It's a Hard Sell

According to some reports, MLS was on pace to match its 2008 Season Ticket sales this year. If those reports are to be believed, then early on it's been the walk-up and single game sales that are taking a toll.

Just around 16,000 at Home Depot Center last night. That's the 2nd time (the 1st time was two weekends ago) that Galaxy has had a crowd of less than 20,000 since 2006. Admittedly, Galaxy is working with 3 years of negative results, ticket price increases, ditching Beckhams, and a few examples from "Alienating Customers Through Crap Service 101" but a similar pattern is evident elsewhere in MLS.

Unless your name is Toronto FC or Seattle Sounders FC, everybody is hurting. Dallas reported approx. 6,000 last weekend while San Jose, a day before, failed to record a sell-out in their 10,000 people shoe-box.

Nowadays, soccer's got to be a hard sell. The league isn't "quite there" yet, and if Major League Baseball is worried about attendances for THEIR league, where does that leave MLS?

Despite what you may read, I think the league will be fine, but there will be some hardships coming at least for this season.