MLS Tickets More Expensive Than Bundesliga, Ligue 1, And Most Other Top European Leagues

It costs more to see the Los Angeles Galaxy than it does to see Bayern Munich. According to data compiled by GoEuro, a travel search engine, Major League Soccer tickets are some of the priciest soccer tickets in the world, more expensive than tickets to the Bundesliga, the premier German soccer league with the best average attendance in the world, or Ligue 1, the French league that’s home to global superstars such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva. According to GoEuro’s report, the average MLS ticket costs $46.22, 60 percent more than the average Major League Baseball ticket.

Published Wednesday, the report tracked both ticket cost and the average price of traveling to an away game. To nobody’s surprise, the English Premier League came in first, with an average ticket price of nearly $83. Spain’s La Liga came in a close second, with a price at more than $78. Italy’s Serie A, where the average ticket costs $76, came in third.

“It costs almost the same to travel to Germany to see a Bundesliga match as it does to stay in the U.K. and attend a Premier League game,” GoEuro CEO Naren Shaam said in a statement accompanying the data.

Ever since MLS launched 20 years ago, it has been inching itself toward respectability, both domestically and abroad. By one measure, the league of U.S. and Canadian clubs is the 12th-best professional soccer league in the world, and thanks to a number of factors -- the improving play of the U.S. national teams, the league’s steady acquisition of top, but aging, talents such as Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and David Villa -- MLS has managed to bring its ratings up, both nationally and in its local markets.

A recently signed television deal with ESPN has an annual value more than three times higher than the one that preceded it, and it includes features such as the “MLS Game of the Week,” which provides the kind of scheduling consistency that has helped a lot with ratings.

The league has also been on a breakneck media-rights tear, closing TV deals in South America, Britain, North Africa and the Middle East.