Morning Consult‘s Mark J. Burns published a collection of interesting but unsurprising data on the English Premier League’s popularity in the U.S. as the 2022-23 season kicks off. Burns took a deep-data dive into the League’s most popular clubs among Americans (no surprise, the Big-6 and four of the last five champions lead the way).
Liverpool wins the Red, White and Blue popularity contest with more than 61% of self-identifying American Premier League fans claiming to have either a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” opinion of Liverpool. The reigning FA Cup champions edged out previous favorite, Manchester United (60%), and reigning league champion, Manchester City (59%), by mere percentage points.
Chelsea (57%) and Arsenal (54%) were the only other Premier League clubs to surpass 50% favorable ratings among Americans. On the other end of the ratings, Brighton & Hove Albion ranked favorable by 28% of self-identifying Premier League fans, while Fulham (lovingly nicknamed Fulhamerica thanks to its history of fielding American internationals) ranked 15th with 34% of PL fans marking them favorable.
MLS & Premier League go hand-in-hand
According to a different Morning Consult survey of 355 self-identifying PL fans, more than half said they prefer watching Major League Soccer matches over any other global soccer league included as an option in the survey.
MLS All-Stars shine bright
Last week’s MLS All-Star Game at Allianz Field in Minnesota was a big win for ESPN and TUDN.
The 2022 MLS All-Star Game averaged 334,000 viewers on ESPN, up 86% compared with the 2021 edition, and was the most viewed MLS All-Star Game on a U.S. English-language network since 2018.
Sports Business Journal ranked the U.S.’s Big-5 professional leagues and their 2022 All-Star Game ratings, with MLS beating out the NHL behind baseball, the NFL and NBA.
According to the Sports Video Group, ESPN deployed 26 cameras for the game at Allianz Field: nine hard cameras (including one 6X super-slo-mo), five handhelds, a SkyCam, a jib, an RF Steadicam, an exterior drone, and eight POVs between the Goal Post Cams and tunnel/back-hall cameras.
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