Guys from the US - rate these sports in order of popularity in USA.

[killersheep]

To give an example of how popular college football attendance is here's some numbers

top three college average attendance per game
1. Michigan - 111,825
2. Ohio St. - 105,278
3. Penn St. - 104,234

This by far eclipses any pro sport in the world.

Van from a Texan's perspective how can you state that Hockey is more popular than soccer now? FC Dallas has one of the worst attendances in MLS and still pulls in 3k more per game than the Stars. TV ratings for MLS have remained flat while NHL has declined. How popular is the NBA right now?................LOCKOUT

I would point out that all three of those schools are Big 10 schools.

Greg, is soccer popular with Texas because of its demographics?

I think so, well as far as Houston goes anyway. As I stated Dallas has one of the worst attendance levels in MLS and in NHL for that matter. Houston Dynamo are also owned by Oscar de la Hoya, just as a fun fact. I know out here in Arizona I went to a New York Red Bulls vs. Atlas (Mexican premier league team) and we got 24,000+ on a Wednesday night with very little advertising and a majority of the fans were hispanic.

As far as demographics go the highest attendances are in predominantly anglo markets....Seattle, Portland, Vancouver and Toronto

You mentioned being in the midwest, Sporting Kansas City sold out almost every game in their shiny new stadium. vs. Royals avg. 21,290 and Chiefs avg. 70,843 Sporting came in at 17,594 not too bad considering that's just under their capacity there were also 3 games this season in which Sporting oversold tickets for standing room only for 1,500 over capacity. Again the demographics at Sporting KC's games are predominantly white.

Furthermore, there has been enough money to make new or renovate many stadiums in MLS.

2011
Portland Timbers rennovated JeldWen Field to make it soccer specific (capacity 18,627)
Sporting Kansas City opened Livestrong Sporting Park, state of the art stadium (capacity 18,467)
Vancouver Whitecaps rennovated BC Place (capacity 21,000)

2012
Houston Dynamo will be building a soccer specific stadium (capacity 22,000)
Montreal Impact will be upgrading Saputo Stadium (capacity 20,341)

2013
San Jose Earthquakes will be upgrading their stadium (capacity 15,000)

2014
Philadelphia Union phase 1 of PPL upgrade adds 3,000 seats (capacity 21,500)

2018
Philadelphia Union PPL park all upgrades complete (capacity 35,000)

[boozeboxer]

Those are very interesting facts Killer.

It is neat how sports gain or wane in popularity.

But it seems to me that all sports seem to gain?? I mean with ESPN and all the different channels out there, almost all sports have seen increased exposure over the last several decades.

[killersheep]

Those are very interesting facts Killer.

It is neat how sports gain or wane in popularity.

But it seems to me that all sports seem to gain?? I mean with ESPN and all the different channels out there, almost all sports have seen increased exposure over the last several decades.

Yeah I think that's right, however with more exposure the coverage also becomes more diluted, for example ESPN3 can have 10 events going on at the same time, plus ESPN, ESPNU etc. etc. It will be interesting to see how the popularity of individual sports trend over the next decade. Football will always be king in this country followed by Baseball, but between NBA, NHL and MLS it's really anyone's guess who will take up that third position.

Another factor that really affects popularity of sports overall is which teams are succeeding at the time. Rangers/Cardinals in the world series do horrible numbers compared to Yankees/Sox and this is true throughout the season as higher profile franchises have success or faulter. The same can be said of the NBA, NHL and MLS.