Out of curiosity I just watched the MLS final. Congratulations with the title. The atmosphere on the stadium was pretty good. Is that normal or was it just because it was the final? Also almost 31 k is pretty good.
The commentators said that Toronto FC's salary budget was 23 mio $/year which is a staggering amount considering the level of play on the pitch. What level would you consider the MLS to be at if you should compare it to a european league? They also said that you had 21 k season tickets at an average of 400 canadian dollars. That would mean 8,4 mio dollars in revenue, which would indicate that the club runs with a big surplus. Is it build up around owners as well?
Obviously, the atmosphere was a little more electric than usual because it was the final but TFC's crowd is known for being one of the most boisterous in MLS so you got a pretty good view of what it's like during big regular season games.
It's pretty hard to compare different leagues with eachother. Similar to how you'd get debate when comparing certain hockey leagues to eachother. I'm assuming by a "european league", you mean like La Liga, Ligue 1, Bundeslia, EPL, etc., but it's important to note that MLS is stronger than a lot of European leagues. There's an interesting article here (
MLS gains ground in league rankings) that suggests MLS is the #12 league in the world. That was done a few years ago but I think it's still approximately accurate. Someone earlier said the league is #15 in revenue, which isn't surprising. I'm pretty sure MLS is top 5 in the world when it comes to attendance. The TV numbers still lag further behind, so much so that I'm pretty sure TFC runs a deficit. They obviously have the millions in dollars in salary, but plenty of other operating costs. Speaking of which, the salary levels are really skewed by Giovinco, Bradley and Altidore making way more than they would in Europe. This was probably necessary to entice them to come over at a time when there were definitely stars of their calibre in MLS but fewer of them than there are now. Now, if we had the salary cap room, we might be able to entice a player of Bradley's ilk for less than what it took to bring him over a few years ago. I think the salaries for non Designated Players (Giovinco, Bradley, and Altidore are Designated Players - you can only have 3 but you can pay them as much as you want and they only count for a certain number of dollars against the salary cap) are pretty fair.