyond the idea that hockey fans felt better about the game once the lockout was over and wanted to consume it at whatever level was closest to them. But you can’t prove from these numbers that the absence of the NHL was better for the minor-league hockey business.

Highmark Stadium in Pittsburgh is one-third of a trio of exciting developments for American soccer that launch this weekend. Two of the three are examples of the sport putting down roots, while the other tries to prove that something can grow on land that’s produced a thin harvest in two previous tries.

The Pittsburgh Riverhounds of USL Pro play their first game at their new, 3,500-seat stadium on the river tomorrow night against Harrisburg. With outstanding views of the city behind it, Highmark Stadium should provide one of the best spectator experiences in the third division (and probably better than some clubs above them provide). The Riverhounds have been around (off and on) since 1999, but will get a good relaunch from a sellout crowd and hope to finally become a part of Pittsburgh’s sporting consciousness.

Meanwhile, the San Antonio Scorpions’ Toyota Field opens tomorrow night when the Tampa Bay Rowdies come to the Alamo City. The 8,000-seat stadium is a little spartan, but has a grass field and looks like a tremendous home for the 2012 NASL attendance-leading Scorpions.

Finally, the third (and maybe final) attempt at a pro women’s soccer league in this country kicks off this weekend as the National Women’s Soccer League stages four games. FC Kansas City hosts Portland Saturday night in the first match in league history, while three other games are Sunday. In Seattle, where a bevy of US Women’s National Teamers helped the Seattle Sounders Women lead the W-League in attendance last summer, the NWSL entry, the Reign, hasn’t seen an outpouring of support just yet.

On the business side, owner Bill Predmore admitted Thursday that he is “disappointed” with season-ticket sales so far, and corporate sponsorships haven’t met expectations.

Elsewhere, the team’s general manager, Amy Carnell, resigned Monday for personal reasons.

“Probably somewhat naively, I thought it was going to be less difficult than it’s proven to be,” Predmore said. “I think I just underestimated the task at hand and really how short a period four months really is.”

While a new business model – where the soccer federations of the US, Canada and Mexico pay the salaries of star players – relieves some of the expense pressure from teams in this new league, the revenue side is still going to be the key. If the NWSL can’t do better at the gate than the WUSA and WPS did, it may find itself in similar straits before long.