MLS Attendance: 2011 Proved To Be Record-Setting Year

Nearly 5.5 million people attended Major League Soccer games this season. Almost 18,000 people went to the average MLS game. Those are the big numbers, and they both represent new high-water marks for the 16-year-old league. But to really understand how much MLS attendance grew this year, you need to dig a little deeper.

League-wide attendance was officially 5,468,951. Prior to last year, the league had never cracked 4 million, and only barely did so in 2010 (4,002,053). In total numbers, that’s an increase of nearly 37 percent.