Until last year, The Tampa Bay Rays perennially owned the worst attendance in the American League. Then, during their miracle 97-win campaign, their attendance skyrocketed to third worst! Woohoo! But at least the Rays can hang their hat on being Florida's baseball hotbed, topping the Marlins, who can only start a wave in the audience if they install hydraulic seats.
Dan Levy wrote at the Sporting Blog about how ESPN should cover the World Cup, including sending a studio crew to South Africa. It's probably a good idea, that way their coverage isn't just lip service to FIFA. Levy's underlying message seems to be that promotion of soccer in the United States is a good thing, and this is a key component in carrying out that goal.
I don't argue with that. Just with this: "The best thing to come out of the success of the U.S. men's national soccer team is that, finally, soccer isn't a four-letter word in the American sports vernacular." Maybe jokes like The Simpsons did back in the day are outdated, but the four-letter word is now nine: B-A-N-D-W-A-G-O-N.
The win over Spain last week, according to the president of U.S. Soccer, was one of three landmark soccer moments in recent memory, along with the 1994 World Cup win over Colombia and reaching the quarterfinals of the '02 Cup. Three great moments in the last 15 years? That's it? Hell, the Marlins have won two World Series in the last 15 years. Would a third championship have made a big difference?
This isn't about trying to squeeze soccer into The American Casual Fan's loaded rota of football, baseball, basketball, college sports, NASCAR, and hockey. The doubt lies in the American soccer program compared to the rest of the world's. Europe is the ACC, and the United States is Gonzaga. And even if all of those caveats were met ... would soccer still be popular?
"People in America like to win," Levy wrote, "and on an international stage, something the United States has never done in men's soccer." We do love international victory (Lance Armstrong, The Dream Team, gymnastics) but when it doesn't happen, we don't get that worked up about it, saying "oh well" in lieu of "oh hell," then flipping back to our own intra-national leagues. Then we zone out international competition until someone notices we beat England or Italy or some other futbol-loving foreign country, such as South Florida.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - El Bicho
Never is a long time. Not likely in my lifetime, but when the nightmares of Pat Buchanan and Tom Trancredo finally become a reality, then we'll see.
2 - Dr Dreadful
Soccer is already popular in the US, and has been for a long time. But it's popular in the way softball is popular: a lot of people love to play and watch it, but it doesn't command big TV audiences of national attention.
It may soon supplant hockey as one of the top four sports here, and I reckon baseball needs to be looking over its shoulder as well. Matt mentions the poor attendances at ball games in Florida. Think where a lot of the immigrants in that part of the country are coming from. Florida baseball should be way more popular than it seems to be.
3 - Dan
I think ice hockey is on the rise. More people are watching the Stanley Cup every year. Less are watching the NBA finals each year. Baseball seems to be in decline. NASCAR has siphoned off a lot of sports fans.
Soccer may end up being like golf, tennis, and even bowling. If you play these sports then you're pretty avid about watching the best play them as well.
The NFL though, is the premier sport in the US. A near perfect blend of athletic diversity, suspense, and urgency, capsulated in 16 rare, regular season, performances, a week apart.
It's also a very attractive gambling medium. That's why many viewers stay tuned even through the lopsided games. The point spread is often in question. As well as the over/under.
It's hard for soccer to break in to the American market. There is a certain amount of over-saturation of American sports already.
4 - Christopher Rose
Football is THE global game. The problem for the USA is that you lot tend to get all pouty and sulky when you aren't good at something.
Now it has been proven convincingly that your national football team can walk tall on the global football stage, I'm sure its popularity will surge yet again.
5 - zingzing
for the first half of the brazil game, i thought we were walking on water. that nothing could touch us.
then the second half happened. what the fuck was that? as much as you have to credit brazil, no one who is paying any attention gives up 3 goals (should have been 4) in 45 minutes. that's just damn ridiculous. i dunno if it was bad coaching, scared (of what? success?) players or what, but that was fucking frustrating. i could just feel it slipping away. that it took until the 85th minute for it to really become brazil's game is a small victory, but she-it.
i've never felt such deflation.
6 - roger nowosielski
It's all about money. Football doesn't take in because of the perception there isn't enough action (scoring mainly). Lack of homegrown talent is no obstacle. Most players in any respectable league are international stars. If there were receipts at the box office, there'd be no problem recruiting.
7 - Dan
It's hard to understand why some soccer fans seem to get upset because a majority of American sports fans find the game to be dull.
Fans of American football, or basketball, or baseball, or NASCAR don't seem to care if their sports are globally popular.
They accept and understand that soccer is "The" global game, they just don't care. It is a boring sport.
No amount of cajoling by needy soccer conformists will draw them away from the more exciting American sports they are already emotionally vested in.
8 - Dr Dreadful
Whether it's a boring sport or not depends on your perception and whether you've been immersed in it or not.
I personally find baseball and ice hockey pretty damn boring. The former consists largely of a guy in an outsize glove and another guy dressed as Hannibal Lecter throwing the ball back and forth to one another, while a third guy with a stick attempts, usually with a miserable lack of success, to disrupt their game of catch. About twice every hour, several other guys get in on the 'action' by briefly running about and trying to get as muddy as possible. The general monotony is interspersed by the invocation of a variety of obscure and pointless rules which appear to serve no purpose whatsoever and to have been made up on the spot.
Hockey consists of twelve guys dressed as Hannibal Lecter chasing a urinal cake around an ice rink at speeds in excess of what the human eye or television camera can process. We the audience just have to take the officials' word for what the score is. There are occasional impromptu auditions for WWE interspersed throughout the proceedings, possibly to distract from the fact that no-one knows what the heck is going on.
There are, of course, many nuances to all three sports which make them rewarding to their respective fans. I'm discovering this with American football, which I used to think consisted of a few seconds' frenzied running and wrestling involving 22 30-ton men and achieving precisely nothing, followed by an orgy of commercial breaks, but which I am now, worryingly, coming to enjoy watching.
9 - zingzing
dan: "They accept and understand that soccer is "The" global game, they just don't care. It is a boring sport."
that's pretty silly. i was on the edge of my seat the entire game during us-brazil. of course, it meant something to me, so i suppose that had something to do with it. i was cursing and drinking and smoking far too much. i had a pit in my stomach the entire second half. and i was on the verge of self-destruction by the end. damn sport is too much to take.
10 - MarkSaleski
i was on the edge of my seat the entire game during us-brazil.
that's because you care about the sport. most people here don't.
i've been hearing this argument for decades, that in the next ten years, soccer will become the dominant sport. it's not gonna happen.
11 - Christopher Rose
Mark, your argument could be used against a lot of the music you like, which most people don't. You're just on the other side of the argument here.
A great football match has all the passion and drama of a great gig, movie or play, possibly more so as the potential for the totally unexpected, such as when the USA recently beat Spain against all the odds, is so much greater. And all neatly packaged into ninety minutes too.
I wouldn't argue that football will become the dominant sport in the USA in the next ten years, but I would be utterly surprised if its popularity didn't continue the obvious growth path it has been on for decades.
On the other hand, it is also pretty obvious that the other current popular US sports are not really going to get any bigger than they currently are.
Basketball is like fast food; ice hockey is enjoyed as much for the zamboni and the violence as the actual game; baseball is too slow and too long; and American rugby is utterly devoid of a real sense of competition because no matter how shit a team is, it's going to be back again next season because teams don't get relegated when they finish bottom of the league, which is pretty strange for the land of free enterprise.
Finally, despite the general global popularity of American culture, none of its sports appeal to a genuinely global audience, despite the pretensions to world series. Blimey, even cricket is growing faster than any of those sports, a thing I would never have imagined possible!
12 - MarkSaleski
honestly chris, i'm not trying to diss the game because of course it has all sorts of nuance and beauty....really, like any sport.
i'm also not trying to say that the sports that are popular here are "better" (which, by the way, is not the argument i make about music).
sadly, it wouldn't surprise me if at some point ALL sports declined in popularity here as the younger generations have become so attached to electronic devices they have no time for going outdoors and actually playing.
does wii count as a sport??
13 - Jordan Richardson
does wii count as a sport??
It damn well better!
14 - Tony
I think the interesting thing about the popularity of soccer in America discussion is that everyone always assumed, because the sport is so popular in the rest of the world, that it would eventually take here.
In reality the opposite has happened. Basketball has constantly been growing on a global scale, esepcially in Europe. Baseball has spread all over the Latin American countries and all over Asia.
The theory was reversed. Soccer is not going to become more popular in the U.S., U.S. sports are already becoming more popular everywhere else.
15 - Scott Deitche
I love the fact that soccer is not that popular. It gives it far more a of a cult feel. Around here in the Tampa Bay area, everyone and their mother can talk about the Bucs roster. But you find someone that watches and knows about soccer- there's the instant click, the 'exclusive club' appeal.
But then I think the most boring thing in the world is watching cars race around a track for the better part of a day.
16 - Christopher Rose
Tony, I think the interesting thing about your comment is that it includes such a high degree of wish fulfilment.
Basketball does get played in a lot of countries but to generally small audiences, a bit like how live theatre does. I don't know much about how popular baseball might be in South America or Asia but a global sport it certainly isn't.
On the other hand, football is continuing to grow in popularity both globally and in the USA.
17 - Dr Dreadful
Last I heard, basketball was (apart from women's/girls' football) the fastest-growing sport among young people in the UK. That's not to say it's a major sport, which it isn't. 29 people out of 30 wouldn't be able to tell you who the current BBA champions are; a slightly larger number would be able to name the NBA champions - which is Chris's point: top-class basketball is watched but not generally played.
British basketball is still marginal and underfunded, unlike in countries like Spain, Greece, Turkey and the Balkan nations, where the top football clubs often have an equally successful basketball section (e.g. Barcelona, Panathinaikos). Britain is struggling even to put together men's and women's teams good enough to compete in our own Olympics in three years' time, and the international basketball powers-that-be are having to bend their rules to help us make it happen.
As for baseball, it is popular only in certain specific Asian and South American countries, namely Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, mainland China to a certain extent; Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Everywhere else, football rules - to the point of obsession in much of Latin America. So to say baseball has 'spread all over' those continents is stretching it.
18 - Tony
Baseball is poplar all over the Latin countries as evident by the influx of players from those various countries in the MLB. Watch the Caribbean Series sometime. The same can be said for Asia, although it is less widespread.
It basically comes down to the fact that the places where soccer hangs on in these regions are the places where the poverty level prevents them from playing other sports. Soccer is by far the cheapest sport to play therefor it maintains popularity in the 3rd world.
19 - Dr Dreadful
Baseball is poplar all over the Latin countries as evident by the influx of players from those various countries in the MLB.
Actually, a current breakdown by nationality of the 2009 MLB roster shows that the foreign contingent, as expected, is dominated by Dominican, Venezuelan, Japanese and Cuban players and those from the United States's neighbors. There are an insignificant number from random other countries. I'm surprised that there aren't more Japanese or Koreans, but I put that down to distance.
If baseball was, as you claim, popular all over Latin America then where are the Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean or Peruvian MLB players?
It basically comes down to the fact that the places where soccer hangs on in these regions are the places where the poverty level prevents them from playing other sports. Soccer is by far the cheapest sport to play therefor it maintains popularity in the 3rd world.
Tony, now you're just being ridiculous. By that argument, baseball should be more popular than soccer in affluent countries like the UK, Germany, Australia or the Persian Gulf nations, where it quite patently isn't and where soccer 'hangs on' by being played and watched by millions every week.
Not to mention that playing a game of baseball is hardly going to break the bank. All you really need is some kind of stick and some kind of ball. As a kid I quite happily played rounders (a British children's derivative of baseball) with a tree branch and a tennis ball.
20 - Dr Dreadful
Additional to the above: I did try to post a link to an MLB nationality breakdown, but my comment wouldn't post. If you Google 'major league baseball nationalities', result number 6 will give you it.
21 - zingzing
rounders is a derivative of baseball? thought it was the other way around.
22 - Tony
Connecting the popularity of soccer to poverty is not ridiculous. I didn't mean to say when you're broke you play soccer and when you're rich you play baseball. Soccer is ingrained in the European culture, I get that. But even in Europe, games like cricket, polo, ect are played by the wealthy.
To play American sports in places like Africa, you need the equipment, enough people, and to know the rules. How can people in poverty stricken countries like Africa learn the rules of baseball? Its not like they can flip on ESPN.
An activity like soccer lends itself well to poverty stricken regions because you literally need nothing besides a ball of some sort. And the basic jist isn't too hard to grasp; you kick the ball into a space past someone who is trying to stop it.
The reason why American's don't play soccer is not because we are not good at it. We do play it as little kids because our mom's enjoy the fact that it is a passive, non-competative activity. When we grow up, we grow out of it. And its not an anti-European thing because I love rugby.
23 - Dr Dreadful
@ #21:
Nope, zing. Look it up. We Brits invented baseball, of which rounders is a scaled-down version. By some freakish accident, it was baseball rather than the other stick-and-ball game, cricket, which became popular in the US - though it was touch-and-go there for a while. Indeed, did you know that the oldest regular competitive international sporting event is the annual cricket match between the USA and Canada? The series has been running since 1870-something. Amazing.
@ #22:
Polo is played by the wealthy, yes... but cricket??!!? Not, emphatically not a rich man's sport. Even in England it isn't, but your thesis utterly fails to explain the game's huge popularity in some of the world's poorest areas like South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Not to mention that cricket is probably the one sport whose rules approach baseball in their rarefied complexity. Yet people in poverty-stricken countries seem to pick it up quite easily and play it all the time.
Actually, you don't even need a ball to play soccer. At school, if there wasn't one to hand, we'd play with a coke can. Not a good idea to try heading it, though.
And as far as it being a passive, non-competitive activity, that may be how American kids are taught to play it, but try typing 'Vinnie Jones' into YouTube and take a look at what comes up.
24 - Jerry
If you oppose illegal immigration and support strong border security, you're not only "racist" but also clearly hate soccer.
25 - Dr Dreadful
I'm really struggling to see how you got there, Jerry...