Salon:
Among the countless points discussed about this year’s World Cup…perhaps the most important looming question is whether this particular quadrennial tournament finally converted America into a nation of soccer fans.
Every four years, the World Cup masterfully demonstrates the fundamental differences between how America and the world respectively treat their athletes.
I don’t like to say “never” but there’s a fundamental difference between the way the American fan sees sports in general and “football” in particular and the way the rest of the world does. We go through this discussion every four years and nothing really changes.
At the very least, the US was a fantastic host to the ’94 World Cup. It was a fantastic experience
The article seems to be written by a non-sports fan.
The NBA example is incredibly shallow. David Stern was behind the focus on marketing individuals, starting with Bird and Magic. I’m sorry – this seems like an article that was written by someone with a self-hating agenda that’s trying to use soccer as a platform to criticize our country.
I admit I haven’t paid attention to how soccer is typically broadcast on American TV outside of the World Cup, so I could be wrong here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the issue has less to do with the fan base and more to do with how the format of the game shuts out TV advertisers. In American football and baseball there are constant pauses to slip in three or four commercials – not so with the non-stop soccer clock.
Soccer moms exist in the US because soccer is a great way for their kids to get exercise without too much risk of concussion etc. And there’s not too much gear to buy. Besides, if the kid isn’t good enough to make the baseball team or not tall enough for the basketball team or volleyball team, then hey, they can be a third defender on the soccer team.
But soccer pros are few and far between in the US. If you’re big and strong, you might become a football pro. If you’re smaller but fast and have a good throwing arm, you might become a baseball pro. If you’re tall and strong and/or agile, you might become a basketball pro. Why? Because there’s far more money in football (sorry, fútbol americano) and baseball and basketball. Why? Because there’s far more TV coverage of fútbol americano, baseball, and basketball.
It’s that simple.
ESPN has a huge contract with MLS beginning this season (see: http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2014/05/12/mls-us-soccer-sign-landmark-tv-media-rights-partnerships-espn-fox-univision-deportes) and will use their other programming (SportsCenter, etc) to forward the sport’s popularity.
MLS is expanding like crazy, and NBC broadcasts EPL games on weekend mornings. This article is wrong on a bunch of different levels
Did you see all the animated advertisements all around the pitch. D’ya think that was for the fans in attendance? The physical setup of US football with teams on the sidelines prevents that.
Bingo – you hit the nail on the head here. If ESPN can somehow convince advertisers that the advertising around the pitch is enough (or they find some other clever way to add advertising while continuing game coverage) then soccer may have a chance. But it’s going to take bringing advertisers on board somehow to get the ball rolling.
Soccer sucks & America knows it.
quality contribution
Thank you.
True but it is true of motorsport racing too – almost non-stop activity.
Granted, there are many more ad placements on the cars but I see traditional TV ads all the time in the form of a “split screen” shot. The race on one side and the commercial video and audio on the other. Seems to work well enough. The same model could be used for soccer/football.
So the only thing holding soccer back is that American’s don’t like flashy goal celebrations?
What a trash article.
Hmmm, that you put “football” in scare quotes shows a certain, perhaps deliberately contrarian, bias. In what way 90% of a game played using feet as opposed to the blind armoured bludgeoning of advertising friendly shove h’appenny with one or two kicks with special teams brought on to defend it, isn’t football?
A billion or two people watching and enjoying the beautiful game. Or the less than 20 million watching the statistics?
I know you’re a fan, but it’s easy for people (Americans and Canadians) to read putting “football” in quotes as condescending.
I’m not a hater but it really is pretty boring. I watched the entire Costa Rica v Netherlands game — regulation play + two OTs, and guess what? nobody scored. game was determined by a shoot off. the vastness of the field and the randomness of the inherit game design just make it too easy for a whole bunch of near-events, which by nature are non-events. this doesn’t make for terribly exciting television viewing.
While that is perhaps a challenge for American advertisers, it’s certainly not the reason for soccer not being as popular in the U.S. There is more soccer on TV now than ever before on all fronts…. World Cup, MLS, European Leagues. It wasn’t too long ago that they didn’t even broadcast all World Cup games…now every single English Premier League game is live on American TV. And this is only possible because the broadcasters and advertisers have are making money (or at least think they will make money).
The real reason soccer hasn’t “made it” in America is simply cultural, though not in the way the article argues–you have to look at it from a values and tradition perspective. Sports are a big part of people’s lives, something that people tie their identities with. If you ask a teenagers to tell something about himself, the first thing he’ll say is what sports he plays. Talk to a guy in his seventies and he’ll tell you about the time his high school one the state basketball championship. Talk to a kindergartner and his favorite (American) football team is going to be the same as his dad’s.
So with that being said, here’s this 8-year-old kid who runs faster than than all the other kids and jumps higher and even though he’s on the soccer team and the baseball team and the basketball team guess what sports his dad played and which sports have the biggest stars on the TV all the time? Not soccer. Guess who knows nothing about soccer because they grew up in a world of baseball/football/basketball? The dad. So while soccer is a great sport for young kids because the high amount of activity and relatively low amount of organization needed, that sport gets dropped because the dad knows nothing about it and the kid’s favorite sports star plays baseball.
The result is obvious…sports in a country/culture become entrenched. Sure, popularity ebbs and flows, but that’s over the course of decades and generations, not years. Think about it…when was the last time a new team sport has broken into the mainstream of American sports? The answer is never. If you look at any country around the world and ask what the favorite sports are, all you have to do is see what sports people were playing when the social/economic/technological state of the country first allowed for regional sporting competition. In other words, when did the working class have enough free time, money, and energy to start playing sports, and when did transportation become efficient enough to get people together all across the region to play each other and thus require agreement on a common set
The journey is more important than just getting there. A match without goals can be as exciting or more if the teams are playing well and are even.
This article is definitely written by someone who doesn’t understand sports. Palming was already illegal in the NBA. It was not done to stop Iverson, it was done because it is traveling. If American fans didn’t like celebrations, then the leagues wouldn’t have to ban them because people would boo the players. Fans love them. When Cruz does the salsa dance, fans love it. People don’t call the NFL the “No Fun League” as a compliment. One reason fans like college sports so much is because of the raw emotion.
The obvious thing that most people overlook when discussing this: there is international football and there is American football. US Americans already have football! They don’t need another football. The time and energy and spirt that a US American would otherwise put into international football is spent on American football. The fact that the 2 footballs are not the exact same game is completely irrelevant. They serve the same purpose of madly cheering a team as they move a ball from one end of a giant field to the other end of a giant field, with the opposing team trying to go the other way. You might as well ask why Americans don’t want to speak international English. There is already American English serving the same purpose for them. You might as well as why the French don’t speak Spanish.
It’s like asking why don’t people in northern California eat poutine? The answer is: they eat garlic fries. Poutine and garlic fries are both just french fries with a unique regional topping. The unique regional french fry topping in Quebec/Canada is cheese curds, and that is called “poutine.” The unique regional french fry topping in northern California is garlic, and that is called “garlic fries.” (90% of the garlic that is eaten in the US is grown in northern California, along with 90% of the wine and 90% of the marijuana and 90% of the software.) Restaurants in northern California will offer you plain fries or garlic fries. Restaurants in Quebec will offer you plain fries or poutine. That’s what the people want. That’s what they are used to. That’s what they are going to order. Around the world, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of unique regional french fry toppings. Poutine is just one of them. Garlic fries is just one of them.
So when you ask a US American to enjoy international football, you are essentially asking many of them to switch from one kind of football to another. They are all cheered out from their Sunday afternoon football game and then you want them to cheer another kind of football game that they are not familiar with. It’s like offering someone in northern California a plate of poutine right after they just finished eating a plate of garlic fries.
Too many long, tedious stretches of uneventful failure. I watched the final in a bar full of people and didn’t hear one cheer in the first 90 minutes. A turnover every 15 seconds doesn’t help, 99% of all drives end in failure. Americans just aren’t into the tedium. I get the country vs country thing, but the game is flawed in my opinion. Too many guys out there….if it was six a side there would be much more action. Big snoozefest most of the time. Heavy drinking helps. Oh and the diving is enough to change the channel right there. Let alone the broadway shows after a score…just my opinion. I try every World Cup yet still come away disappointed.