Major League Soccer’s regular season wrapped up yesterday and here are the final attendance figures:

Now, some notes:

• The New York Yankees did outdraw MLS, but not by much (3,719,358 to 3,608,359).
• The only teams showing any average attendance growth over 2008 had very modest gains, with San Jose’s 2.9% growth (thanks in part to the largest crowd of the year in 2009, a doubleheader at Candlestick Park that drew 61,572 to see Barcelona/CD Guadalajara and fewer than that to see San Jose/Columbus) the best of the bunch. No one else had even 2% growth in average announced attendance. However….
• There were big drops in New England, New York, Los Angeles, DC and (to a lesser extent) Chicago. New York is understandable, but LA may have suffered from a few years of terrible teams, high prices and the whole Beckham Fiasco. And everybody suffered from the economic turmoil.
• Those drops by New England, New York and Los Angeles, all 20% or more, were not the worst in league history for teams from one season to the next. Eleven teams, led by Dallas’ 40% drop when they moved from the Cotton Bowl to Dragon Stadium in Southlake, have had worse year-to-year declines.
• Since I know you’re going to ask, the answer is 14,976. That’s the league average without Seattle. Because there were 225 games in the league, Seattle’s total impact was mitigated a bit, but it was just over 1,000 people a game league-wide (about a 7% bump). Because the league still was down about 3% on average, you can see the impact of the economy on the league overall.
• Seattle broke Los Angeles’ 1996 record with a 30,897 average (the record was 28,916). The Sounders’ median (32,404) was also a record and despite having one less home game than the Galaxy had in 1996, they broke the record for total as well (463,455 to 462,650).
• October (17,593) was actually the best month for league average attendance, beating July (17,218).
• In a small sample, weekdays (Monday-Thursday) outdid weekends, 17,566 to 15,855 on average. If you count Fridays in the weekday sample, it’s slightly larger and the difference is a bit less (16,775 on weekdays to 15,915 on weekends).
• New York’s total and average were the worst in team history. Surprised?
• Dallas’ median (8,623) was bad, but wasn’t the worst in MLS history. That still belongs to Miami, whose median was 7,023 in 2000.
• Because of its small capacity, Kansas City had the 14th-worst average in league history, but five Wizards teams have actually had smaller averages. KC did have a median (10,385) that matched its capacity, meaning they sold out a bunch of games. So there’s that.
• Home openers averaged 15,334. Home finales averaged 18,955.
• Games involving (or purported to involve) David Beckham (as the visiting attraction) averaged 22,048, but only goosed the league average by just under 200 people a game overall. Last year, Galaxy road games averaged 28,132.

Tags: attendance, MLS, soccer, stuff only I care about

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 12:50 pm and is filed under soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.