Attendance at the Leagues Cup for Orlando City SC and others couldn’t keep up with MLS ticket sales, but it did better than the US Open Cup.

MLS reduced participation in this year’s U.S. Open Cup to eight teams, with the remainder of the league’s tournament support going to the Leagues Cup. This sparked calls for a boycott of the Leagues Cup by fan groups, including one in Orlando.

The reason for the emphasis on the Leagues Cup, according to MLS Commissioner Don Garber, is that when the league’s number crunchers and growth forecasters used their calculators and spreadsheets to create the U.S. Open Cup, they simply weren’t getting people into the stadiums.

In the first attempts to host the Leagues Cup, attendance was not as high as that of the MLS games, but the number of participants was three times that of the US Open Cup.

Therefore, for now, MLS intends to invest most of its efforts in the Leagues Cup and keep only a few teams in the US Open Cup.

Fan groups from across MLS posted their calls for a boycott on social media. These groups include The Iron Lion Firm and OrlandoCityUK.

But the triple attendance continues. The US Open averages 5,477 spectators, while the Leagues Cup draws just 22,154. Orlando City SC sold 17,057 tickets for its last game before being eliminated from the tournament.

Could the Leagues Cup boycott have worked?

Boycott or not, the Leagues Cup captures the imagination of the MLS sports audience more than the US Open Cup. Still, as the oldest soccer competition in the United States, it is a noble gesture to demand respect for the sport’s history.

The boycott would not have persuaded the fans or the MLS to abandon the Leagues Cup. But the boycott could have been much more visible and therefore more effective if the fan groups had structured their participation differently.

The groups, including the Orlando City supporters, had their members vote on whether they would join the boycott. Afterwards, some posts were made on social media. The posts were copied and commented on by O-Town’s 11 and some blogs.

And that was it.

Sports photographers did not take or post photos of boycott supporters in public before the games. They were not invited to talk shows during sports broadcasts. The boycott never took hold.

But the US Open Cup and Leagues Cup are still here and will return. There is still plenty of time to plan a boycott that calls for less fan deference to the Leagues Cup. However, it is important to show MLS that fans are interested in increasing support of the Open Cup by having more spectators at those games.

It still won’t work well. But it would work better.