MATTHEW FUTTERMAN and NICK WINGFIELD of Wall Street Journal talks of how the soccer boom this past month shows that soccer is in fact growing in the eyes and hearts of American sports fans.
For MLS commissioner Don Garber, the challenge is teaching Americans a new way of following a sport. “At their base level, sports are local and they are tribal,” Mr. Garber said.
“It’s got to be about that experience of a father and a son or a daughter going to a game and sharing something as they root for their local team together.”
The best example of this is the league’s Seattle franchise. In its first season, the second-place Sounders (7-3-8) have smashed MLS season-ticket sales records. Attendance for its home games— averaging about 30,000—is the best in the league by nearly 10,000. The raucous fans, who chant and sway throughout the games at Qwest Field, produce better turnout on average than Seattle’s baseball team, the Mariners. Majority owner Joe Roth, the former chairman of Walt Disney Studios, says his dream is “to make the Sounders a mainstream sport in an American city. I think we’re on the way.”
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