How Does Seattle Attendance Stack Up?

By: Steve | July 15th, 2009

Seattle has blown away the soccer doubters this year, with packed stadiums and a dedicated fan base even in the face of economic recession. But just how good is Seattle’s attendance? We took a look around the soccer and professional sports world and asked the question: if Seattle was in _______ league, how would they rank based on average attendance.

First, lets put it in an overall context:

German Bundesliga = 42,599 *Europe’s best
EPL = 35,582
MLB = 30,045
Sounders FC (est.) = 29,984*
Spanish Primera División = 28,491
Italian Serie A = 25,324
Scottish Premier League = 15,537
MLS = 15,434

So taking a more detailed approach Sounders would be:

…12th in Bundesliga, not bad considering German teams account for 9 of the top 20 best attendance records in Europe

…12th in the EPL, not bad

…8th in La Liga

…6th in Serie A

…3rd in the Scottish Premiere League

Well, that is all well and good, but soccer is not as popular as other sports in the USA, right? Soccer could never surpass our national pastime, baseball, could it? Well, check this out, the Sounders would be 13th in Major League Baseball with over 2,000 more fans per game than the resurgent Mariners.

Seattle attendance is not just respectable, it is downright impressive, so kudos to the Sounders fans who have been going and look like they will continue to go. There is no reason to think we will see a drop off in the following season.

On Saturday, we will see QWest’s beauty as a soccer stadium to its full extent: with a sell out crowd of 67,000 to see Chelsea. The question is, can Seattle find a way to one day fill out the 67,000 seat stadium against the likes of say… the San Jose Earthquakes.

If they can, the Sounders fan base and attendance can go from solid, to downright elite. I hope we see that day.

All European league figures are unofficial statistics from ESPNSoccernet.com
Sounders average attendance figures provided by MLS Daily
MLB attendance figures courtesy of MLB.COM

Category: Expansion Teams, MLS, Only on Seattle Offside, Seattle Sounders FC, Seattle Team News, Stadium

« Freddie and Kasey are All Stars. ONLY Freddie and Kasey. | Home | Do Me a Favor. Go to the Chelsea FanFest. Because I Would Just Embarrass Myself »

Laurie

Domenic, over on some Seattle forums tonight, some guy from DC was trying to tell us that our attendance may be great rightn ow, but in a few years we'd be "just like Toronto."

One of our guys pointed out that your attendance this year us actually up over 2007 and you're still selling out pretty much every game. As opposed to DC, whose attendance has dropped 25% in that same period.

Hee.:-)
Domenic

All the power in the world to you Sounders' supporters. You've made the league proud. TFC are no slouches either though. We're sold out on the year, again (20,000 per game), and we have a 14,000 person waiting list. Look for grass and seat expansion by 2011. Cheers!
Steve

wow tim, thank you for your reasoned and well thought out argument
NathanHJ

Tim, baby, time to dial back the on the caffeine.

Or take your charming personality over to BigSoccer.
Tim

What kind of fucking idiot actually has to compare the attendance to the SPL? Are you so brain dead that you didnt already know Seattle would come in 3rd. How un soccer savvy. It makes you look fucking small time to not know that only two teams in the SPL draw anyone to a fucking game, moron.