If you have ever wondered where SBI readers check in from most often, you might be surprised at what the numbers reveal.
We started out as a New York/New Jersey-dominated website before re-launching as a nationally-focused soccer news site in 2008. In the three years since we have managed to develop a well-balanced readership that represents American soccer fans very evenly.
Here is a rundown of the top cities, states and countries for SBI readership, based on traffic statistics taken over the past six months:
TOP 20 STATES FOR SBI READERSHIP
- California
- New York
- Texas
- Illinois
- New Jersey
- Washington
- Virginia
- Pennsylvania
- Massachusetts
- Florida
- District of Columbia
- Ohio
- North Carolina
- Maryland
- Georgia
- Colorado
- Michigan
- Oregon
- Indiana
- Utah
TOP 25 CITIES FOR SBI READERSHIP
- New York
- Washington D.C.
- Chicago
- Seattle
- Los Angeles
- San Francisco
- Houston
- Atlanta
- Boston
- Denver
- Philadelphia
- Columbus
- Dallas
- Arlington, VA
- Portland
- Austin
- Minneapolis
- Salt Lake City
- San Diego
- Raleigh/Durham
- Brooklyn
- Toronto
- Miami
- St. Louis
- Indianapolis
TOP 10 COUNTRIES
- USA
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- Germany
- Mexico
- France
- South Korea
- Japan
- Italy
- Australia
TOP 25 FOREIGN CITIES (Excluding Canada)
- London
- Mexico City
- Seoul
- Paris
- Melbourne
- Athens
- Hong Kong
- Berlin
- Bangkok
- Buenos Aires
- Tokyo
- Madrid
- Dublin
- Zurich
- Johannesburg
- Sydney
- Manchester
- San Jose, Costa Rica
- Munich
- Milan
- Rome
- Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico
- Munster, Germany
- Stockholm
- Guadalajara
———–
If you are curious about how these rankings stack up to past rankings, here is our rundown of traffic rankings from fall of 2008, SBI's first year as an independent website.
Surprised by some of the rankings? Is your city in the Top 25? Which city impressed you with its ranking?
Share your thoughts below.
Crazy how much Seattle/Washington has climbed in the rankings since 2008.
I’m just surprised that many people in California can read.
oh scott… you are so clever. where are you from, buddy?
and, why is Brooklyn listed separate to New York?
(SBI- New York City blows away the competition even without Brooklyn’s tally, but I thought it was interesting that Brooklyn could break the Top 25 by itself so I listed it. I meant to include that in the write-up but forgot.)
Brooklyn is a city? Since when? Does that mean “New York” is only Manhattan?
Good things still to come. Nice work SBI staff on the gradual progression and nice support fellow readers.
Ives, if you combined DC and Arlington, VA as essentially one city would it overtake NY and roughly by how much?
(SBI-You could combine DC and Arlington and it would still be barely half of New York’s numbers, and that’s not including Brooklyn with the rest of NYC, as I mention in another comment here.)
That actually made me laugh out loud
Atlanta and Raleigh/Durham for MLS Expansion Teams!
MLS in indianapolis!!!! We would truly embrace a team here
Why is San Francisco listed when the team is in San Jose? Ives, as a fellow Jerseyan I would expect you to not fall for the ‘we are where we say we are, not where we actually play’ Jedi mind trick.
(SBI-San Francisco is listed because that’s where the readers are checking in from. Has nothing to do with MLS locations.)
Be happy with your USL teams and the 1,500 fans that show up.
do you have a list of visits per capita state?
Come on Omaha, pick up the pace.
I’m just surprised you got off of You Porn long enough to type your comment.
Damn, Tallahassee did not crack the top 25. Guess I’ll have to get my cat an e-mail account to increase the North Florida readership levels. (Although he is a Chelsea fan and I would then have to read his drivel about those wankers in blue.)
sooo crazy, bro… so crazy… *rolls eyes
Really sorry to see how low St. Louis (the so-called soccer hotbed of the USA) ranked. Does not bode well at all for MLS St. Louis. On the other hand, Austin and Minneapolis look pretty good.
Well… Jersey does produce the most talent
It’s interesting that DC is as high as it is, given that population-wise DC proper is actually a relatively small city (~600K). I wonder if per capita DC has a higher percentage of SBI readers than NY.
Anyway, interesting numbers. Thanks for sharing them.
(SBI-Kev, the totals are for visits, not unique visitors, so it can be a case of readers who visit quite a bit. Given the number of political and legal jobs in DC, and the amount of down time those jobs have, I’m betting there are a lot of readers spending a lot of time on the site.)
I’m just surprised that many people in New York have a computer.
Are you actually comparing the excitement and quality of play between USL and MLS? I live between 3 and 4 hours away from both and I might be able to make it down to watch MLS, but an USL match probably isn’t worth that much hassle when instead I could watch it on TV.
it may be like an “all hands on deck” type deal… What with Baltimore United imminent
Wait, Fresno isn’t on the SBI map???
WTF?
Out of curiosity…I’m the only one, right?
(SBI-Fresno is 21st overall in Cali. Given how much you comment I’d bet you make up a good chunk of that traffic so thanks for holding it down. LOL)
Those 15 DC United fans spend a lot of time opening and closing SBI to pad those visits while in Seattle they have an Excel query do it for them.
Be interested to see top cities outside US and Canada.
(SBI-Done. Thanks for the idea.)
Hey, how did Maine do??? I’m sure I’m the only one from the state!!! hahahahahaha…(transplant here).
You may be the only person from Fresno who can read a full sentence… aside from “meth sold here”.
And even that’s not a full sentence.
I was surprised to see the INdy/Indiana traffic, but the ATL/GA and Raleigh/NC have you beat by a lot.
Out of curiosity and being a Queens native, where does queens rank compared to brooklyn?
Got off?
Conversely, I’m surprised to see Miami so low. Maybe we need futbolporives.net.
Snookie doesn’t count.
Ives, it’s been said a couple times before, but, as a researcher, I agree that a potentially more “accurate” portrayal would be rankings done by percentage of population for each state, city, and country. But I know you’re a busy man, lol – perhaps we can get that as well…?
(SBI-No shot. Who has that kind of time? LOL)
+1!!!
I figured. Great post nonetheless, sir!
im just surprised how idiots like scott47a find their way to SBI
ur right… darn.. Guess we will settle with Tim Howard, Jozy, Tab, Meola, Agudelo, Rossi, Berhalter, Bradley, Harkes, Reyna, Vermes, Szetela…
Maine #2 checking in.
(SBI-Maine came in at no. 40, though technically 39 excluding D.C. since, you know, it’s not a state. LOL)
Brooklyn used to be it’s own city before it consolidated. It is hard to people who haven’t lived there to understand the way that plave (the tri-state area) works. I’m sure it sounds quite arrogant.
Thing is Brooklyn still has that sense of being able to be it’s own stand alone city, like Manhattan. Queens and Bronx are more tagged onto Manhattan I feel like (no disrespect).
Neccesary to seperate it in the rankings? Probably not. But for the NYC/NJ/LI/CT area it is interesting to us.
I’d be curious to know what percentage of readership is foreign vs. domestic.
It was a joke. My wife is a Californian and is significantly smarter than I am.
Still, you would have to be particularly slow to support one of those awful Cali MLS teams. The Star-chasers (isn’t Beckham cute kids)? No thanks. The Clash? Better the first time. Goats USA? A sad little-brother organization to Guadalajara.
Perhaps all of SBI’s Cali fans are Nats supporters or Euro-types.
In example, if people live in Manhattan they rarely commute out of the city but if they do it is likely to Brooklyn. If people have $ but are going to move out of Manhattan (but stay in the city) they move to Brooklyn. Carrol Gardens and Park Slope and such.
Of course this is a generalizaiton but feel like a lot of NYers would back up this happens.
I was thinking I was the only one from Denver, CO that reads SBI since I’m on this site a few times a day. Perhaps I’ve single-handedly put Colorado at #16 and Denver at #10! haha
Szetela? How did he make it on this list?
Only suggestion I have is having a links list to all your Fox articles somewhere prominent that I can click on (like a “last 5″ list with dates). You mention them in your posts, but I don’t always notice or didn’t catch the topic. It would definitely get some more traffic to your articles on Fox.
I love SBI. It keeps from scrolling through other sites finding info about USMNT and yanks abroad. Keep it up.
Which is why I always wished MLS were in SF not SJ. But getting a stadium downtown would never happen. Way to limited in space, and way too expensive to do.
Austin, TX at number 16! this is not a big city, I wonder if it is me causing the big numbers? maybe i need to start doing some more work and less surfing. LOL!
I’m in Omaha as well. I guess it is just 2 of us. Lol!
keep it up Ives, make us proud!!!
My minnesotans let me down. Dissapointing
Those of us from Arlington, VA are overachieving due to constantly checking the site (and Goff) to see if DC United has fired their President/General Manger.
City Pop.
New York 8.4M
Washington D.C. 600K
Chicago 2.8M
Seattle 617K
Los Angeles 3.8M
San Francisco 815K
Houston 2.3M
Atlanta 541K
Boston 645K
Denver 610K
Philadelphia 1.5M
Columbus 770K
Dallas 1.3M
Arlington, VA 218K
Portland 566K
Austin, TX 786K
Hi Ives,
Great rankings. Any idea about the Canadian province with the greatest readership?
Cheers,
Wolf
Well, all we need now is for Ives to give us the actual readership numbers…YES!!
While both were better than St. Louis, Atlanta was much higher. Seems like a good spot for a team, but will Coke sponsor it?
Then why is she married to you?
Heh, good to see you encouraging people to not follow their local club team, even if they’re not winning it all. You must be one of those so called “real football” fans, who’s “always” been a fan of Man Utd, Barcelona, Milan, etc.
wow, that’s just a poorly composed first sentence. Shame on me.
Gotta be Ontario. You’ll have to worry about BC in the future.
when a team from NY wins a trophy, you may speak
San Diego represent! move Chivas down here and re-brand. play at Qualcomm while they build a SSS in Chula Vista
Could do Daly City or Oakland though.
This is true, but SF is a cool international city, that despite its population is densely populated. My family is from SF and the surrounding Bay Area as well as Germany. SF has a great European feel to it in some ways. I think MLS would be awesome there, but again, very unlikely to ever happen.
I can see where you’re coming from, but most of us love our teams. The San Jose fans were heartbroken with the loss of their beloved Clash and a lot of Galaxy fans have been there since the heartbreak of the first MLS Cup and El Tanque. Chivas USA may be the team Jesus forgot about though.
Yes, Canada. Am I the only Albertan on here?
Is St Paul lumped with Minneapolis?
This is kind of neat. Hey ives whats the check in count for Tyler, Texas?
(SBI-Tyler is No. 65 among Texas cities. I’m going to have to bust Daniel Hernandez’s chops for not visiting enough.)
visited my bro who moved out there… Minnesota is awesome… Being from jersey, i thought no other state would be worth my time, but Minneapolis was a blast. Dont get a juicy lucy at the 5-8 unless you want to chill on a toilet for hours.
Crushed that Bamyan Afghanistan didn’t make the top list… At least you know you have a readership of one there.
Checking in from El Paso, TX. Make us proud Omar S.
I am going to assume I am the only Oklahoman who reads this site (or for that matter, reads).
Where does this idea of St. Louis being the soccer hotbed come from?
Unfortunately that meth lab explosion and the gang member killed in the drive by shooting took out the other two Fresno SBI readers…
We all say were from Boston but were not.
Whoa, awesome.
How are those destroyed Buddha statues doing?
Wahoo! I’m glad I’m 1 of 2 people in Arizona who care about soccer. This state blows.
A couple of small errors: 1. the listing says top 10 states, and then, lists 19 states and D.C.. That’s the other small error, D.C. isn’t a state.
(SBI-Does it really matter? People get the point of the list. I came very close to including a disclaimer in the title but figured, “Hey, nobody will be THAT anal right?” Should have known better. Ha.)
Arkansas doesn’t even crack the top twenty. Unsurprising, but there are more soccer fans down here than people think.
Virginia doing work at seven! hahaha
Sorry if this has been brought up before, but why aren’t the “Brooklyn” numbers part of “New York City”?
The reasoning here is funny. Follow the logic more people can read in Brooklyn than Toronto. This started as a New York/ New Jersey site. It is a great site. You aren’t going to loose readership in the area with a shift to national.
Vancouver’s got the same hindrance – only 578K.
Neither is Virginia, it’s a commonwealth, but we’ll deal with semantics later.
This reader was born in Little Rock for what it’s worth.
St. Louisians…or St. Louisites?
CTRL+F is your friend.
A lot of our players on the 1930, 1934 and 1950 World Cup USMNT teams were either born in St. Louis or played for St. Louis club teams
Yeah Szetela! He’s really lighting it up in Europe.
i lol’ed.
someone please tell Mayor Bloomberg that Brooklyn is part of NYC.
Ives – Interested in hearing you came about with Germany as 4th in Europe with no cities in germany in Top 25 of Europe.
Is it due to the military in Germany spread throughout smaller towns, or Expats, combination?
(SBI-You missed Berlin, which is in the Top 10. I added Munich and Munster and filled out the Top 25. There are plenty of Americans living in Germany so I’d bank on that being a factor, not just military either. In fact, there’s one player who I know visits SBI religiously and always seems to get his home city ranked wherever he’s playing. I won’t say who, but it’s pretty funny.)
Upstate NY, where are you? You could just make a category that encompasses all of NY north of Westchester and Rockland.
“top 10 states” then there are 20 states haha we all human i love this site
The Cosmos would have to join MLS and get a soccer stadium in New York first, only then could a NY team could try winning a trophy.
Wouldn’t that be “for” Ives?
And how did we do that?
St. Paul can suck it, unless you get the MLS team (big if).
Which cities with MLS teams are not in the top 25?
San Jose (although SF is high on the list)
Vancouver (not yet I know, but Portland is on the list)
Kansas City appears to be the only one that is truly missing from the list
I know man, this scientific survey effectively proves that St. Louis hates soccer.
dude it’s one website, hardly representative of the entire soccer loving population of North America.
Actually Munster is #23, but good point in general. I’m pretty sure that isn’t the location of the main US base, but I could be wrong . . .
And three years ago nobody around Seattle even heard of MLS.. go figure.
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oddly, it’s not. There are no bases there at all, and no “main” base really, other than Ramstein Air Base.
WESTSIIIIIIDE!!
Cuuuuuuuuuuleroooooooooooo!
Jesus forgot about us but maybe Satan remembered…..
Infidel por vida!
I’m, surprised you spelled Fresno correctly. Thank Jesus for spell check.
a floating soccer stadium under the golden gate bridge……
I’m not seeing the part of my comment where I said it wasn’t just one website….
I’m referring specifically to the top 25 cities list FOR THIS WEBSITE, I think that’s pretty clear.
Someone figure out who this is, it has to be an American, right…
Great breakdown of information. Just wonder if I can claim the distinction of being not only one of the few females, but the oldest SBIer at 64 (65 in Feb!)
Hope I’m helping uphold San Diego’s place.
“por” is a very adaptable preposition, it can mean “by”, “for”, “at”, “per”, “as”, and “to”, among others.
someone needs to brush up on their spanish I
So it turns out that I visit this site more than I realized. I own a Mac, so my address bar will complete it for me…for example http://www.c turns into http://www.cnn.com. but when i just type www it fills in the rest or this sites address!
Hudson County REP
I’m glad to hear from a kindred spirit! I’m also a huge female fan and would not have admitted my age (52) until your post gave me courage. I do my share to put South Carolina on the map for Ives. Love the site and the beautiful game!
So Atlanta has a higher rank than 8 current MLS cities, plus Arlington and Brooklyn. We can definitely handle an MLS team down here.
A case of one of these is not like the others for sure:
Yeah, this I’d really like to see!
Rep! Thanks for that!!
I second the general sentiment of this. I’m constantly readin (infrequently post) and seem to often miss these.
My congrats to you, your website certainly has captured all the continents.
Ives/SBI,
It seems your readers like to talk about themselves! No surprise as its the human condition but still, its kind of funny.
Somewhat in that vein, how about some more ‘you write the caption’ posts? A bit of community generated humor is always fun. The Donovan doll one is still my fave of those I’ve caught.
lol you’re right
No, you’re not the only one in Fresno. I am, unfortunately, also in The ‘No for the time being.
Are you going to post a breakdown of the reader survey from earlier this month? I noticed you said this post is based on page hits, not unique views, and presumably people didn’t bother creating different names and e-mail adresses to respond to the survey multiple times, so it would be interesting to see if there are any dramatic differences in these lists based on the survey rather than traffic.
(It would also be interesting to post a breakdown of the other stats from that survey, like ages and the male/female split. Maybe a top 10 of the clubs and countries most supported by SBI readers).
snookie is not what i would consider talent. she is more of a disgrace to any1 from the tri city area…breezie is nasty and i always wondered how someone so unattractive made it on television. I truly think that the show jersey shore makes people lose brain cells, and I do not allow that program to be viewed when i’m in the vicinity…
check your punctuation b4 you clown on the dude’s spelling…lol
Some places overseas I’ve lived over the last 2-3 years came up as “unknown” on the site meter. So some of the more obscure locations might not register.
Kunduz and Charikar should have registered at least a blip too!
Probably not significant, but I would guess some folks have an ISP in a nearby town or city, so mining their IP address might show them from a slightly different place.
(Judging by the ads that pop up in my browser with the name of my ISP’s town 60 miles away).
Still would guess that metro areas would be close to proportional as far as population/traffic.
Continuing off topic, doesn’t Pennsylvania also consider itself a commonwealth?
Nah, I’ve noticed several people commenting on here from Denver. We definitely hold our own on this site. I think our ranking of 10 goes to show how poorly the FO has done in getting fans to games. And the move to Commerce City was…clearly not motivated by getting fans to games. The attendance dropped in half after the move
Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola played MF for William Paterson does that count.
Franklin NY, just 11 miles from Oneonta, former home of the NSHOF
By having funny accents.
What is this anti-American nonsense? VA and PA should be kicked out of the union and forced to participate in the Commonwealth Games…
Any US soccer fans currently manning the research stations down in Antarctica?
Yes, we need a survey list, and then we can compare the two lists. And decide which list is superior and will be used in the allotment of MLS expansion teams.
+1
I’d make the drive every weekend from The Fort. Hell, I’ve driven to Columbus to catch a match quite a few times.
And my regards to Faruque at Save in Bamyan!
Considering that I log in from my office computer in Paris about 20 times a day, I wonder how much of the Paris/France traffic I am responsible for…
I’m holding it down for Albuquerque, New Mexico!
SEOUL REPRESENTED Very Nice
I just moved to the UK (Oxford) from Canada (Prince George)…so I assume I’ll be bringing up the UK numbers
Thanks Ives for this site, it is even more important for me to check this site for MLS news…along with the Canadian site I follow as well.
I just moved to the UK (Oxford) from Canada (Prince George)…so I assume I’ll be bringing up the UK numbers
Thanks Ives for this site, it is even more important for me to check this site for MLS news…along with the Canadian site I follow as well.
RSL!
Great to see Hong Kong! Nice to know I’m not the only one watching the games here…
Interesting to see how highly ranked the non-MLS cities and states are.
Ives-thought about adding a Clustermap to graphically show the numbers of visitors worldwide?
He’s a flounders fan of course…
Ditto
No Detroit? Disappointing.
There is a NATO installation in Munster with Yanks assigned to the command in various staff positions-a small contingent of forces. I was in Heidelberg and played for TSG Rohrbach in the BundesBierliga, but have been relegated to trying to gain an appreciation for Sporting KC here in KC.
Dude, Ives is everywhere out here in the Colorado soccer community. Balboa can’t stop calling him.
Your fault for giving him your home number, Ives.