Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a metropolitan area of about 230,000. Fargo is 175,000, not far off.
NFL teams only play eight home games a year, so actually it’s possible for NFL teams to be successful in smaller cities, if the situation is right. You only have to draw to eight big events.
While you will get definitely 150,000+ spectators to a Sprint Cup NASCAR race, there is no way in hell that all 1,500 NASCAR-sanctioned events average anywhere near that number.
To take just one example, the Altamont Motorsports Park in Northern California hosts NASCAR-sanctioned races, and has a crowd capacity of 7,500.
Two pre-seasons games and possibly 2 playoff games at home. That’s 12.
GorillaMan I think I am the original smoggie in manila.
But the last time I attended a match we played at Ayresome park
Formula 1 gets over half a billion TV viewers a year, and most tracks will accommodate 100,000+ spectators.
BUT with only a handful of races in an entire continent, you can reasonably expect a far larger crowd for each one.
Damn right, show some respect.
Personally, I think attendance numbers may be declining because of high casualty rates from soccer riots.
‘High casualty rates’? Yep, there’s still a major problem with hooligans in Italy, as mentioned in mhendo’s link way back, but elsewhere?
Also, if you’re rating popularity by attendance figures, surely some teams having to play games in front of no fans as punishment for hooliganism doesn’t help the overall averages- unless they don’t count those. 
I suppose in a roundabout sense this is true, since stadia in Britain lost about a third of their capacities with the end of “Standing Room Only”… but there have always been riots, and it doesn’t seem to have hurt the game much.
And when I say there have always been riots, I mean just that…
(from here):
Of course, as your link suggests, back then the game itself was pretty much part of the riot, rather than something separate.
In a related matter, tomorrow is the annual celebration of the Haxey Hood, in the village of Haxey, in North Lincolnshire. It’s a sort of traditional rugby game based on a medieval legend.
In 1991, i lived in the neighboring village of Westwoodside, and had a chance to see the Hood that year. It really is quite something to behold. While the Wiki entry stresses that “Safety is of prime concern,” there are plenty of bumps and bruises. Watching a couple of hundred guys swaying back and forth through the village in a tussle for a piece of leather is quite an experience. If the area has had typical December/January weather, it can be a very muddy affair.
I’ve never actually written this before on the SDMB, but I think you need a cite for that assertion. In other words I don’t think you’ll find a shred of evidence for it, except perhaps in Italy in the last 3 or 4 months. Can we get this straight - top level football in Europe is very popular and well attended. You cannot challenge this on the basis of a subjective viewing of a few televised games.
RNATB above mentioned the fact that capacities in Britain came down after the Taylor report. However nearly all the big clubs in England and in Glasgow have got their capacities back up to 1989 levels, or have significantly surpassed them. Furthermore, they are now regularly filling these capacities, which was never the case before 1989. Attendances for medium sized clubs in England and Scotland are also bigger than they were in the 1980s; far more people buy season tickets than before, which ensures much greater consistency in attendance.
It’s just one of those stock jokes that you can rely on to get a laugh in North America. US sitcoms are full of them. In Frasier, for example, it was mainly the “British food sucks” joke. The Simpsons preferred the “soccer riot” joke. The other one is that we all have bad teeth, although there probably is more than a grain of truth in that one, to be honest. Less than perfect teeth are acceptable here, even for famous people.
The one that gets me is the British food joke. Not because our food is fantastic, but because --newsflash-- nobody goes to America for the food, either.
In boats, on the Atalantic Ocean, on their way to America. 20 million hooligans are about to show you some serious attendance.
[Insert intro to *Immigrant Song *.]
Actually you’re probably right, I now realise I was whooshed on account of believing that such a cliche would not be passed off as humour. However that’s because I didn’t link it with the first part of Brian Ekers’ post - sorry Brian, it’s actually a cleverly funny post!
Unrelatedly, on further inspection of the Wikipedia list of league attendances, it warms the cockles of my heart to see that the Scottish 2nd Division nestling comfortably between the Icelandic league and the Apalachian Baseball League.
I didn’t realise that the Welsh Premier is so unpopular that the Scottish 3rd is twice as well attended - the players must be tripping over the tumbleweed.
Oh, I should have mentioned that when I said the rest of the world calls it “FUTbol”… I was thinking of a “King of the Hill” episode where the soccer coach says something like that.
Guess I should have made that reference clear upfront.