MLS’ (Un)Popularity: A Scientific Sampling
The usual way we soccer supporters in the U.S. measure interest in the sport is via television ratings and attendance figures, as both are readily available in the public domain and easy to digest. Unfortunately, this is a pretty weak sampling of fan interest as a whole in the American population.
Within the American sports industry, the longest-running and most widely respected research service on fan interest in American sports is the TSN/ESPN Sports Poll: their major clients list includes pretty much every league and major sponsor. As for soccer, MLS’ marketing arm SUM use their results in their marketing package — though they probably won’t be mentioning the results released this week that list MLS as the lowest in fan interest amongst American sports.
The poll was created in 1994 by a professor at Temple University, Dr. Luker, who believed a scientific random sample of the whole U.S. population was needed to establish an accurate poll of nationwide fan interest across all sports. Their methodology is as follows:
- Interviews occur 360 days of the year
- Questionnaire approximately 27-30 minutes in length
- Representative of US population, 12+ in age
- Online sample of 2,300 interviews per month, approximately 27,000 annually using TNS’ 6th Dimension Panel
- RDD/CATI sample of 1000 per month, for probability sampling and accurate projections of fan-base sizes are used to weight the online results
The bad news for MLS, as mentioned above, is that it ranks last of the 21 sports and leagues listed in terms of fan interest over the past twelve months. International soccer is also listed three places further up (so total interest in the sport of soccer is most likely higher than either ranking, though the same goes for other team sports divided between the college and professional levels).
Interest level in soccer was gauged at 27.8% in the survey, less than half of the leading league the NFL at 63.8%. A good spin for MLS is that this is well above its historic low of 10.1% suggesting considerable growth over the years, though also below its historic high of 35% (data has been tracked by the poll since the league began; unfortunately, we couldn’t find specific figures for other years to put dates to these high/low numbers).
| July ‘09 | 12 mth ave. | All-time high | All-time Low | |
| NFL | 63.80% | 69.20% | 77.70% | 55.10% |
| College Football | 57.30% | 61.40% | 69.30% | 52.10% |
| MLB | 60.80% | 59.80% | 67.00% | 33.00% |
| NBA | 47.00% | 51.20% | 64.70% | 39.50% |
| College basketball | 47.80% | 50.50% | 59.30% | 42.50% |
| Extreme/ action sports | 46.90% | 46.60% | 53.40% | 39.80% |
| Figure Skating | 43.00% | 46.40% | 64.40% | 41.40% |
| Boxing | 38.80% | 38.70% | 45.10% | 28.20% |
| NASCAR | 35.30% | 38.60% | 53.80% | 31.80% |
| MMA | 33.90% | 36.10% | 39.20% | 31.70% |
| Minor League Baseball | 37.10% | 35.90% | 43.20% | 27.00% |
| PGA Tour | 35.80% | 35.60% | 42.50% | 30.00% |
| Horse Racing | 34.40% | 35.30% | 42.70% | 26.20% |
| NHL | 36.00% | 34.10% | 47.10% | 25.80% |
| WNBA | 31.50% | 32.60% | 48.00% | 28.20% |
| WTA | 32.90% | 30.70% | 41.50% | 26.20% |
| ATP World Tour | 31.60% | 29.70% | 34.50% | 25.00% |
| Int’l soccer | 31.70% | 29.40% | 40.00% | 5.60% |
| IndyCar | 27.10% | 29.40% | 35.20% | 21.70% |
| NHRA | 25.50% | 28.60% | 34.00% | 21.30% |
| MLS | 29.20% | 27.80% | 35.00% | 10.10% |
The league did score better in avid fan interest, coming 14th of the 21 listed. It should also be noted that, as you can see, MLS was only 6.1% behind the NHL in general fan interest. Indeed, in professional team sports it’s only the expected big three of the NFL, MLB and NBA who are streets ahead of all other professional leagues.
As an MLS partisan, I’ll take the positive spins, but it’s still tough not to feel a twinge of pain for the league when we see interest in it sitting below even IndyCar and the NHRA nationwide.
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Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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Interesting data. And I certainly won’t try and deny there is some truth in it. But honestly as a long time soccer fan in this country, I gave up caring about how the sport “ranks” in the American sports landscape long ago. I’m used to the media slighting it. And other than economic viability of the league (which I think we’re beyond), why should I care? I love the sport. I know many, many others who share the passion, and that’s all I care about.
Now all that said, I’m still leery of the data. There is undoubtedly a very deep-rooted bias against the sport in the mainstream American sports media. It is improving, but even still when they do cover it, it’s very often with a sort of “okay, now we know most of you don’t care and/or understand, but now we’re going to talk about soccer”. So, if this research was conducted from within a traditional American sports industry framework I have to feel like it’s probably skewed somehow. Because, lower than minor league baseball, horse racing, and the ATP? Really?
And of course, it doesn’t include things like USL in the poll. And, for sure, if they took the poll next summer during the World Cup, I’m sure the numbers would be a good deal higher.
Another positive spin–yes, MLS ranks below int’l soccer, but only by 2.5%. We can all agree that MLS won’t be the NFL anytime in this century, and wouldn’t be likely to outrank hockey or NASCAR for decades at least, but getting to the point where more interest in MLS was equal (or even greater) than international soccer would be a strong achievement.
Spin aside, I don’t think this data provides actionable information as a snapshot. I don’t really have the time (that’s what bloggers are for, right?) but it would be far more interesting to me to see what the trend has been over the last several years. That, rather than raw comparisons, will tell you whether MLS is progressing or not, and if you compare it to other sports with historical gains in popularity, would allow you to judge whether the actual progress, and the goals, were reasonable.
I think Harris Poll numbers traditionally say about the same thing.
I like rw’s approach. Who cares what non-soccer fans think? Most of the people in your office or life who would razz you about being a soccer fan play fantasy freaking football, who’s the bigger geek?
I think that either the gap between MLS’ popularity and “international soccer”’s popularity has to be bigger than what’s expressed here, or there’d be less of a disconnect between the two. We know the disconnect is there based not on what people SAY they like, but what people ACTUALLY do (in terms of watching on television and attending matches with international teams).
Lastly, there’s not just ONE perfect metric to gauge the popularity of our sport. You have to look at all the available metrics and get a sense from that, and compare those metrics over time. A lot of them are either ethereal or not readily available (we never get very deep merchandise numbers or overall revenue numbers).
As someone who’s been paying attention since the late 1970s, there’s no question in my mind that the sport itself is more popular than ever. And MLS’ popularity has grown since 1996. We’re still not there yet. But things are getting better all the time.
And, like rw says, I don’t particularly care about those who don’t like it and never will. That’s fine, move along.
Oh, also, so much for the notion recently expressed by one moronic podcaster that “people are just YEARNING for something to replace baseball.”
This data seems like a joke. What does the percent stand for? People “interested” in soccer? It just seems like such a joke to me that the NHL is listed below minor league baseball and right next to the WNBA. Sure, more people might be “interested” in minor league baseball, but the NHL makes a hell of a lot more money in the things that count – ticket sales and TV viewership.
Also, the idea that MLS is only 2% behind international soccer in interest seems ridiculous. I think it’s more like we are 2-3 times behind international soccer in fan interest. We had 70k people come out to see the big clubs this past summer paying 50 bucks/ticket vs. 15k people/game at 30 bucks/ticket for the average MLS game.
What? Where’s F1 on the list?
Yeah, forget the MLS ranking for a moment… Interest in the WNBA is nearly equal to the NHL over 12 months? NASCAR is lower than boxing, and a couple of notches above horse racing? Say what? What is this thing, exactly?
Also, as for this:
“And, like rw says, I don’t particularly care about those who don’t like it and never will. That’s fine, move along.”
I get the general sentiment. At some point you can’t spend your life being dragged down by the haters anymore.
But there IS a valid reason we should all care about soccer’s popularity in this country: The bigger the sport is, the better our national team and our domestic league will become. Personally, I’d like to see a top-performing men’s national team in my lifetime. I’d like to see an MLS with top-level action week in and week out. That stuff will happen only with growth, with better opportunities, with more respect.
So it’s fine to say, “Hey, I don’t care if we’re always a little niche.” But if so, be prepared to accept lesser results on other fronts, too.
Guys, not being American and not living in your country I have to say that to the eyes of a stranger football in your country is developing amazingly fast! And it’s great, so don’t let some ratings get you down and keep doing your thing.
This is a poll meant to inform advertisers. Advertisers won’t even look at the headline numbers – they’ll look at specific markets and demographics. Hockey might get bad national numbers, but in the big northern cities, they’ll be closer to basketball’s numbers.
My guess is that soccer’s support base skews considerably younger than some of the other sports, and that would matter to advertisers.
Hopefully a significantly increased minimum salary in the next few years will improve the quality of play and generate more interest nationally.
thanks alot
I call BS. This poll makes no sense. I am a firm believer, for example, that the NBA is ‘popular’ because our media tells us it is. Look at ESPN (which, not coincidentally, holds part of the league TV contract). All Sports Center IS is the wintertime is the NBA, and some college basketball between commercials. It’s ridiculous. Meanwhile, the NBA plays to stadiums that are one-third empty all over the country.
The WNBA is dying. To somehow suggest that at it’s all-time high, more people were interested in it than are currently interested in the NBA beggars belief. Figure skating is the most popular ’sport’ on the planet for two weeks every four years, during the Winter Olympics. Other than that, it’s not even on the radar and though it’s wildly popular among women during that time, I don’t see too many guys in my circle of friends wondering who the gold medal favorite is.
Full disclosure: I have absolutely no interest in seven of the ‘top ten’ sports listed here (just the top three). I’ve also got virtually no interest in MLS, mainly because there isn’t a team within eight hours’ drive of where I live and European football is a much better product.
I’d take gentle issue with Alex above regarding a league close to my heart, the NHL. The league wants to grow in the South — the north and Canada hasn’t mattered to Gary Bettman for years. Yes, where the NHL and NBA go head to head, the NHL often wins in terms of attendance, but despite a great game, their marketing is Godawful.
Those numbers don’t make any sence, NHRA ahead of MLS, figure skating ahead of NASCAR????? NAscar is the most attended sport in the country and have HIGH ratings, these numbers prove that this study is total garbage. Don’t worry MLS fans, the league is doing very well, 13 years and knocking on the NHL’s door for #4 sport in America.
It would be great if everybody read the description of the poll before running off calling bullshit because it’s not something that it never claimed to be.
Or, you could look at the headline and read the last paragraph before the methodology. Up to you.
What else is it supposed to be?