I admit that I am mostly posting this to get the reaction of Sean and CRChair to this article which posits 7 reasons why soccer will never be a popular American sport. Personally, I only ever find soccer interesting if one of my friends is playing - and never if I am playing. But I have been lectured on numerous occasions by AYSO parents, referees, and players as to why I should find it interesting and how soccer is in fact the ultimate sport.
1. Americans don’t have the Attention Spans.
Soccer is a continuous game that is heavily influenced by a teams endurance and stamina. Unfortunately, Americans do not understand that concept. While the most popular sport in the United States involves watching a car go around a track for 600 miles, soccer is players running constantly for 90 minutes. Unlike soccer, however, NASCAR also involves the elements of horrendous crashes, pit stops, and fan favorites. Football also stops after every play, and during the four quarters of the game. The same goes for the innings of baseball, and the quarters of basketball.
2. Low Scores.
Because soccer is such a competitive and trying sport, the scores remain relatively few and far between. Americans like scoring, in all ways, forms, and meanings. Look at every other sport and their average scores, and then compare them to a high scoring soccer affair involving 5 – 6 goals. While scoring a goal is exciting, you have to remember spectators endure 90 minutes of passing balls and running in order to witness the goal.
3 comments:
I think the issue is chicken and the egg. Americans don't get into soccer because it's not on tv. Networks don't show soccer because people don't watch it the few times it's on. In the US if anything is marketed the right way it becomes popular. MLS has done a terrible job of marketing itself. Other than David Beckham can anyone here who doesn't keep up on MLS name another MLS player. I can list off a dozen pro basketball players and I don't watch basketball. The players in the NBA market themselves and the NBA markets their players.
I think that the 'short attention' excuse is exactly that. Given the chance I think that Americans can and would come to enjoy watching soccer - heck golf gets pretty good ratings and the spectacular rarely happens there, even when Tiger is playing.
I think, to repeat myself, that given enough time and the right marketing soccer could be just as big as the NBA in America. But unfortunately, minus that the list is correct.
I think reason number 2 is flat out wrong. Baseball is the 2nd most popular sport in America and will draw 80 million fans to its games this year and and average score for a game would be 5-4. With the argument of the author you would think the scores were 12-8 all the time. Also, in football a team can have 28 points which sounds like a lot, but really they only scored 4 times.
I do agree however that soccer will remain a popular sport to play, but will not become a popular sport to watch on TV in the USA. It is hard to get Americans into a sport without a generation pushing it into the mainstream. That is how the X-Games stuff has come to have widespread appeal.
crchair makes a good point on the scoring. plus there are many sports fans that would argue the best baseball games are the ones that end at 1-0 because it was an epic defensive/pitching game or at 7/3-0 in football.
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