MLS 2010 Season Viewership Down 12% on ESPN2

So much for the “World Cup Bounce” that Major League Soc­cer must have been hop­ing for in the form of higher TV rat­ings after the most watched World Cup tour­na­ment in the his­tory of the United States con­cluded in July. The TV rat­ings for MLS games on ESPN2 are in, and it’s more of a “World Cup Splat.” Reg­u­lar sea­son rat­ings for MLS on ESPN2 dropped 12% com­pared to last season.

Accord­ing to Sports Busi­ness Daily, ESPN2 aver­aged 249,000 view­ers for 25 MLS tele­casts dur­ing the 2010 sea­son, down 12% from last year (284,000, 24 tele­casts), and down 2% from 2008 (253,000, 25 tele­casts). To put the num­bers in per­spec­tive, ESPN2 aver­aged 258,000 view­ers for WNBA reg­u­lar sea­son games this year, and Ver­sus aver­aged 366,000 view­ers for Indy­Car racing.

Accord­ing to Sports Busi­ness Daily, the top match of the sea­son on ESPN2 was Sounders/Galaxy on July 4 (391,000) — mean­ing that not a sin­gle MLS tele­cast on ESPN2 this sea­son drew over 400,000 viewers. To put that in per­spec­tive, four tele­casts topped 400,000 view­ers last season.

How does the 391,000 num­ber com­pare to the Eng­lish Pre­mier League matches shown on ESPN2 this sea­son? For a 4:30am PT/7:30am ET Sat­ur­day game shown on Sep­tem­ber 25 between Man­ches­ter City and Chelsea, the view­ing audi­ence was 428,000. And ear­lier this year, in April 2010, the view­ing audi­ence for Man­ches­ter United against Chelsea on ESPN2 was 526,000.