Six of the nine Major League Soccer matches played during the 21st week of the 2012 season were sellouts. Equally impressive is the fact that of the remaining three, two of them were played to crowds of 92 percent capacity or higher. The league has now registered 63 sellouts throughout this season, effectively playing in front of packed houses 30.7 percent of the time.
A total of 162,675 fans purchased tickets for the nine matches of Week 21, averaging 18,075 per contest. This brought the season average down ever so slightly, taking it from 18,667 to 18,641. Through the 205 matches of the year, a total of 3,821,423 tickets have been sold by MLS clubs. The league is approaching (and will easily surpass) the four million mark, something which has only been done in the regular season during the last two years. Keeping in mind that the league schedule has gotten progressively longer in the history of MLS, the 2012 regular season has already recorded a higher total attendance figure than 13 of a possible 16 seasons (regular season + playoffs).
Week 21 was the 13th highest attended week of the season to this point. It came in just below Week 15 (18,095 per match) and just above Week 20 (17,889 per match).
Montreal, FC Dallas, Sporting Kansas City, San Jose, Portland and Philadelphia led the way during the 21st week of the season, recording their third, second, tenth, fifth, eleventh and sixth sellouts of the season, respectively. Dallas and Sporting packed their stadiums tight on Saturday, as the Hoops played to 110.1 percent capacity against the Los Angeles Galaxy while SKC played to 102.6 percent capacity against the Columbus Crew.
Week 22 of the 2012 MLS season begins on Friday, August 3 when Houston hosts New York at 8 pm EST. The match will be broadcast live on the NBC Sports Network.
This is Brett Compton’s 248th post for WeFollowFutbol. Read more about him here.
Could you give a report on how attendance by team with regards to sellouts? And percentages of tickets sold?
Montreal actually sold out the game vs RBNY because a section of the stadium (about 600 seats or so) remains closed.
Changes made. Thanks for the info!
I read that Montreal ownership admitted that they completely misjudged their market. Found a good NYT article about their predicament.
http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/m-l-s-montreal-gambles-on-star-power/
Any insight, Chuck?
Toronto FC. 19K every game and still in last. Do you remember the kid on the high school team that tried really, really hard but still stunk.
Great link, Alex. Thanks for sharing!
No problem, Brett. Ok, so I was curious about Dallas too. Here’s a link for awhile back, but still insightful. The comments section has a lot to say as well.
http://www.matchfitusa.com/2010/03/fc-dallas-attendance-hunting-for-answer.html
Sounds like building a stadium 30 miles away wasn’t a terribly good idea. Looks like if you build it, they don’t always come. In their defense, I probably wouldn’t either.