2013: Do or Die for Soccer in America

It’s undeniable that soccer in America has made great progress over the last few years. It’s recently moved up to the second most popular sport among 12-24 year olds, outpacing basketball, baseball, and college football. Its top teams boast attendances better than any NBA team. The Seattle Sounders, for example, would rank 6^th in the Premier League in average attendance, above Chelsea and just below Liverpool. People are beginning to perk up and watch SportsCenter when there’s a soccer highlight on the screen. A shirt supporting your local MLS club is netting you more and more random high fives from strangers. The sport is growing, and this year may be one of its most important years for soccer in since the arrival of Pele to the New York Cosmos.

It’s an empty summer and we’re on TV

This year there’s no mass competition to distract Americans when they turn on their televisions. There’s no Summer Olympics or election to cover. It’s a wide open schedule, but that doesn’t mean Americans will stop watching TV, they just need something new to watch. The deal to show the MLS on NBC, which started last year, was a big step in allowing mainstream American audiences the opportunity to watch domestic soccer without having to search around the specialty channels. And with the NBC pickup of the Premier League starting this fall can really give American audiences an opportunity to see experience mainstream soccer broadcasting in a way they have never been able to experience before. Good TV ratings will encourage the trend of soccer on American TV, which is a huge step for furthering the sport without having to make the trek out to your local stadium a couple of times a month.

To continue growth of the league post-Beckham

David Beckham is about the closest thing we had in America to a soccer superstar, who was known as a celebrity first and soccer player second. He was the only link between the MLS and many Americans. Galaxy away games would sell out because people wanted to see the one player in the league they know.  Now that Beckham has left, the MLS has to survive on its own soccer merits. Our supporters culture is growing, soccer-specific stadiums are being built, and even our main TV providers are showing games, all in order to generate interest in the league. Being the year before a World Cup, the league and those involved with it will be doing everything they can to combat the trend of declining attendance in the years before World Cups (like we saw in 2005 and in 2009). If we can keep the positive momentum of league growth going through this year which history says should be a poor year for the MLS, even after losing a star like Beckham, it’s a very good sign for the opportunity provided by next year.

To set up next year

If there’s anything America loves, it’s rooting for ourselves. If there’s another thing we love, it’s cheering for an underdog. Fortunately, World Cups afford us the rare chance to do both. First of all, we still have to qualify for Rio 2014, but if we do qualify (knock on wood right now as you’re reading this, just as I’m knocking while writing) then we really could be on the brink of a new, brighter day for soccer in America. The MLS saw attendance numbers rise in the years of the last three World Cups. Even the years after the last two, 2007 and 2011, brought two of the three largest percentages of growth in the history of the league. If all goes well (please, all of you, pray to something that we qualify) the league could grow in a way we’ve never before imagined in these next couple of years. Or it could completely fall apart and soccer never recovers in America and all of its fans go to see what lacrosse is all about (and immediately discover that it’s odd and not entertaining and give up on it almost before we’ve begun). But it all depends on this year.