To be fair 25 of the 31 NHL teams are expansion franchises, it's been going on for decades. I'm not sure how you can say the CFL is better than the NFL, it's like saying the Conference is bettter than the Premier League.
I watched them toronto raptors when I over there and it was actually really good. Drawing at the end and went I to extra time. Really exciting. But most of the fans seem to basically do their own thing and only really get involved for the last quarter.
I've never been to a live game, but watched a fair bit on telly. There's a very large fan-base and the crowd seems to be always having a good time, but I personally find that it's only in the very few final minutes that you need to pay attention. It's certainly a very fluid sport - not like baseball and US & Canadian "football", which are stop-start, full of side-shows and too long. To each his own I suppose. I get similar comments from many Canadians and Americans when discussing football ( "soccer" as they call it). Not enough scoring they say ! My answer to them is always the same: It got me into trouble once in a local sports bar during one world cup many years ago. I went in, to watch a quarter-final game ( Italy were playing some other team...naturally England had not managed to get through the group stages...there was no other customer but me in there, something like a dozen TV's showing ice hockey. When I asked the owner/barman if he'd mind putting the football match on one of the screens he told me no, same old argument... "It's boring, they never bloody score". My response was: "Football is like good sex - it's all in the build-up, but you'd know nowt about that would you ?". His response was " Not serving you - you're banned, get out of here". Or words to that effect. Vive la difference I say ! Never went back there
Luke Wileman @LukeWileman Average audience of 1.3 million watched @torontofc win #MLSCup against Seattle on @TSN_Sports. Peaking at 2 million as Vazquez made it 2-0 late in the game. Thanks for watching this season! Isn't that disappointingly low?
In the US, the broadcast drew about 1.1M viewers (~800K on ESPN and ~300K on Spanish networks). This is down from ~2M last year, but the 2016 Cup match was then shown on an over-the-air network so it reached many more homes. This has been a bad year for MLS, following years of slow but steady growth. The most significant hit to MLS was the USMNT crashing out of the World Cup competition. But MLS is also facing some other troubles. First, they are facing a rogue owner who want to relocate. Columbus Crew might be moving to Austin, Texas soon, against the leagues wishes but unable to stop it. Second, is a party to an anti-trust lawsuit against the US Soccer Federation by a lower tier league, NASL. Support for soccer in the US has been slowly and steadily building, but some rocky times are here and I hope MLS can weather them.
