We’re exactly four weeks away from the first competitive match of the Seattle Sounders’ season, which seems as good of a time as any to share the results of our preseason polls. One of those polls dealt with your feelings about how last season went and the other, more recent one, was about your expectations for 2025.
Broadly speaking, I came away believing that fans were generally more positive about the state of things than you might guess from the mood on social media, in the comments section here and anywhere else where fan sentiment is measured in volume.
Here were some of the takeaways:
Looking back on 2024
Generally speaking, fans seemed to be reasonably satisfied with the 2024 Sounders season. We got 775 responses to our rather exhaustive survey after posting it here and on various social media platforms. Respondents were asked to grade the 2024 season on a scale of 1-5, with the average coming in right around 3.7. Perhaps more telling is that only 4.3% graded the Sounders 2 or below.
That doesn’t mean fans were short on things they’d like to see improve, of course. When we asked respondents to give their opinion on why attendance continues to decline, we gave them eight options and they were invited to provide alternatives as well. Respondents were allowed to select as many options as they wanted. The two most recurring answers were related to the lack of day-time kickoffs and decline in atmosphere. Both of those issues were identified by more than half of respondents. Notably, the Sounders will have much more variety in kickoff times this year. Other common responses were connected to the expense (variations of “too expensive” also showed up on about half the ballots) and a general sense that the newness has sort of warn off.
Somewhat related, respondents were asked what one thing the team could do to “improve vibes” around the team and by far the top response was “sign some new players”, which got 48% of the vote. Somewhat interestingly, there were two options that related to lower prices (both for tickets and concessions) which only combined for about 15%.
We also tried to get a sense of what fans think about the way games are broadcast. The Sounders’ radio broadcast was given cumulative score of about 3.5, with just 7.2% rating it below 3. Nearly 80% of fans said that the move to Apple has either made it easier to watch games (39.3%) or hasn’t really changed the way they follow the team (38.8%).
Specifically in regards MLS Season Pass, respondents most like that there are no blackouts (72.8%) and that all of the games are on one subscription (83.8%). The stream quality (41.7%) was also a common positive. The least popular answer, though, was the announcers, which were cited by just 4.6% as a positive.
Conversely, announcers were the most cited negative (61.5%). Somewhat related, the lack of local TV broadcasts (59.2%) was also overwhelmingly identified as a negative. Once again, lack of variety in start times was seen as a negative by just over half of the respondents. The cost of Season Pass was cited by less than a quarter of respondents (22.3%).
When it comes to advice for improving the broadcasts, the two most cited suggestions were more local coverage (61.8%) and making the visiting radio call an option on all streams (55.1%).
We also asked about favorite studio hosts and broadcasters. Although used somewhat sparingly, Matt Doyle was easily the most popular studio host (67.5%) with Andrew Wiebe (48.7%) the other only other host even coming close to 50%. Perhaps not surprising given his Sounders connections, Keith Costigan was overwhelmingly the favorite announcer (66%) with Taylor Twellman (42.6%) the only other one to crest 40%.
It was an open-ended question, but we also asked for one suggestion to improve the American soccer scene and the most common response was some version of “make it more accessible.” Sometimes, that took the form of making youth soccer more affordable, other times it had to do with getting games on in more bars, but in the view of our respondents the game is still facing some serious hurdles just to get in front of people.
Looking ahead to 2025
As strong of a response as we got to that survey, our more recent survey on expectations for 2025 garnered almost twice as many responses. As I write this, we’re creeping up on 1,500 responses, which I think gives us a decent sample size of Sounders fans (even if this is unscientific).
Again, the broad takeaway is that fans are probably a bit more optimistic than it might seem.
For instance, about 54% of readers scored the Sounders’ offseason as 4 or better on a scale of 1-5. Less than 15%, meanwhile, gave it a score of 1 or 2. The average comes in at a healthy 3.4. This is despite a general frustration with the lack of a new Designated Player signing. GM Craig Waibel didn’t enjoy quite as much support, but about 47% gave him a score of 4 or better and just 16.5% graded him as a 1 or 2.
Fans are even more positive about the upcoming season. The average optimism score was 3.92, with 75% scoring it at 4 or 5. Just under 4% peg their optimism at 1-2.
To better measure that optimism, we asked respondents two follow-up questions. One was about how many trophies they expect the team to win. In an update to the survey we also asked to give a point and playoff seed projection (that question has more than 900 responses).
About 71% of respondents said they expect to the team win at least one trophy, with about 52% saying the Sounders would win exactly 1. Perhaps more telling is that about 72% of respondents projected the Sounders to claim at least as many point as last year, with 65% projecting a total of 57-62 points and finishing with a top 3 seed in the Western Conference and 7% thinking the Sounders will claim at least 63 points and contend for the Supporters’ Shield. Just 7 of 934 respondents said they expect the Sounders to miss the playoffs.
