The league is also on a high after the Fort Lauderdale Strikers progressed to the quarter-finals of the US Open Cup, a sharp contrast to its teams’ failure in the competition last year.
“Some years it’s going to go your way and some years it’s not,” Peterson said. “Last year when we didn’t do so well we had a measured response that this is sport, you’re going to have good years and bad, we know how good we are, we know we can compete.
“And so this year when it went better, we’ll say the same thing. We love this competition and we have one team remaining and we’ll see if they can go the whole way. That’s the goal.”
One issue that has caused some concern, however, has been low attendances from some of the teams, particularly the Strikers and Miami FC.
Peterson admits work needs to be done in this regard.
“I put some of it to growing pains in some regard. We have five new owners in the group – sometimes it takes longer to find out who you are going to be in your local community than maybe it should,” he added.
“We had some weather issues, some games on vacation periods – and I don’t want to use those as excuses but when you play from April to November you’re going to have these issues.
“You are going to need to find ways to overcome them but we didn’t overcome them this year. I don’t think it’s a trend – soccer is not losing popularity, the teams are not losing popularity.
“I think we have to spend a lot of time and resources in building up a fanbase and supporters’ groups and find a way to fill these stadiums and it’s going to take a bit of work in some places.”