Photo credit: Rob Gray-USA TODAY Sports
After six gameweeks played in the 2018 season, attendances are down for 66% of the MLS clubs who have played home games this season.
The only MLS clubs who haven’t seen a drop in attendance compared to last season are Atlanta United (up 10%), LA Galaxy (up 23%), Vancouver (up 26%), NYCFC (up 4%), Sporting KC (up 1%) and San Jose (who have seen no increase or decrease).
The MLS franchises who have seen the biggest drop in attendances compared to last season are:
1) DC United — down 71% (due to playing in a temporary stadium),
2) Columbus — down 25% (due to fans protesting that owner is trying to move the club to Austin),
3) Montreal — down 24%
4) Minnesota — down 21%
5) Chicago — down 13%
6) FC Dallas — down 11%
7) Seattle — down 7%
8) New York Red Bulls — down 6%
9) Real Salt Lake — down 6%
10) Orlando — down 6%
11) Colorado — down 6%
12) Philadelphia — down 4%
13) Houston — down 2%
14) New England — down 0.5%
15) Toronto — down 0.1%
LAFC and Portland Timbers have yet to play a home game this season.
In gameweek 6, Atlanta, LA Galaxy and Orlando had impressive attendances. But there were poor turnouts everywhere else. Real Salt Lake has had less than 17,000 two home matches in a row, the first time that has happened since July, 2011. The mitigating factor to both was poor weather, including cold, snow and rain. As a consequence, the numbers for the first 53 matches this season are down 1.75% to 2017 as you can see in the table below.
The whole #SaveTheCrew movement is a farce. Yeah don’t move our team, but we’re not going to do anything to prevent you from moving it other that whining about it on Twitter. Averaging under 10k per game this year and attendance before that was never great. It’s really not a mystery why Precourt wants out of Columbus.
I guess that I am one of the few that is excited that the Crew may move to Austin. I live one hour away from where they are planning to build the stadium. I also feel that the teams in the bottom third of attendances should to moved instead of adding more expansion teams. I have always been an FC Dallas fan but major cities should be able to get 20,000 people into a stadium, if not, move them. Other cities want teams more.
An odd twist on promotion/relegation…the bottom three move.
We can call it “American Pro-Rel” 🙂
Precourt was never going to stay in Columbus. He had his out from Day 1 with the Austin clause.
2016 attendance shows Columbus loves the Crew
2017 attendance shows that you lose 2k when you tank marketing
2018 attendance shows that everyone hates Precourt
2016 attendance: 16,774 – Yeah, whole city really getting behind the team.
2017 attendance: 15,474 – Columbus loves the Crew so much that less marketing makes the city forget the team exists.
2018 attendance: 9,511 – SaveTheCrew is a great hashtag but nobody wants to act on it.
No clue where you’re getting your 2016 numbers from but Crew had 17,125 for 2016. For reference, Dallas has never reached that. That’s also 87% capacity for the year, which puts them right in the middle of the pack.
You are delusional to think that any MLS team wouldn’t lose at least 2k if they dropped marketing. Every team has it’s season ticket holders, but they all still depend on the casual fan.
Now as for giving Precourt $$ when he is literally actively using that money in Austin, not surprisingly there are a lot of people who refuse to do that. Personally I am going to see them every chance I get because I love Berhalter’s style. I can absolutely see why people don’t want to give Precourt their money though.
Crew to Austin and send Dallas to Columbus. Everyone happy!!! 😛
I would say that the weather is probably a major factor for all of the decreases. I mean, it snowed this weekend in a good chunk of the country. Seeing the effect that this weather is having this spring is a great argument against EVER adopting the English schedule for MLS.
Weather wasn’t a major factor in the Seattle attendance drop of over 7%. After the horrible performance in the MLS Cup Final against Toronto, hopes were dashed when Seattle’s striker Jordan Morris suffered a season-ending knee injury right before the MLS season began. Midfield playmaker Nicolas Lodiero was also injured and missed the first two matches. This put the goal-scoring onus on Will Bruin and an aging Clint Dempsey, the latter of which got himself ejected in Dallas after doing something stupid.
All told, the Sounders haven’t won a game or scored a single goal in the three matches they’ve played this season and until the organization acquires another striker that can repeatedly score goals to replace Morris there’s no reason to expect the team’s performance to improve in the near term. Sure, Seattle has a loyal fan base but I don’t see attendance numbers going anywhere but down from last season.
The english, germans , dutch etc don’t play in the snow? Last time I checked they don’t stay home when it snows.
The Europeans are a different breed from us. Their passion for soccer is closer to our (collective) passion for NFL and NCAA football, where a little snow late in the season won’t deter many fans. But soccer is still far too niche to draw anyone but the hard core supporters to a game when the weather is crap – especially the families that MLS has traditionally targeted.
The other side is that the Europeans aren’t choosing between supporting their local side in the snow (which England gets very little of) and the NBA and NHL (plus their assorted minor leagues). Also – and this could be speculation – Americans are more apt to watch the game on TV than in person due to a combination of costs, travel, and weather. Don’t underestimate the impact of travel (outside of places like NYC, obviously) in relation to the weather. American metros sprawl over vast distances and are usually traversed by car. Most rational people would rather not deal with the weather AND the traffic BS that comes on game days – especially in the early season.
For what it’s worth, MLB attendance looked bad all weekend too.
You cannot compare MLB attendance to MLS attendance. MLS only has one team that is constantly over 40,000 in attendance where MLB has multiple, and MLS only plays on prime time days where most of Americans are off from work like Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays and are free and can actually attend the games. MLB plays everyday and sometimes even has 1PM afternoon games during the middle of the week. At the end of the day you just have to accept the fact that MLS is not as popular as some of you would like to be. And it will probably be that way for a very long time.
Still beleiving that there would be an upsurge in before the season runs out.
OMG here we go again with excuses, it’s the weather! Right now it’s to cold, in the summer it will be to hot. It is because Kids are in school, in the summer kids will be because they are out of school! Or maybe it’s the Russians fault!
It’s definitely the weather here in the Denver area. First home game for Colorado was CCL on Feb. 20. Temperature at kickoff was an insane 5 degrees. Both home games this MLS season have been in cool and very windy conditions which took the “feels like” temperature into the low 30s. It’s too early to run an article like this, because the weather is an overriding factor in many areas of the country.
It’s been extremely cold in Chicago for the start of the season. I would like to see your numbers when the weather gets better in Bridgeview. Last game the temp by end of the game had to be in the lower 30’s upper 20’s. I think only Polar Bears and Huskies enjoy going to games in that weather
This early in the season anything under 5% difference is not even worth noting. Most teams have had 2 or fewer home games and if you haven’t played rivals or bigger teams or there was bad weather all of those things can account for that level of fluctuation easily. And conversely you throw out DC and Columbus because of very unique scenarios (temp stadium & moving team). And quite frankly the sample size is just two small for you to draw any meaningful conclusion with any of these teams.
I think Montreal and Minnesota are a bit concerning but even with Montreal they will play a handful of games a year at the Olympic stadium and those games can skew their attendance numbers. If these trends are still there at midseason that would be the time to write this article not after 2-3 home games.
I would say attendance is down because MLS is a garbage league
What a pathetic remark. MLS is a fantastic league. It gets stronger and more passionate every year. Go dumpster dive else where you loser.
It used to be, I have watched a few games this year and there was a big difference in the caliber of the game as opposed to the past. The speed of the game has increased and was very entertaining. MLS is still going through some stability issues but I am sure that they will work through them.
This article is typically misleading. You can’t compare the current 2018 average to the season-ending 2017 averages.
In fact, the attendance is actually higher compared to this time last year, even with DC’s numbers and the fiasco in Columbus:
–through week 12 in 2017 the average was 20,809: https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/6cnk43/the_mls_attendance_thread_week_12_2017/
–through week 12 in 2018 the average is 20,834: https://www.reddit.com/r/MLS/comments/8l149f/the_mls_attendance_thread_week_12_2018/
The final 2017 MLS Average was 22,112.
Weather is typically a problem in March, April, even May. DC’s new stadium and better weather will help the current figures. The World Cup may also have an effect, perhaps lower attendance during the Cup and higher afterwards.
Having said that, many teams like Dallas and Chicago should be concerned, but in some cases if the team is doing poorly compared to last year the attendance would be expected to drop.
Me thinks fans of MLS who watched the World Cup realized what real football is really all about. “I’m paying HOW MUCH to watch a 3rd rate MLS game!!??”