DALLAS — It's clear Major League Soccer (MLS) is banking everything it can on Lionel Messi's impact on soccer in the U.S.
It's why they produced an unprecedented preseason schedule - just to show off the league's newest, shiny toy it has.
And why not? Their success is invested in his success.
So it makes sense that Messi's club, Inter Miami, has been booked to play a seven-match schedule that sees the team traversing over 23,000 miles in a month's timespan.
This grueling stretch kicked off Friday night in El Salvador against that country's national team for a match that ended in a 0-0 draw.
The first of only two U.S.-based matches in this run would come Monday night at the Cotton Bowl -- the historic first home of FC Dallas. With a capacity of 92,100, it's a much larger venue than the 20,500-seat Toyota Stadium in Frisco that the club currently calls home, and where the international soccer icon was hosted in his first North Texas visit.
On paper, the idea makes sense.
Messi mania completely took over Frisco for that Leagues Cup match. Toyota Stadium was sold out well in advance. The whole spectacle, Frisco officials said, brought an economic impact of $3 million to that North Texas city.
But once kickoff rolled around for Monday's game in Dallas, it was clear that the Cotton Bowl was substantially emptier than the MLS likely thought it would be. At halftime, an attendance of 32,211 -- or just over one-third of the venue's capacity -- was formally announced.
Granted, DFW's cold and rainy weather surely played a factor. Light rain covered the entire area overnight Sunday and into Monday morning.
Certainly, scheduling needs to take some of the blame here, too. The league put on this match -- and scheduled it for 5 p.m. on a Monday.
Even if conditions were perfect, the game is kicking off during rush hour.
WFAA took a video of what the Cotton Bowl looked like at halftime, with the venue looking pretty bare, aside from the lower bowl's middle sections.
For comparison, FC Dallas' first ever match in the Cotton Bowl in 1995 -- back when they were called the Dallas Burn -- brought out a crowd of 27,779.
And, again, Toyota Stadium sold out all 20,500 of its seats for its August Messi game.
The prospect of potentially filling the 92,100-seat Cotton Bowl was there. And MLS took the swing... but they missed.
PHOTOS: FC Dallas, Inter Miami play preseason match at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas
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