Major League Soccer Innovating the Fan Experience

For a long time, there has been a stigma surrounding Major League Soccer suggesting that people just don't care about it.  The general idea about soccer fans in the United States is that they get interested during the World Cup and then disappear for another four years.

So, why then, is America's most popular sport, football, turning to MLS to help solve its growing attendance problem?  Yes, you read that correctly.  According to the Wall Street Journal, numerous major football executives have been studying how Major League Soccer teams engage their respective fan bases.

Here's the thing...that stigma about soccer fans in the USA?  By and large, it’s still true, particularly when it comes to TV viewership.  World Cup ratings in the States have been spiking since we hosted it in 1994.  This year, with the tournament held in a time zone that put games on in the afternoon to early evening, Americans watched soccer in greater numbers than they did the NBA Finals.  If past trends hold, the ratings will come crashing back to earth now that the World Cup is over.  MLS ratings flat out stink.  More people in the States watch the English Premier League than they do Major League Soccer.  Now, that's to be expected, to a degree.  The NBA draws bigger TV ratings than NCAA basketball, too.  The explanation just boils down to quality.  The EPL has a better on-field product than MLS just as the NBA does compared to the NCAA, making it more attractive to those holding the remote control.  However, the league was outdrawn on TV by the WNBA last season.  All due respect to any women who may be reading this, but that’s just embarrassing. 

Live attendance is a different story.  MLS is trending upward when it comes to putting butts in the seats, while every other sport is trending downward.  Even football.  Soccer is becoming a very popular, in-person experience.  Though eventually it will run into the same problem that the big three (NFL, NBA, and MLB) are having and be so heavily featured on at-home platforms that fans will start choosing to sit on their comfortable couch rather than spend money on tickets, gas, parking, concessions, etc., right now MLS has figured out how to make it really enticing to go to a game.

Half empty stadium in Florida - Getty Images

Wild atmosphere at Sporting Park in Kansas City

Call it self-awareness.  MLS owners know full well the stigma that follows American soccer fans.  That reputation has been earned.  It seemingly took the league over a decade to recognize the necessity of getting back to the basics; that there was no World Cup-induced magic bullet to creating sustainable popularity for soccer.  Today, MLS teams are focusing on cultivating an audience at home.  Sporting Kansas City and Seattle Sounders FC management have led the way in embracing the challenge of basing their audience-expansion plans on getting people to come to the stadium instead of watch on TV, bucking the modern, more lucrative trend.  It’s an admirable, grassroots approach of growing the teams, the league, and the sport, domestically.  SKC and Seattle are considered two of the smartest franchises in MLS, each with future visions (rapidly turning into realities) of becoming world-renowned.  Part of their genius has been targeting the younger demographic that comprises the bulk of the American soccer fan base.  What do young people have in common?  They want to be a part of something exciting and new; and if there's a way to do it while being directly engaged by a team on their smart phones and other techy gadgets, all the better.  The San Francisco 49ers have adopted that mindset in opening their new stadium with a "high tech experience" at the forefront of their plans.  It was something borrowed, though, from Sporting KC, whose tech-friendly, soccer-specific Sporting Park opened several years ago.

“I think what we’ve done is we’ve created a 'place to be' from a social standpoint (where) a soccer game breaks out every now and then inside of it,” SKC CEO Rob Heineman said. “It’s really our responsibility as a club during that 90 minutes in that soccer game to try to convert them from thinking, ‘Wow, this is a really great place to be,’ to, ‘Wow, this is a really great place to watch soccer.’”  Mission accomplished, Rob.  Sporting KC has 46 straight sellouts, won the 2013 MLS Cup, and were visited earlier this year by representatives from several Southeastern and PAC 12 Conference programs to study and learn. 

MLS has also embraced the most diehard fans that they have by sectioning off specific areas of their stadiums to accommodate supporter groups.  Supporter groups are independent fan clubs that are often the driving force behind the reactions you hear during games.  They create massive banners and belt out chants and songs.  In Europe, the members are referred to as "Ultra," coming from the Latin word "beyond" in reference to their being a cut above the average fan.  Recognizing and appreciating the passion of the supporter groups, MLS decided to give their members reduced season ticket prices and specials on concessions (food, beer, etc.).  Currently, supporter group tickets are $10 less per game than the average ticket prices for general admissions.  MLS has created a culture that rewards diehard fans in more ways than one.  

Easier to pay for banners when your tickets are cheaper

“Everything has grown but the TV rating,” former MLS star and current ESPN Analyst Taylor Twellman said.  Until that number grows, Major League Soccer will continue to rely on drawing people to their stadiums by making the little things count.  The Portland Timbers, for instance, let their supporters park their bikes outside Providence Park and offer better quality foods that you would not often find among major sport concessions.  Their 20,801 attendees per game certainly seem to appreciate it.  The fact that MLS attendance averages exceed that of the NBA and NHL suggest that fans across the league approve of their team's efforts, as well.