Why no-one is laughing at the MLS anymore

By Ian Winwood

Published 11:28 25/11/11

In the past month two interesting developments occurred in the field of North American sport (or ‘sports’, as it is known on the continent to our left).

The first came last week when the National Basketball Association and its players were unable to find agreement on an ongoing labour dispute that has already cost the league the first month of its season. Following the National Hockey League a few years ago – that’s ice hockey to us - there is every chance that the NBA will become only the second professional sports league to lose an entire season to a lock-out.

(There are some people that are describing the dispute as a strike, but it’s not. The team owners have locked out the players.)

The second development was not as widely reported, but was no less striking.

For the previous season, Major League Soccer had become the third most popular team sport in the US in terms of live attendance.

The sport that the soccer league overtook? You guessed right: the National Basketball Association.

Major League Soccer opened its turnstiles in 1996, two years after the United States hosted that summer’s World Cup.

At first the league was a shaky enterprise, comprising just 10 teams, some of whom do not exist today.

Many were quick to assert their belief that Americans would never take to the game of football as it is played by people actually using their feet.

When five years ago David Beckham signed for LA Galaxy, Mark Lawrenson described the former two-times Champions League winner as having signed up to play for “the Dog & Duck.”

Well, this week the Galaxy beat Houston Dynamo 1-0 to win this season’s MLS Cup, the US League’s ultimate trophy. A crowd in excess of 30,000 people saw them achieve this feat. What’s more, these days the LA side – one of two MLS teams who play in the city – are rarely described as “David Beckham’s Galaxy”, and the club’s success is not dependent on whether or not the Englishman signs a contract extension.

Elsewhere in the United States large crowds are gathering for games far less important than the MLS Cup.

In the Pacific Northwest the Seattle Sounders are playing to home gates of more than thirty thousand people. One state south, the Portland Timbers are entertaining full houses of more than 20,000 Oregonians. Across the border, tickets to see Toronto FC are as hard to come by as seats at the Air Canada Centre to see the Toronto Maple Leafs, that city’s adored (if hopeless) ice hockey side. And even in cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – towns busy with American football, baseball, basketball and hockey teams – the beautiful game is playing to interested audiences.

The quiet rise of Major League Soccer is all the more impressive because of the almost universal blackout of its games on network television and sports radio. Broadcasters would rather expend hot air on the misfiring Chicago Cubs than on the Chicago Fire soccer team, which will make it all the more delicious should the latter become more popular than the former.

It will take quite a giant leap for Major League Soccer to eclipse either baseball or American Football as the most popular sport in the United States. To be truthful, there’s no sign that this is set to happen anytime soon.

But then again, a generation ago the rise of Major League Soccer to the level that it presently occupies was predicted by precisely no one.

Watch these goal posts, as they’re liable to move. 

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