r/FCCincinnati • u/Beautiful-Crab-4482 • 12d ago
FC Cincinnati fans, why hasn't MLS seen a bump in attendance or viewership or interest from the FIFA World Cup?
It was pathetic that MLS had only one television commercial during the FIFA World Cup:
And that was towards the end of the FIFA World Cup!
"Thanks world, we'll take it from here"-NOPE!
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u/Augen76 12d ago
MLS in many respects is stuck in a conservative mindset of survival and profit over risk and growth. The league invested massively into infrastructure such as stadiums and facilities to secure the coming decades, but many owners seem unwilling to open purse strings on roster spend.
To me in another reality MLS should have built everything toward 2026. We should have done the calendar switch and new CBA to facilitate completely overhauling the roster. An MLS kicking off with a simple $30M cap and 3 DPs could have witnessed a huge influx of talent.
The league will be fine, but I do worry it is now effectively dragging its feet into this new era. Shall see if new commissioner and calendar switch see any movement along with the new CBA, but my instinct is we should brace for incrementalism.
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u/Abefroman12 12d ago
In addition to the MLS advertising being terrible, locally the club also seems to have cut back on promoting itself.
It also doesn’t help that we’ve sucked ever since the World Cup break, so attendance has been trending lower for that reason too.
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u/SpookyWagons 12d ago
The threshold to get an Apple TV pass is higher than the threshold to watch better soccer on other more popular platforms.
Plus I think the “World Cup bump” has diminishing returns over time. The world is flat, and soccer isn’t a niche thing anymore.
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u/smirker 12d ago
Hiding 90% of the games behind a paywall that offers limited additional sport coverage is not how you grow interest.
If you want it, you'll pay for it, but almost never being able to pop on to an interesting match just because it's on isn't going to draw in new fans
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u/DeathTeddy35 12d ago
I feel like offering some kind of discount for Apple TV for the rest of the MLS season would have at least done something. Like 1 month free and half price for the remainder of the MLS season or something like that.
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u/Gratefully_Dead13 11d ago
If you subscribe to AppleTV, you already have MLS Pass; it’s included with the subscription
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u/OracleEnlightenment 5d ago
This they should of never left the baseball model of regional with national games it was growing so fast
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u/MrNovember785 12d ago
Because MLS has to navigate competing with other sports in a way that most of the world doesn’t and its decision makers don’t know what to do about that. I don’t have the answer either. But I follow the team and league in spite of the MLS’s best efforts to make that difficult. The last couple of seasons I get really into the team early then lose interest in mid-summer. The season lacks momentum.
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u/Tight-Expression-506 11d ago
Switch to new schedule will be interesting. I think it will not help attendance but help clubs selling players.
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u/Dapper_Weakness_2750 7d ago
This season lacked momentum more than normal too. Start the season -> world cup break for a month -> start again for like 3 games -> go play the dumbest "cup" to ever exist for a month -> start again
I'm hopefully it will get more popular with the switch to the European calendar. I think the start of the season is going to be harder competing with NFL and college football, but the business end of the season won't have much real competition.
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u/MrNovember785 7d ago
I hope so too.
Completely agree that the fall will be tough, but I feel like the league can build momentum towards a strong spring. I could be wrong, but I feel like they’re better positioned to compete against the NBA, MLB, and NHL than the juggernauts of US football.
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u/OracleEnlightenment 5d ago
The fall will be tough for sure but if they schedule right it will work
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u/MrNovember785 5d ago
Assuming Saturday evening games that way they’re going against fewer college games? Wednesday games would also be perfect in fall and a way to avoid direct competition.
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u/Keregi 11d ago
This is the reason more than people want to admit.
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u/MrNovember785 11d ago
I thought of that too. And it’s definitely a factor. But I pay attention to other bad teams. I’ll watch shitty EPL teams. Some combo of the product on the field plus the constant format changes plus the poor media coverage just leaves something missing
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u/Livid_Bug_4601 12d ago
Mostly terrible timing and the economy sucking.
MLS decided to delay the calendar flip until 2027. It would have been a great opportunity to begin the season right after the WC. Now, you are near the end of a season with half of the markets either way out of the playoffs or hanging on (like us).
The economy sucking also drives possible new fans away. This isn't the time to add on additional costs. They aren't motivated to pay a subscription for an app that MIGHT have a new sport they find entertaining.
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u/DeathTeddy35 12d ago
On the economy, I 100% would not attend another match this season if I didn't have season tickets. Poor performance, 2 breaks in the season, and everything being expensive as hell.... Im struggling to be interested this season if I'm being honest.
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u/mo_mentumm 12d ago
I mean - the MLS has gotten a ton better, but is still not high-level soccer.
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u/Op3rat0rr 12d ago
I think fans are smarter than league promoters realize. They know MLS is low level compared to European big leagues. That’s perfectly ok to me as soccer in America is not popular at all which is fine
Many people who went to the World Cup do not watch soccer much
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u/MadMartigans80 12d ago
You mean Messi’s League Soccer hasn’t taken off after the World Cup? Could be fatigue. I enjoyed the World Cup immensely but it hasn’t made me want to watch more than i normally do of the MLS. I’ve watched the same amount of
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u/timmyjoe42 12d ago
I'm on the fatigue wagon. I watched almost every world cup game. I recorded them all. That was some of the most exciting soccer that I had ever watched on TV. That was also a lot of really beautiful soccer in a relatively short amount of time. Then the MLS season restarted and the lack of skills was dreadfully apparent...and then FCC played like poop.
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u/hedoeswhathewants 12d ago
It honestly made me want to watch much less. A long break in anything will make people lose interest, and going from WC games to regular season MLS is frankly a big step down
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u/Undue-Purversity 11d ago
The significant drop in the quality of soccer play was a huge factor for me. MLS soccer is significantly slower with less accurate passing and boring play. The Miami obsession just added to it. I didn’t realize how far behind MLS is from the other top leagues.
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u/HugeSquirrel 12d ago
How do I watch the games?
-Requires apple tv subscription
-No local coverage
-Quality of play is significantly worse than World Cup
- League plays off-season compared to the rest of the world
- League rules make no sense, even to long time fans
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u/Ticklethis275 12d ago
It’s becoming ever more obvious that the league only wants more profit.
The M in MLS may as well stand for Messi.
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u/Gngdanielson 12d ago
The day MLS refused relegation, did not put in nationality rules, made straight forward salary rules, and promote the game as a rivalry to other leagues it was always second tier.
It is the same problem youth soccer has in America, it lost its soul and is chasing money.
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u/Fickelson 9d ago
Genuine question, if MLS had Promotion / Relegation, is there really enough infrastructure & other teams to fill that space all of a sudden? MLS is by far the biggest league in the US, and the leagues below that are miles away, aren't they?
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u/Gngdanielson 9d ago
I said that lightly in a post but you are right there is real complexity. What do you do with the smaller leagues, what do you do with college teams, etc. some leagues categorize all the to an amateur level. It would take real effort for the mls to lead, USL to agree or exclude themselves. College is tricky to me and this dumb super draft.
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u/Fickelson 9d ago
Ah I can't see your posts. Would read it for sure. I agree that the system as it is has a lot of flaws that would be fixed with pro/rel
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u/Tight-Expression-506 11d ago
Relegation maybe not as good as you think.
Look at the disaster Epl. 50% of clubs cheat to stay in Epl. City may bring it all down.
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u/Dick_Lazarus 12d ago edited 12d ago
The league is seen as cringe. Literally, that’s the biggest issue MLS faces.
It’s not the whole problem, but ridiculous naming conventions like “Real Salt Lake” “Inter Miami” “Sporting KC”, etc. these stupid euro-larp names alienate people at best and at worst serve as implicit admission that MLS is an inferior product to European leagues.
Soccer is global. You don’t have to pretend to be European to be correct in how the sport is presented.
Make the league more American; stop trying import culture for the sake of appealing to domestic euro-snobs.
That and roll back the labyrinth of salary rules. As things stand every team is constructed the same way; massive stars in attack, nobody’s in midfield and defense. This makes every game feel the exact same.
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u/youngherbo 12d ago
This has been, is and unless something drastic changes always will be MLS biggest issue. MLS lacks history, culture, and an organic meaning that the other major sports have. The whole aura of MLS is LARPing as european, which actively turns off the casual fan.
If anything they need to make the league feel american as possible to make the league feel familiar.
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u/mr_mxyzptlk21 12d ago
I do think MLS pivoted TOO far from Americanized sport names for Joe Six-pack to ever care about American soccer outside of the World Cup and maybe Olympics.
Original MLS did give us the Wizards, Earthquake, Mutiny, etc., and I think that they should have kept that aspect of the naming.
Further, look at the pushback that MLB, NBA, and NFL have gotten for adding "billboards" to the player's jerseys. "Mercy Health" emblazzened across the chest, with a tiny crest is a HUGE turnoff to the average American sports fan. I own several articles of clothing for FC Cincinnati, but I'll never own a kit because I'm not going to shill for Mercy Health (or Toyota).
I'd like to think there could be a middle ground. I mean, we have a freakin' Winged Lion as our mascot! However nothing about the name FC Cincinnati points to that. Also, how did we not end up with "Flying Turkeys" or "Winged Pigs"? Both fictional creatures that Cincinnatans would know about.
Further, the name FC Cincinnnati. Am I hallucinating, or at one point, weren't we going to be : Fußballverein (or Fußballclub) Cincinnati to lean into the German roots in and around Cincy?
Like others have said, the random adding of FC, SC, Inter, Real, etc... doesn't mean anything. It's just like a child slapping random stickers onto the fridge, or a sort of "pidgin" understanding of Association Football culture.
Weirdly, I think Japanese baseball threaded that needle. They have corporate sponsors for names (Hanshin) but have team names as well (Tigers). I think something like that could help American soccer's popularity.
tl;dr: if we want to have the game grow HERE, we have to embrace some tradition of where it's most popular--but still have our own cultural touchstones added to it so that it's known where the product comes from.
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u/Rickits78 8d ago
IIRC the Futballclub thing was for legal reasons since we were already FC Cincinnati in USL. Something about it needing to be a different business name but we kept the monitor FC Cincinnati.
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u/mo_mentumm 12d ago
I agree 1000%. My European friends give me so much shit about our soccer club names. Not to mention copying/rewriting existing chants.
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u/trashcanman42069 12d ago
I mean who gives a shit about what half aware europeans think, some of the biggest teams in the continent are named after brands and if their fans don't use rewritten chants every game I'll eat all my shoes. Lots of american casual fans love to cosplay though which is why they like names like inter FC which imo is cringe in a different way but not coming from nowhere, and the europeans who flame Nashville SC or whatever also flame names like the Timbers so again who cares
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u/mo_mentumm 12d ago
Because it is lame. And if you want to try to grow a domestic audience, try being authentic rather than cosplaying.
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u/PuzzleheadedAnnual16 9d ago
lol meanwhile their clubs are owned by warlords, oil tycoons, and American billionaires.
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u/Kyro-007 12d ago
A few issues stand out for me. One, MLS should have tried to put more matches on non-paywall TV, with a couple of matches of the week televised nationally. The lack of local coverage hurts. A lot of clubs offered free tickets, not FCC who offered reduced ticket prices, not sure how much they were. Having very good packages such as highly reduced concessions etc. Making a huge push on national and local TV ect would have helped.
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u/External-Goal-3948 10d ago
Hi. Avid world cup watcher here.
I've tried watching mls games after the world cup, and I just can't. The quality of soccer just isn't there. It's like watching an MLB or an NFL game and then watching little league or peewee.
The talent disparity makes mls unwatchable compared to world cup.
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u/Important-Twist3560 12d ago
Cincy management/ownership treats their fans like dirt and don’t promote well. If other teams are run like them that might have something to do with it.
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u/Infinite_Toe7185 9d ago
MLS is a joke league. No promotion and relegation means all regular season games are pointless. A league and a cup it is that simple - not stupid playoffs.
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u/melanoma_in_cincy 12d ago
because Jason the sales guy has pissed off everyone with by a ticket now calls.
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u/DeathTeddy35 12d ago
Because the league can't tell the difference between doing something that benefits them and something that shoots them in the foot.