Make European Football the most popular American sport

Its quite hard to make Soccer the number one sport in the USA. Mostly because Soccer wasn't even the major sport in Great Britain until the 1860's, and by that point Baseball had already been developed. You can have soccer as a major sport, but its very hard to make it the number one sport. The Harvard and Canadian games were also basically Rugby from the start. They just warped without any actual code.
 
Do remember, also that we have more choices in good sports, as I pointed out in my comment. I love set piece strategy like football so much that, and am, yes, willing to even live with an amazingly low playtime %age. Others like fast basketball. Others like baseball, though ti's been getting slower and has long been too slow for me.


Anaxagoras wrote:
In my experience, most people who call soccer boring have never spent much time watching it. It's like a person who has never eaten at a restaurant other than McDonald's saying a Happy Meal is better that the finest dinner at a three star Michelin restaurant.
I have tried it plenty, including Latino and World Cup, nd it doesn't work for ME. The longest I've lasted was two minutes, when a good goal attack and defense going on with good teams. Given how American viewership has consistently responded to it, I'm not alone, either.
 
MLB- Will collapse when the world ends.

NHL- Most likely to collapse and be replaced by a soccer league

NBA- Possible, more Americans actually watch College basketball

NFL- It would probably stick around, unless soccer really replaces it

Also, most Americans think soccer is boring because all you do is run and kick, as compared to American sports with more strategy and stricter rules.

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Sorry to drive this off topic again, but do you have any ideas how complex soccer strategy is? There's a reason good managers of big teams have a yearly salaries of over 10 million euros. Formations, passes, posture, transfers, player chemistry, player psychology...the list goes on. Clubs that just pass the ball forward and hope for the best don't tend to do very well.
 
It's like saying American Football consists of ads punctuated by people dressed in ultra-tight spandex pants in garish colors rolling in the grass and gently rubbing each other.

That's what I see at a glance, but surely there's more to it.
 
Its quite hard to make Soccer the number one sport in the USA. Mostly because Soccer wasn't even the major sport in Great Britain until the 1860's, and by that point Baseball had already been developed. You can have soccer as a major sport, but its very hard to make it the number one sport. The Harvard and Canadian games were also basically Rugby from the start. They just warped without any actual code.

I agree with you that it's difficult, especially given baseball's dominance, but recently baseball has lost popularity to American football, which is now the most popular sport, by far so if you combine figures for the NFL with college football. So while baseball will probably always remain the national past-time, it might not remain the most popular sport.
 

anamarvelo

Banned
:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Sorry to drive this off topic again, but do you have any ideas how complex soccer strategy is? There's a reason good managers of big teams have a yearly salaries of over 10 million euros. Formations, passes, posture, transfers, player chemistry, player psychology...the list goes on. Clubs that just pass the ball forward and hope for the best don't tend to do very well.
American football team have a 1 billion dollar buyer each the super bowl witch isvo only played in the us is the second most watch sporting event I'm the world after the olympics
 
I feel like fast, high-scoring basketball's been doing most of the replacing of baseball. Though, it's just a feeling - I haven't looked it up; it's just how it works for me. Basketball's also widely popular across alot of Latino turf.

Sorry to drive this off topic again, but do you have any ideas how complex soccer strategy is? There's a reason good managers of big teams have a yearly salaries of over 10 million euros.
That's nice. But, how on earth does that keep ME entertained? Am I a soccer coach? Oh, and Austin's local University of Texas Longhorns football coach makes $5m, while we're talking salary.


How on earth are soccer ads less silly? There may be fewer than in football, but basketball's about the same ad format.
 
MLB- Will collapse when the world ends.

NHL- Most likely to collapse and be replaced by a soccer league

NBA- Possible, more Americans actually watch College basketball

NFL- It would probably stick around, unless soccer really replaces it

Also, most Americans think soccer is boring because all you do is run and kick, as compared to American sports with more strategy and stricter rules.

I mainly agree but I would put the NFL in the MLB class. The NFL will be around for a long, long time. The NHL is the least popular by far with the NBA going up and down in popularity over time. It isn't that hard to imagine the NHL going belly up (although I would still bet against it) and I can imagine the NBA going under with some difficulty. Short of a true, nationwide natural disaster such as a large comet strike I can't see MLB or NFL going bankrupt in my lifetime.
 
That's nice. But, how on earth does that keep ME entertained? Am I a soccer coach?

I dunno, you're the one who started talking about tactics.

How on earth are soccer ads less silly? There may be fewer than in football, but basketball's about the same ad format.
Mostly because we get 15 minutes of ads wedged between two halves of 45 uninterrupted minutes of play, instead of stopping the game after each kick to shove ads down our throat.
 
the super bowl witch isvo only played in the us is the second most watch sporting event I'm the world after the olympics
Sorry, but that is wrong. The 2012 Super Bowl, which broke viewership records, was watched by barely over 100 million people. The 2011 Champions League final was watched by over 300 million people. And that's not even counting any World Cup matches.
 

Abhakhazia

Banned
I mainly agree but I would put the NFL in the MLB class. The NFL will be around for a long, long time. The NHL is the least popular by far with the NBA going up and down in popularity over time. It isn't that hard to imagine the NHL going belly up (although I would still bet against it) and I can imagine the NBA going under with some difficulty. Short of a true, nationwide natural disaster such as a large comet strike I can't see MLB or NFL going bankrupt in my lifetime.

Yeah, really.

When I was a kid we used to go down to Busch Stadium in St. Louis (Go Cards!) and my dad would always call it the "Temple to Capitalism". Which sums up all American sports.
 
Not the football discussion again. As to those Americans who think football is boring to watch, I wrote in another thread why the American sports especially American football are unwatchable to most Europeans. The reasons are probably almost reversed from your POV therefore I simply quote the whole post here.
First let me say that nothing I write here is meant to degrade American Football, only to give a European view on it after several of you promoted it here. I don´t think that American football has any chance to ever gain more than a niche in Europe for several reasons. The most important is what I´d like to call the "culture of sports":
Europeans usually demand a team sport to be as uninterupted as possible, "to have a flowing grace" as a friend of mine once put it. This is the case in football or less popular sports like team handball or field hockey. Ice hockey or basketball can have this flow to a certain extent as well, which is why they are pretty popular in parts of Europe. I can imagine a European tolerance for the constant interruptions in baseball, because it is radically different, but AF has enough similiarities with established sports, that spectators will be pushed away by the interruptions.
Connected with this is the reputation of AF in Europe as chess on grass. This is a derogative term used for highly tactical games where players "kept close to the text books" and rarely showed initiative. In football by definition this is a boring game. AF now relies much more on tactical guidelines and the brilliant improvisations which excite European spectators are unlikely.
Another problem of AF are potential recruits. Indeed no one will go to a game to watch only second rate American players. But in America sports are closely interwined with the educational system. Here that is not the case. You usually get no support for playing a sport and no advantages like college stipends for it, not even in a popular sport like football. Instead you have mostly to pay for membership in a club and for your equipment, something which is not cheap for any sport, much less AF. Getting rid of some protections in youth leagues might make it easier and also might reduce the reputation of AF players as wimps which can´t take a hit unprotected.

There are additional smaller things but they only will underscore that what makes AF so popular to spectators in the US (short spikes of action seperated by breaks) is exactly what it makes so unpopular to the Europeans. And I can see no way how to change it without changing the sport entirely.
 
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