Soccer fans in this part of the world sometimes get too caught up in attendance and TV numbers. For years we’ve had to defend the sport’s place in society and those numbers help to justify our position that soccer has “arrived”/keep us up at night worrying about what the “soccer haters” will think.
The truth is the sport doesn’t need to be defended any longer. We don’t need to obsess on the numbers.
They can still be interesting though. Take this past week’s First Kick numbers. Including the CONCACAF Champions League games there were 10 games played in MLS stadiums last week. The attendance figures were impressive, even more so when you consider how early in the year they came.
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47658 - Toronto
27000 – Los Angeles
23433 - Seattle
21000 - Vancouver
20906 - Dallas
20438 - Portland
16314 – DC United
14746 -- Colorado
14464 -- Chivas
10525 – San Jose
When you consider the San Jose number is a sell out those figures are even more impressive.
Keeping the focus on Canada, the Vancouver v Montreal figure ranks that game in the top 5 all-time in terms of most attended soccer games involving two Canadian club teams. It was the second highest attended game of that description in the MLS era. There were 21,436 at BMO Field for Toronto v Montreal on Apr. 28, 2010.
Although complete data is lacking, it appears that the current record was an original NASL game between the Toronto Blizzard and Montreal Maniac in 1981 when 27,060 showed up to the Big O. There were 23,333 at the same fixture the following year.
The April 7 game between Toronto and Montreal could double the previous high.
TV numbers for the Montreal v Vancouver game were also good. A record 541,000 watched (253,000 on French language RDS; 288,000 on TSN).
The average NHL number on TSN only is 707,000 with the CFL averaged 637,000.
With numbers like that we don’t really need to ask when the sport is going to arrive. It’s here.