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Soccer is now more popular than baseball

Colonel Kang

Colonel Kang

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Sep 29, 2022
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Baseball is in great shape.

NFL is king
CFB is queen
Soccer is growing, due to MLS, immigration, & more US TV coverage, but won't ever take over due to lack of commercials which creates pushback from TV execs. The sport will never get the coverage
NBA - Don't exactly know how popular it is.
MLB - Has an uncontested season, sells more tickets than any pro sports league in the world, & has the most inventory. It's consistent & not going anywhere.
 
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patdog

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Jeffreauxdawg said:
Here's a stat to put in your peace pipe and smoke you soccer loving wimps...

MLB attendance in 2025. 71 million people.
That's 10 million more people than the top 5 soccer leagues in the world drew combined.

View attachment 1125082
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That's kind of misleading too. MLB plays 162 games per year vs 38 (or fewer) for soccer leagues. Also, 30 teams in MLB and 20 (or 18) for the soccer leagues (except MLS). PL averages 38,400 per game, Bundesliga 39,200 and MLB 29,200.

Also, one thing people don't realize about Premier League is there are 20 top tier teams in a country the size of Mississippi. Most big cities have multiple teams. London has 6 teams in the Premier League. So allegiances are split so many more ways there.
 
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InTheIttaBenaHotSun

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patdog said:
I like soccer & watch a lot of it. But I never watch MLS. it’s like AA or maybe AAA baseball.
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The same here. I never watch MLS but if it's on while I'm switching channels, I'll stop and watch the EFL's Championship and League One (Premier League's version of AAA/AA)
 
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OG Goat Holder

OG Goat Holder

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Colonel Kang said:
MLB - Has an uncontested season, sells more tickets than any pro sports league in the world, & has the most inventory. It's consistent & not going anywhere.
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That huge amount of inventory is the biggest advantage it has.

That's why I'm convinced that you can't take away the MLB format of playing every day, because you want it to be considered something to do in summer. But they could jazz up the postseason, I think, and create a situation where the season isn't just dragging along.
 
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L4Dawg

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Jeffreauxdawg said:
Here's a stat to put in your peace pipe and smoke you soccer loving wimps...

MLB attendance in 2025. 71 million people.
That's 10 million more people than the top 5 soccer leagues in the world drew combined.

View attachment 1125082
Click to expand...
Using your numbers the average attendance at a MLB games is a little over 29k. For the EPL it's a little over 38k. I imagine the English Championship numbers per game are pretty close to the MLB ones.
 
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mstateglfr

mstateglfr

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Jeffreauxdawg said:
Here's a stat to put in your peace pipe and smoke you soccer loving wimps...

MLB attendance in 2025. 71 million people.
That's 10 million more people than the top 5 soccer leagues in the world drew combined.

View attachment 1125082
Click to expand...

Why is total attendance meaningful, when there is such a difference in games played?
Total NFL attendance in 2025 - 18,782,913...do you want to make this same point between MLB and NFL based on total attendance?

And why dont you take viewership into account? Either in addition to, or instead of, in-person attendance?
The NFL drew 5.86 billion viewers globally in 2025.
The EPL drew 10.5 billion viewers globally in 2025.



Anyways, this thread started with regard to sport popularity within the US.
 
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mstateglfr

mstateglfr

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Jeffreauxdawg said:
View attachment 1124910
Click to expand...
This poll asks what someone one favorite sport is...but lists leagues. That is really odd. I have historically been a basketball geek, but have been pretty ambivalent to the NBA and NCAA for the last 4 or so years.
If my options were football, baseball, auto racing, or hockey(all that is listed here), I would say basketball...but if I were given this specific poll, I might pick NFL even though I dont at all view football as one of my top 3 favorite sports.
 
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patdog

Heisman
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mstateglfr said:
Why is total attendance meaningful, when there is such a difference in games played?
Total NFL attendance in 2025 - 18,782,913...do you want to make this same point between MLB and NFL based on total attendance?

And why dont you take viewership into account? Either in addition to, or instead of, in-person attendance?
The NFL drew 5.86 billion viewers globally in 2025.
The EPL drew 10.5 billion viewers globally in 2025.



Anyways, this thread started with regard to sport popularity within the US.
Click to expand...
Yeah. And getting back to that point, I'm not sure I believe soccer is more popular than baseball in the US.
 
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L4Dawg

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One more stat:

MLB average attendance as a % of total capacity: around 70%
EPL average attendance as a % of total capacity: 93%
 
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InTheIttaBenaHotSun

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BossDawg78 said:
NASCAR was pretty damn big in the early 2000s, but yeah I think viewership has taken a nosedive since. You couldn't drag me away from watching a Sunday race back then, now I couldn't even name one driver. The bigger races like Daytona and Talladega still draw a pretty big crowd and viewership, but it drops significantly after that.
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I watched every race from '96-'00 then started watching less and less. By '03, I'd catch a few laps of the big races but never sit down and watch flag to flag. The drivers, I followed, started retiring and I never cared to follow any of the young ones coming up. I watch 80's Winston Cup races on YouTube from time to time. It's fun seeing the old guys racing those late models.
 
ckDOG

ckDOG

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We sure people just didn't vote for the first football they saw in the list?
 
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