Major League Soccer 2012 Attendance – By The Percents

Overall, the league went from an average of 17,921 to an average of 18,807, which keeps them above the NBA's (and last year's NHL's) average attendance.

However, the buzzwords about the attendance are still just that — buzzwords. 'Six million fans', 'record attendance', 'seventh highest in the world' and the like are all well and good, but I'm more inclined to check just how many fans are showing up by the percentages. I did it last season and I found that the average MLS stadium was being filled up to 79.5% capacity.

There was certainly room for improvement there, I think we would all agree. So how did we do this time around? Let's check it out.

One thing to note is that DC United both helped the situation out a bit prior to the season by cutting down the max attendance at their cavernous stadium. United had a pathetic 32% capacity last season simply because they decided to keep the entire 48,000 seat monolith that is RFK Stadium open for ticket sales.

Here's this year's numbers. (Percentage totals are rounded up or down to make things easier.)

Our final number? 87% average attendance across the league, up from 79.5% last season.

Two things to note: Montreal and San Jose both have out of whack numbers due to playing one or two games a piece in larger stadiums over the season. Even without those games, there's a marked improvement in this season's numbers. Things still won't be completely fair until the Earthquakes have their new stadium opened, because their numbers continue to be hilarious in the percent department.

Actually, things won't be completely fair until every team (and I include Chivas in this calculation) has a stadium to call their own. At that point, we can start comparing and contrasting with a bit more gusto. This year did bring some solid changes to the league's stadium situations, so we're a lot closer to a good number than we were last season.

Last season, there were some pretty dismal numbers,specifically DC's above mentioned 32% clip. There were six different teams that were below 60% capacity, while the only one of those left is Chivas USA. Most of the teams near the bottom like Columbus, FC Dallas and Colorado saw improvement, while most of the decreases in attendance were minor ones like the 1% loss in LA. It's easy to see where the growth came from — Montreal was a big help, while Houston getting their own stadium boosted things as well. And of course, DC gained about 40% by slicing their max capacity over 20,000 seats.

Remember, the NBA and NHL are both hovering around 90% average attendance, but every team has their own stadium. By the time that we get to a point where every MLS team can boast the same, probably four or five years from now, I have little doubt that MLS will have continued their growth to the point where they won't need a team getting 129% attendance to boost our league up to around that point as well.

(Oh yeah, and we're still handing baseball its ass in this incredibly biased category. Rejoice!)