PC and WI: Basketball and FIBA had Soccer-level Popularity

This is kind of a second draft of this thread, but:

Why do you think soccer and the FIFA tournament are so much more popular than basketball and the FIBA tournament?

Does anybody get excited about these playoffs? If so, what would it take to make the latter as popular or more popular than the former? If not, what would make people care in the first place?
 
Why do you think soccer and the FIFA tournament are so much more popular than basketball and the FIBA tournament?

Because worldwide, a lot more people play, watch, and support association football than do so with basketball. Honestly, if the US had been able to send professional players to a lot of those early FIBA tournaments, they would have easily dominated, the way that they did in 1994 or during the 1992 olympics. Nowadays, maybe there would be a bit more parity, but that doesn't change the fact that Basketball's global reach is still a fairly recent phenomenon, whereas Association Football is an ingrained part of many cultures and has been for over a century.
 
More people play/watch (Association) Football for a few reasons:

-You only really need a ball
-The rules are simple
-Its been international for much longer
-Its a lot more glamourous than the NFL or NBA

As to why people care so much, see above. People really do care about the playoffs. They provide opportunities for countries to show off their athletic prowess much more often than the Olympics. Losing a game is national tragedy. In effect, its a channel for patriotism (though diluted).

Basketball, Baseball and Gridiron entered the international game too late to be very popular; its extremely unlikely that the popularity of Football will be eclipsed any time in the future by any of its competitors. IMO, the only nations that aren't football crazy are Canada, the USA, all of East and South east Asia (basketball and baseball), and South Asia (cricket is more popular). Europe, Africa and South America are footie-mad places.
 
OK, so what if one of them got in the game earlier? :p

That's kind of hard. Basketball especially has a late start; by the time that the game is invented, the FA cup has been contested for much of a century. Gridiron develops from similar roots to association football, so i guess that is possible, but I don't see how it can spread. Baseball seems the best bet, since it is the oldest of the three and, during the mid-late 1900s, the most international. Technically originated in Britain, had some popularity at various points, spread decently in a few places (Caribbean and a few Latin American countries, Japan, Netherlands, Australia), so it at least has some history of international diffusion to build off of, and has some sort of roots in a few places.
 
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