The first miss was the fact that the NWSL was the first team sport in the United States to get started again. Regardless of interest (their ratings are inching closer to MLS on similar outlets), the shine off "first back" was gone amongst US soccer fans by the time it was first kick down in Orlando for MLS.
The second miss was all the soccering going on in Europe. The Bundesliga was the first to get going, almost a month before MLS. Shortly thereafter, it was the ever-popular Premier League in England. While they were playing games, MLS was wrestling with positive coronavirus tests and sending teams home.
With all this, it shouldn't be a surprise that MLS TV viewership was at, if not slightly lower than, normal.
Most Viewers:
The Bottom (took out TUDN):
If you think back to when ESPN aired the Michael Jordan documentary, you may recall that a frustrated MLS dropped its slow news bleed of layoffs and salary cuts and went into full "PLAY GAMES AT WHATEVER COST" mode.
Now that the results are in we know that there's nothing here. No pent up demand. No curious onlookers. No massive thirst for just any team sport.
MLS has now moved on to the knockout stage of this tournament, but with the NBA, WNBA, MLB, and NHL starting up again, these numbers will only continue to drop.
Almost immediately after the first few TV ratings came rolling in, Don Garber announced that the league was now open to private equity ownership across multiple franchises. The timing wasn't a coincidence.
To my knowledge, Garber did not give another in-game / on-air interview after the first game.
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