Because of how the information came to us. If I was sitting here and read "Atlanta just sold 70k tickets on the MLS!" I'd be like 'well, that's impressive'. But no, I was sitting here and read something along the lines of "these dudes from the MLS sold more tickets than your team!" and then obviously we get defensive about it.

It is a great achievement. But I think you're the one overexaggerating it here with some pretty strange comparisons. A professional MLS team is just on a completely different level than either swimming in the UK (seriously, who would watch swimming other than at Olympics/Commonwealth?) or a new band with people nobody has ever heard of. I think football in the US is much more popular than you seem to be giving it credit for.

Look at the attendances for the last few seasons and you'll see that new expansion teams are often among the teams with the best attendances. New teams generate a lot of interest. I expect that's a pretty common theme across American sports leagues, for new expansions teams to have very good attendances to start off with. The real question is whether they'll maintain that level of interest in the long time, and for Atlanta at least their chances look good considering their results.

I understand how expensive "exclusive" TV rights are (the $200m isn't really exclusive when Telemundo also paid $300m for the Spanish language rights in the US), but the fact that there's a lot more matches in the Champions League/Europa League than the World Cup is also an important factor. You're going to make more money and thus can afford to pay more if you've got more matches to show.

And 8.3% of Americans isn't a small number of people. And favourite sport doesn't really matter, people can have a different favourite sport but still like and watch football. And are you sure about Speedway being the 5th most popular sport in the UK? I would have thought Football, Cricket, Tennis, Rugby, F1, Golf & Horse Racing would all be more popular than that.

71k was their record, not their average. And a quick look at MLS attendance figures for pretty much any year compared to swimming attendance figures in the UK would probably make that comparison seem silly

It's not a fair comparison but it's still a comparison, and thus the butthurt is inevitable.

I'm innocent and naïve, I can't handle evil people :(

Seriously though, kudos to kapi. He was sure as hell invested in this debate, going after the facts and stuff. He salvaged my side of the argument while I was just talking crap based on nothing.

There definitely is a difference between national teams and club sides, mainly only locals are likely to watch club sides. But still, there's clearly a decent number of MLS fans out there. Orlando have had 60k+ attendance figures a few times as well.

And yeah, you're right. F1 events aren't getting 71k attendances... "the 139,000 people who turned up on race day" http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/40550469

And your example is only valid if they picked some random guys off the street and said "hey, want to be in a football team?". They didn't. They may not have any players as well known as Kaka or Pirlo like when Orlando and NYC joined the league, but the players they do have have still played plenty of football at high level leagues before, they're not random unknowns.

The Atlanta Falcons were playing that same day (obviously in another city). Considering the Atlanta is all about the NFL, it makes even more impressive since people would usually be sitting on the couch watching the Falcons. The World Cup is usually the only event that gets mainstream coverage.

It's a lost cause, they're not gonna be impressed.