I've always thought if us Europeans are gonna downplay the quality of their league as tier 3 or 4 equivelant by English standards, we have to give them due credit for turning up to watch it each week - especially when they could be watching elite Basketball, American Football etc as you say.

Also that figure comes without the help of significant away followings boosting the figures. If the US was scaled down to have the population density of any of the 'big 5' leagues, I suspect that figure would go up by a couple thousand.