Originally Posted by
Mal
Just food for thought: I checked some attendance numbers, and the total attendance last year at all English FA soccer games (Premier League down through English Conference, whatever that is), five levels of over 100 teams, was somewhere in the 30 million range.
Minor league baseball alone in the U.S. outdrew that last year. They play more games, yes, but we're talking about approximately the same amount of teams, and not including the majors while including the EPL. In many communities those minor league baseball teams fill a similar role as the lower division soccer teams do in European towns. Major League Baseball's 32 top level teams, on the other hand, this season drew about 75 million to stadiums. They play a lot of games (because people come, they can do so), and obviously there's 5 times the total potential fan base, but it's 1/3 the teams of English soccer. All told, the average American attended more than 2/3 as many professional baseball games last year as the average Brit did professional soccer matches, and if you just look at the top leagues, the average American went to as many MLB games as the average Brit did EPL games. And that's our second most popular sport up against the updisputed king of the hill by a long shot in the UK. I'm not even touching the U.S. league where it costs $20M+ for a 30 second ad on the championship game's telecast. Or its collegiate minor league, where 44 million people went to a game last year.