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.

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.

It’s not a big controversy, but I found it slightly interesting that FC Kansas City’s uniforms (the first to be unveiled in the new National Women’s Soccer League) bear the logo of a local boxing club, while Portland Thorns FC had to discontinue selling a t-shirt with the (clever and mildly ribald) slogan, “Feelin’ Thorny?”

The message, of course, is that women can be fighters, but not lovers.

(Yes, yes, I get it: Kansas City isn’t advocating violence, they’re promoting fitness, and the boxing gym’s clientele is supposedly 75% female, so it’s not a inappropriate shirt sponsor at all. I just thought the kerfuffle over the Portland t-shirt was overblown and shows how a small group of people can get honked off over something innocuous and halt the whole enterprise.)

Just because people have asked and not because it’s particularly revealing or surprising, here are the 149 teams in MLS, the NASL, USL Pro, the PSL, WPSL Elite and the W-League ranked by average announced attendance. Before you ask, many lower teams don’t always report all of their numbers, so there are many missing figures in the WPSL-E, the PDL and W-League. And, no, I don’t get NPSL figures because they really don’t make an effort to put those numbers out there and I’m not inclined to go searching for attendance figures for a league that let the Phoenix Monsoon in. Please to enjoy:

Imagine a bad breakup with someone you shouldn’t have hooked up with in the first place, someone who seemed perfect for you but who belittled you to your friends, was a slob, didn’t pay their half of the rent and utilities and criticized your sexual performance. Now imagine having to have that person spend one weekend a month at your house for the next two years. That’s what’s happening to WPS right now.

Rather than deal with protracted litigation over WPS’ revoking of Dan Borislow‘s magicJack franchise last October (which a Florida circuit court judge said last week had been done improperly), WPS and Borislow have reached a compromise: magicJack will play exhibition games against WPS teams for the next two years, but won’t “really” be a part of the league. This shows you how desperate the other WPS owners were to be rid of this guy – they’re currently playing under another USSF waiver because they have just five teams instead of the mandated eight. MagicJack would at least give them six, but Borislow has alienated his fellow owners and even his own players to the point where the league’s new CEO said she feared the owners might prefer to fold rather than let him back in.

So the team once described as “the Barcelona of women’s soccer” (Distaff Barça, by the way, finished third in the league and lost in the playoff semifinal) is kindasorta back, for seven or eight friendlies (at least a couple in Boca Raton) in each of the next two years. Which means two more seasons of drama for a league that needs drama less than it needs investors.

Here’s Alex Morgan‘s stoppage time goal that saved the US Women’s National Team from a draw in Italy that would have put them under the gun for Sunday’s return leg in Chicago.

A Women’s World Cup without the US would be unthinkable, but now Italy has to not concede a goal and score at least one and win in penalties to get through.

I’ll be one of the broadcasters for today’s Pac-10 women’s soccer match between UCLA and Arizona State at 3pm ET/1pm MT on Fox Sports Arizona and Fox Sports Prime Ticket. Both teams are hoping to secure berths in the upcoming NCAA Tournament.

I’m sorry, there’s just no way to spin it anymore. With the apparent folding of the Washington Freedom and FC Gold Pride (the latter only the league champions, with The World’s Best Player^TM), Women’s Professional Soccer is down to just six teams, none west of Chicago.

They can say they’ll play with six teams in 2011, and they very well might. But they’re dead women walking and I don’t see a reprieve coming.

When it comes to Washington – a WUSA original that kept playing through the interim years and into WPS – my man Beau Dure asks, “Why now?” I ask, “Why not now?” Why does anything happen when it happens? If John Hendricks has had enough, he’s had enough. If someone decides that their money is only going to be lit on fire long-term, why should they waste any more time after reaching that conclusion? So that other people can have a hobby?

Fake Sigi makes a good point in that if they’re going to require you to put the entire year’s operating expenses in escrow (which Beau refers to as “one escrow payment” – well, yeah, Beau, but it’s a pretty frigging big one) you might very well say, “Well, you know what? I don’t have it on me right now. You can’t get blood from a turnip, goodbye.”

This goes back to the exact same thing I said about WUSA ten years ago: there is a market for this product. Unfortunately, it’s either not as big a market as some would like or expect or it’s too expensive to reach that market in a meaningful way.

WUSA went big: big stars, big salaries, big budgets. “Look at us, we’re big!” they shouted. WPS learned from that: smaller salaries, smaller budgets, fewer big names. “Please look @us,” they tweeted.

Neither strategy worked. Not because of sexism or anything like that, but because the market decided it isn’t interested in ponying up enough in ticket dollars, television eyeballs and merchandise sales – in short, investing in caring – to make a professional women’s soccer league viable at this point in time. Maybe at any point in time, but definitely not at this one.

Should there be professional women’s soccer? I think there should be as much or as little of anything as the free market decides. Should .260-hitting shortstops make $5 million a year? Hell, I don’t know. That’s the going rate; who am I to decide? But it seems as if we’ve tried it and it ain’t happening.

The regular season is over, and the second year of Women’s Professional Soccer saw a 23% drop in overall average league attendance. Only the Boston Breakers were able to improve on their average from year one, going from 4,183 per game to a league-leading 4,490. The league average went from 4,684 to 3,588, a drop of more than a thousand per game.

Losing Los Angeles obviously didn’t help, but The Stadium That Will Change Women’s Soccer^TM in Atlanta couldn’t overcome a bad team. Saint Louis folded while their numbers were down 20% in a small sample, while Washington also saw a 21% drop and Chicago fell 14%. Sky Blue FC and FC Gold Pride (with far and away the league’s best team and the world’s best player) were only down slightly.

Other tidbits:

• League-wide, attendance was basically stable from month-to-month, peaking in May for the second straight year.
• For the second year in a row, we saw a dropoff from the first half of the schedule to the second half, but it was much smaller in 2010. In 2009, the difference between the first 35 games and the last 35 games was about 1,300 per game. This year, the difference between the first 45 games and the last 44 (there were only 89 games because of the St. Louis affair) was just over 300 per game.
• World Cup Bump^TM? Nope. not here. WPS games prior to the World Cup averaged 4,010. During the World Cup, 3,219. Aftewards, 3,412.
• In two years, the league has drawn an announced 647,177 to 159 regular-season games, for an average of 4,070. In its first two years, WUSA averaged 7,536 (obviously while burning through a lot more money). WUSA’s drop from year one to year two was only 14%, but they weren’t battling the worst recession in memory.
• Philadelphia’s going to host the first playoff game, this Sunday. That should be a treat. The Independence had only drawn over 3,000 once since their opener before getting 4,011 for their home finale two weeks ago. The winner of the Philadelphia-Washington game goes to Boston, where they draw well, but it’s on a Thursday night and at a smaller facility. FC Gold Pride will host the final and they will have had a few weeks to sell it. If they can’t, that doesn’t bode well. Last year’s playoffs (with a 7,218 crowd for the final in LA) averaged 5,500. They’re going to struggle to get there this year, it looks like.
• Though they’re gone, the LA Sol still holds the title of best overall attendance for the two years at 6,298 for their only season. Washington is next at 4,699 with Philadelphia’s 2,938 bringing up the rear. In fact, Philly’s average is lower than any WUSA team averaged over its three-year run.

EDIT: I missed this, but Commissioner Tonya Antonucci is stepping down (Steve Goff broke the story), meaning there aren’t many folks left who started this rebirth of the pro women’s game. And while apparently a western New York team (the W-League’s Buffalo Flash entry) may join the league next year, unless someone convinces the investors there’s a future for this, I’m not sure WPS survives. Hope Solo may be right when she says she’s done playing in (this) league, but it might or might not be her choice.

We’re going to focus on the leagues that are still playing this time around (if you are keen on them, the final numbers for the W-League and PDL are here) and give you a little extra data that I keep but don’t normally put into these posts because, quite frankly, it screws up the formatting.

Notes:

• The Portland Timbers are only the third D2 franchise to average over 10k for a season (Montreal and Rochester are the others) thanks to a late surge that saw them pack PGE Park three times in the last month. Those guys should be in TMLS!
• In WPS, everybody but Sky Blue FC, FC Gold Pride and the Washington Freedom have finished their home schedules, so don’t expect a big bump on the last weekend. FCGP simply can’t draw (I’ve said it before, having Marta in the East Bay is like Pavarotti at a dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida) so an 11:30 am start for the WPS final in a couple of weeks should be fun.
• Stadium renderings usually aren’t indicative of how a stadium finally turns out, but these first looks at the proposed new Earthquakes stadium are pretty nice. They’d better get it sorted, because continuing to play at Buck Shaw is just a feeding tube at this point.
• I’m missing three game attendances for Real Maryland in USL-2, but only my OCD-like sense of completeness compels me to hope I’ll get them. There may not be anybody there to ask before too long.
• Finally, there are 12 teams in USSFD2. Montreal is off to TMLS in 2011, with Portland and Vancouver moving up next year. That’ll leave Rochester as the flagship franchise again, but it’s the bottom of the attendance ladder that’s really troubling. St. Louis has supposedly found a new investor, but Carolina and Minnesota are still looking and Baltimore is broke. Miami can re-brand as the Strikers all they want, they still have Traffic running them. And Puerto Rico has reportedly jumped ship from What’s Left of USL to the NASL. I can’t for the life of me see how the NASL gets USSF sanctioning. Or, at this point, how anybody does.