Me: gets on for gaming information *sees this* dies

Can't wait for some serious soccer hooligans in a country full of guns.

Yay football!

This of course is anecdotal, but in my area tickets for MLS are 1/2 the price of most other sports venues. The only thing as cheap as MLS is a AAA(?) baseball team.

Not saying this is solely the only reason for the increase attendance, but a lot of families around here can't afford to go to the local pro or college games.

Just wondering if the economy isn't a factor in the growth of MLS.

i thing the biggest problem is tha lack of meaning... the us system doesnt work like the european.
here in europe losing or winning has a meaning even for the smaller clubs. "abstiegskampf" is just intense, so much emotions. i cant describe it, its just intense. when my team lost the last game and had to go to league 3 i was crying, the whole train was crying. it was so close. thats what u don get in the us system.

Eh, considering that US Police is more then willing to gas/shoot rioters if they get out of hand, i can't see it being a problem.

It's not like europe where hooligans can just provoke police and provoke them knowing they arne't going to fight back.

You are interpreting the term "violent" too literally. We are not talking about people pulling knives and guns out of their pockets. (Btw, the teacher I remember actually was a teacher (math I think) who was asked to be a soccer coach as well. Not every school had/has coaches for their sports teams. But that is irrelevant to the discussion). I'd term a sport violent when the players are packed into something resembling an armour and the basic goal is to try and crash into other players, leading to injuries (and quite frankly, to serious mental problems after a few years of head banging). The "non-violent" equivalent sport everywhere else is called rugby and has considerably less problems with "violence". Then again, rugby is considerably more popular than football (outside the States). So the three simple reasons for the increase in soccer's popularity can be summed up as:

1. Everybody can do it - even women - pretty much everywhere

2. You don't have to pay a fortune for an armour

3. It's a lot cheaper for a family to watch a soccer game than (probably) any of the more prominent games

Of course part 3 is only true as along as soccer is not too successful. Once big business sees profit things can change, usually to the worse.

the police knows tat if they shoot at the hooligans they will spark a real riot, because the peacefull fans will not take those actions by the police, and u dont wanna have 20k angry guys running around in your town.

Never catch up? It's only a matter of time till it surpasses the NHL, NBA and MLB. I don't doubt either that it'll get to be as popular as the NFL in 40 to 50 years from now.

Not a chance of that ever happening.  People have been saying this for at least 30 years and it hasn't even made a dent.  It's not going to magically happen in the next 40 or 50 years.

MLS is basically the minor leagues when it comes to soccer worldwide.  That just won't fly on a large scale in the US.

The story of MLS is definitely an amazing one. It went from tons of promise at its inception in the mid 90s to nearly folding just 5 or so years later, and then coming back from the dead with a vengeance and more than doubling the number of teams in the league in less than a decade.

There are a number of factors at work here as to why MLS has grown significantly in popularity over the past 5-6 years... for one thing nearly all the clubs that have been brought into the league since the mid 00s have been either existing franchises from the old NASL days with established fan bases (Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Montreal etc), or built from the ground up via grassroots fan support for a franchise in their area (Real Salt Lake, Philadelphia). MLS stopped trying to simply plant a flag in the largest markets w/out a franchise just because, although they are wading into that territory again with NYCFC and pushing for Beckham's Miami franchise to be the next one to join the league.

On top of that, many other factors such as changing demographics, the continued popularity of the sport among the youth in this country, the almost hipster-like support that many of the clubs in MLS enjoy thanks to the college crowd and 20 somethings jumping on the soccer supporter culture bandwagon, not to mention the fact that you can get great seats and treat a family to an MLS game for a fraction of what it costs to attend any of the big 4 sports in most major markets these days.

The quality of play has also improved tremendously in recent years... a decade ago many MLS matches were almost unwatchable for purists of the sport, but today the league has cracked the top 10 in terms of quality of play and popularity. Mark my words... by the end of the next decade MLS will be in the top 5 leagues world wide.