Can soccer become as popular as American football in the USA?
By David on Sep 20, 2007 in Featured, USA
Why hasn’t soccer become as popular in America as it is around the world? It’s widely accepted in America that soccer is the number one sport in the world, but in America, soccer might rank anywhere from 7 - 10 of the most popular spectator sports, with American football being the most popular.
I believe more American children play soccer than any other sport. But the interest seems to decrease as the kids grow older. What can be done to increase the popularity of soccer in America?
I’ve read many opinions and some of the ideas/suggestions are:
* Create more timeouts and game stoppage situations so television producers can sell more advertisements and be more motivated to put soccer matches on television. Since soccer has so few time-outs and break times for commercial advertisements, television producers cannot make much profit in televising soccer. A typical American football game may have 45 minutes of TV advertisements. It seems soccer has only a few minutes for TV advertisements. Soccer is successful all over the world, but maybe the economics are different in America.
* Reduce the size of the soccer field to something similar to American football fields. This way soccer matches could be played in the largest football stadiums in America, instead of smaller soccer-specific stadiums.
* Create more scoring. 20 - 17 soccer scores? Americans may prefer higher scoring games. The National Hockey League is trying to increase scoring to increase public interest. Some possible suggestions for soccer:
- Reduce the size of the field.
- Increase the height or width of the goal.
- Eliminate the goalie completely, except on penalty kicks or shootouts.
- More points for scoring from further out on the field.
- Reduce the number of players on the field to increase scoring.
* Allow more substitutions or unlimited substitutions during stoppages. This keeps the players fresh and may increase scoring and level of play.
* Bring better players to America from around the world (Pele, David Beckham, etc.) to allow Americans to feel they are watching the best in the world.
The American Basketball Association (ABA)(1967-1976) competed with the existing National Basketball Association (NBA) by changing the rules of the game. The ABA re-invented the game … changed the ball to a red, white and blue ball that would show up better to TV audiences, added the 3-point line, used a 30 second shot clock instead of 24-second shot clock in the NBA, created a “no foul out rule” in its last season.
Eventually the NBA and ABA played games against each other and several of the ABA teams (Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers and New Jersey Nets) eventually merged with the NBA. The Miami Heat, Dallas Mavericks and Utah Jazz also later joined the NBA from ABA cities.
Many golf courses have changed their course designs recently to offset the new golf equipment and the long hitters such as Tiger Woods.
Baseball added the designated hitter.
Would soccer in America benefit from re-inventing itself or customizing itself to the American sports fans?
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Andrew | Sep 20, 2007 | Reply
First off, I think American and international soccer players and fans would have a violent reaction to any changes in the rules. Doing so may have worked for basketball, baseball, and golf but soccer is too establshed to do that effectively. If American soccer used different rules they could not be applied internationally and American soccer would not be played anywhere else in the world.
Secondly, it seems that soccer is growing in popularity in the United States. The youth of America have grown up with it in a way that no previous generation has. American soccer is growing up with this generation. Proffesional teams are improving and beginning to be more attractive to international players. The popularity may not pervade the television standings, but that is because the media haven’t caught on to the shift yet.
zeke | Oct 16, 2007 | Reply
Andrew, I’m not sure how old you are, but soccer’s been popular with youth for I don’t know how long. The same thing you’re saying is that same thing soccer fans were saying in at LEAST the 80’s. Soccer has some loyal fans here, no doubt. But soccer is european…when we start caring about something that’s not ours, then MAYBE we’ll start caring about soccer. Of course, if the rest of mexico decides to immigrate here, soccer will probably have a pretty big following.
dugg | Nov 6, 2007 | Reply
football is the best sport alive ya Digg
Kevin | Dec 2, 2007 | Reply
Change the rules?
wouldn’t that mean it is no longer soccer?
Besides, when the American youth relaise that there is no TV Money in american sports they hop over to europe and start making the real millions (the millions counted in British Pounds and European Euro’s) instead of the flucuating mess known as the US Dollar which os putting American Sports People way behgind their European counterparts.
In as little as two years, Mr Peyton’s salary cheque has halfed in value, while looking through the other side of the window, Mr Ronaldinho’s pay cheque has doubled making him rival Mr Tiger Woods who, if this currency situation continues as is, will be surpassed by no less than 20 Soccer Players in terms of spending power within the next year.
Money makes the world go round and while the American bank prints lots of notes, they ain’t worth much….
Soccer will continue to grow, and even accelerate it’s growth because fundamentally it is powered by both the British Pound and European Euro, both getting stronger by the day and together both are too powerful for the old and tired US Dollar.
Remember that £50M is over $100M right now (yes, many european based soccer players make that much money and far more so than american sports people because we have the strength in sheer numbers of top flight soccer clubs, and the economy industry doesn’t see american currency getting back on track for at least a couple of decades….
American Football Coach | Mar 19, 2008 | Reply
I really think that soccer has a very bug fight if they are going to take down the NFL.
Matt | May 15, 2008 | Reply
Agree with Andrew on the first point if not his later thoughts; changing the field, rules, pace of play and scoring will effectively kill soccer in the States. Our “stars” in the new sport would not be able to compete on the world stage with the demanding game as it’s played, and as a result fewer top talents would want to play or stay in the U.S. Point of fact, we’ve tried “tweaking” the game before (read “Love and Blood” for some examples), with a different play clock and rules outside of FIFA. Most of these changes have been “undone” to the benefit of US Soccer.
Popularity ultimately equals money here. I, for one, would like to move to the table system like almost every other league (EPL, La Liga, Seria A etc). The championship excitement extends throughout the year, plus the fear of relegation keep it interesting for bottom feeders. The reason why this won’t work here isn’t because “Americans need a big game like a superbowl.” Rather, TV needs to get paid. The table system can generate as much or more money than a championship game, but only if there are consequences. Example: Europe has UEFA and Champions league and a whole host of other perks for a team coming in - say - #5 on the EPL table. Berths like that = serious money for the team and draw viewers to mid- and low-table teams like nothing else. Equals money for media. In the US, we don’t have a table and we don’t have perks or berths to bring that $$ and excitement. Maybe someday Superliga or Conca Champs or others will get us there.
Until there’s money for TV, there’s no big popularity jump. Until we figure out what the rest of the world knows re: tables and relegation, there’s no big money.
Meike | Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
I am from the Netherlands, which is in Europe, by the way,
and I am going to write a paper for PO class about a topic related to this.
I wanted to know if there’s a reason Americans think Soccer is ‘weak’,
while Europeans are totally lovelove about Soccer, and usually think American Football is too wild.
Are Europeans more gentle than Americans?
Or does it really only have to with money?
And do you think there’s a reason why it’s both called football
(even though American Football doesn’t even require feet)?
David | Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
Meike, for an explanation of the history of American football … check out Wikipedia … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_football.
It seemed to start in high schools and Ivy League colleges in the early-1800’s … with rules taken from rugby and soccer, along with many unique rules added by Americans.
I don’t think soccer players being weak or strong has much to do with its popularity in America. Golf, baseball, basketball, figure skating and most other popular sports in American don’t involve violent activities.
Alot of the popularity of American football may just be a function of the intense TV marketing in the 1950’s and 1960’s. If the TV networks had put hours and hours of soccer matches on national TV every weekend, would football ever have become so popular?
But did the American public push the TV networks towards football, or did the TV networks create the interest in football?
kiki | Aug 30, 2008 | Reply
Your suggestions work best for TV producers, but they almost certainly kill all exciting features associated with soccer. If someone wants to see more time outs and scoring, he can go and watch basketball, hockey, base ball, etc. Better not be popular in US rather than killing soccer’s amazing dynamics. Beauty of soccer is firstly related to its flow like motion- it is a not a clipping intermittent sport like American football. And then it is beautiful because of its somewhat non-recurrent pattern of scoring: the ball doesn’t have to go though a tiny little basket, nor does it have to pass through a huge crossing line. Moreover, it doesn’t have a deterministic pattern of scoring, like dropping a 2-point or 3-point ball or a touch down. What you are offering eliminates these unique features completely!
Mike Dorner | Sep 14, 2008 | Reply
David’s note is right. I was a teen in the 1950’s, living in the Deep South. The real interest in American football then was in college and local high school football. Few were interested in pro football. I was the only kid in school that listened to it.
Present fans of American football will not believe this, but pro football was so underdeveloped and so much a small player in terms of followers (outside the franchise cities) that the only radio network that would carry it was the dying Mutual Broadcasting System. (No TV network did so.)
Around 1960 the major TV networks were looking for a way to attract male audiences to sell them to potential advertisers. Men are notorious for watching little TV except for the news. CBS hit upon pro football as the way to do it, and the rest is history. By the way, an early CBS-TV documentary series, “CBS Reports” (we are talking almost a half-century ago)put a then-miniature camera on the back of a pro player of reputation at the time and did one of its hour-long documentaries on pro football– “The Violent World of Sam Huff.”
Tell most men today the history of how pro football came to be THE American sport, bigger even than baseball, the national pasttime, and they will refuse to believe it.