If you haven't heard, some soccer on TV ratings came out yesterday. FSC, America's preeminent all-soccer broadcaster, became Nielsen-rated just about a year ago. Since then, the network's ratings have been of supreme interest to cadre of soccer observers (meaning everyone with too much time on their hands and an opinion about the place of the game in the US, myself included). Throw in the ratings from ESPN for both MLS and their newly acquired European properties (but mainly English Premier League games), and suddenly there's more than an few number to bat around and analyze.
What do they mean?
Is soccer actually watched in large numbers in this country?
Does EPL outperform MLS?
Those are all pertinent questions I suppose, though I think that they all cloud the issue, and some more than others. The nature of the numbers, and what they indicate about about the United States as a consumer of soccer is important; TV, more than attendance or jersey sales, drives revenues, budgets, balance sheets, and projections. The more people watching soccer on TV, the more advertisers will gravitate towards the game, and the larger the infrastructure grows; when there's money to spread around, the number of people it can be spread around to increases. We want the game covered by the media in greater numbers and with greater quality, and it will be TV viewership that makes that happen.
Still, it's important to realize that Nielsen isn't perfect. While the ratings convert (somehow) into "hard" representations of total viewers, they should be taken with a grain of salt. In order to turn around the information they provide so quickly, Nielsen is working with small sample sizes and extrapolating them into a larger picture. I'm no statistician, but the problems with that process are obvious; when the ratings company says 250,000 people watched a particular soccer game, there's really no way of knowing exactly how accurate that number is.
Not that it matters. Advertisers and networks use the number in the game they play, so in the end, perception is reality. Nielsen is accepted as the authority, and if they say 250,000 people watched a particular telecast, then for all intents and purposes, that's how many watched. The network sets their ad rates based on those numbers, and the advertisers buy time with those numbers in mind.
I've failed to get to my point. All this talk about TV ratings and what they mean has only led me off my intended path. The TV ratings from FSC, augmented by those of ESPN, has led to much discussion of Major League Soccer's ratings as compared to those of the English Premier League. The weak sister of soccer in America, the country's own domestic league, cannot seem to get away from the bully on the block.
It's natural to want to compare the ratings of the EPL to those of MLS. It's all soccer, after all, and the leagues are ostensibly doing the same things, running professional competitions of the world's most popular sport. But beyond that, the two leagues are so different that it's almost not fair to compare them; while the EPL consists of massive clubs, spending tens and hundreds of millions of dollars a year on players, Major League Soccer tightly constricts their spending to the point of ridiculousness. When clubs are prohibited by the rules from even chartering flights for their players, the discrepancy is to obvious to ignore.
MLS is an American product, and is therefore looked upon by many as the barometer of the sport's popularity in the United States. But MLS is an infant in the footballing world, operating on a level more Double A to the EPL major leagues than as a direct American analogue. How is it fair to believe that soccer fans, both those who have followed the game for years as well as the new fan attracted to the biggest and best, would tune into a league whose best players often make less than a European superstar's weekly wages?
I watch MLS, and I know plenty of people who do. Our reasons vary, from true passion for a particular club to a sense of obligation to support the American professional league. Often, even as we watch, we disparage the quality, bemoan the poor officiating, and grumble over terrible production. No matter why we watch, we realize that what we're seeing isn't the best, and we don't pretend it is; there's a reasonable argument to be made that soccer junkies who make sure to follow MLS despite having "better" options like the EPL and La Liga are doing more for the growth of the game in the United States than those who don't. That's simplistic, and I don't mean to make MLS watchers sound "better" than those who ignore the American product; I get the allure of big time European football, and I though I wish more people would give the league a chance (there are other reasons to watch than quality alone), I get it. Americans like their sports to be the best.
There's a reason that the UFL will likely ultimately fail, despite the voracious appetite American have for football of the gridiron variety; it's not the NFL. There's a reason that Americans are barely aware of sports leagues that exist outside of the United States but play the country's biggest games; they're not the NBA, NHL, or Major League Baseball. The history of inward focus, bred of continental separation and a feeling of world superiority is easily transferred by Americans who pick up a love of soccer to the biggest and the best abroad. The world is getting smaller, and that means soccer-loving Yanks who are already predisposed to sporting snobbery have an easy out when it comes to the game in the United States. The American don't do it best, so let's transfer our attention to the most popular league in the world where, as luck has it, the language is one we understand.
American soccer fans won't stop watching the EPL anytime soon, and they certainly won't be trading in English football for American soccer. ESPN sub-licensed rights to the league because they knew that the interest would be there, at a time of day when anything beyond the hunting and fishing crowd is a bonus. MLS is a different animal, and while its audience is largely the same (or should be), it shouldn't be held to a standard set by the EPL. There are many ways that yesterday's ratings can be taken; they seem to indicate improvement for MLS but are being viewed by many through the EPL prism, which immediately leads to the minimizing of their importance.
Stop it. Stop it now.
MLS and EPL are not direct competitors. Major League's Soccer's success or failure does not hinge on how their TV ratings compare to those of the Premier League's. It shouldn't matter to anyone, least of all fans of MLS, if one is "beating" the other.
