On occasion people who have brought others to MLS games have had those people say that they like the shootout. And soccer officials who come over to watch the games sometimes say that they like the shootout.
These are examples of anecdotes, they are not evidence.
I can just as easlily say that on several occasions that I have been to A-League games seated near latinos and when the game ended in a draw, they say "Que pasa?". Or at Revolution games, significant numbers of the Midnight Riders leave the game after 90 minutes rather than watch the shootout. These are anectotes too, and we have no way of knowing whether the first group of anecdotes are more generalizable to the general soccer fandom than my anecdotes until we actually do some real research.
To my knowledge, there have been 5 surveys conducted on the net and/or through Soccer America in the past 18 months regarding what should be done if a game is a draws after 90 minutes. shootouts. All of them have shown overwhelming preference for (in this order): 1) draws, 2) some form of overtime, and 3) shootouts.
In these surveys, preference for leaving draws, draws has ranged from between 45% - 75%. Some form of overtime has ranged between 25% and 35%, and shootouts have been preferred by fewer than 20% in each of these surveys.
OK, some might say that this was "corrupt" since it was 'preaching to the choir'. But these were widely circulated, and available to a lot more people than those who might have been "swayed" by our august debates on NAS. The total number of individuals surveyed in these surveys ranged from 600 on the first one (18 months ago), to the one on the Clash web page which is currently approaching 3,000 respondents. By anyone's statistical criteria, this is a representative sample of soccer fans.
As for MLS, all they have done is ASSERT that "fans sure seem to like them" without providing a shred of evidence to support this assertion. It strikes me as strange that a $50 million business is making major business decisions flying by the seat of their pants rather than gathering some easily available evidence about their customers' preferences.
To MLS' credit, they finally seem to be sensitive to the need to provide hard numbers on shootouts -- and a number of more important issues -- since at two recent Revolution games, extensive, multi-page questionnaires were distributed to at least a portion of the fans in attendance (in both English and Spanish language versions). It was not clear to me whether this was generated by the Rev management alone or whether this was a more widespread MLS phenomenon. Did anyone else in other cities get surveyed in the stands?
It should go without saying that it would be very nice to know the results of this survey both regarding the shootouts and other issues.
Some people assert if it Shootouts were dumped and draws remained standing, then more people would be screaming at the end of a game about "WHERES THE SHOOTOUT"?
This actually is a wonderful example of corrupting the sample, since new fans -- who may not know that draws are accepted in all other leagues except Japan and Costa Rica -- have now been exposed to a year and a half of shootouts and may incorrectly assume that this is part of soccer "tradition".
What would have been interesting was if MLS had simply started letting draws stand with the start of the league in 1996, SINCE THEY HAD NO EVIDENCE THAT DRAWS WERE NOT ACCEPTABLE TO US SOCCER FANS.
What about replacing the shootout with more soccer (overtime)? If this step were taken, I would only favor it if FIFA mandated that all leagues did so. Once again -- for the umpteenth time -- we are back to the issue that soccer is not "our" game to tweak, like MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL. The whole reason that soccer is as popular worldwide as it is now, is that EVERYONE plays by the same laws and nearly everyone plays by the same procedure regarding draws.
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