Soccer is certainly not anywhere near the most popular sport in Canada, obviously. In terms of fan interest it’s not even in the top three. Hockey is arguably also the most popular sport in Finland, but maybe not, and I would submit the Swedes and Russians are more into soccer than they are hockey.
Baseball is the most popular sport in at least five countries I can name off the top of my head; Cuba, the DR, Japan, Taiwan, Nicaragua, and there’s arguably Venezuela and Panama. Puerto Rico too if you define it as a “country.”
In the Philippines, soccer is definitely not on top; boxing and basketball are tops.
I went to a random major league baseball game last year (if the Mets qualify as “major league”) and the stands were maybe 1/3 filled. So the big 3 in the USA are - football, basketball, baseball. Hockey? Maybe, in a few cities, but not as big.
So I guess the question would be - to what extent is soccer not at least the 2nd or 3rd most attended/watched sport in some countries in the world and at least within shouting distance of first? Given the popularity of the other mentioned sports - i.e. hockey in Canada and Russia, cricket across some of the commonwealth, rugby in ANZ, etc.?
For example, hockey is probably close to 4th in the USA for team sports, depending on how you define “sports” like NASCAR. AFAIK soccer is not close to hockey, which can consistently sell out 20,000 seat arenas in some cities, even if there are echoes audible during the regular season games in other arenas.
I will never understand it. They also don’t seem to take much of an interest in the game outside of their team.
I used to officiate youth soccer and chatting with some kids they couldn’t name one pro player besides David Beckham. I simply cannot imagine a kid on a junior high football team not being able to name more than one NFL player.
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I will never understand it. They also don’t seem to take much of an interest in the game outside of their team.
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I don’t see why that’s all that hard to understand when, if you think about it, there is otherwise very, very little connection between what people play and what they watch.
Americans love to WATCH (pads and steroids and touchdowns) football. Americans pour more money into pro football than they do any other sport - but they for the most part don’t PLAY football. Football as an actual participation sport is largely limited to a person’s youth and teen years, and then 99.99% of participants stop, a few play college ball, and a sliver of those go pro. Even if you make a very generous estimate of the number of people in organized football as encompassing touch football, it is still far less popular a sport than bowling, or basketball, or tennis. Far, far more Americans bowl than play football, or indeed play almost any other sport, but professional bowling is a fringe attraction. Figure skating in a consistent draw on TV and the mot watched Olympic sport in the USA, but the number of people who actually participate in figure skating is statistically insignificant.
OTOH, it’s true that the NBA and NHL sell a much higher percentage of their available tickets, and charge much more for their tickets. With regard to TV ratings, MLS lags far behind its competitors (and actually also slightly behind the English Premier League), but with regard to putting butts in the seat, they are doing quite well.
Of course, World Cup matches draw much more interest, as do exhibitions by international teams; Mexico routinely sells out Soldier Field, for instance (GoogleFu fails, oddly enough, to locate an easily accessible list of attendance figures for these international friendlies, though the all-time US record is over 93,000 for a friendly between the LA Galaxy and FC Barcelona in 2009).
So I agree with your overall point that soccer is probably less popular than hockey in the USA, but there is an argument to be made that it is at least “close”. Certainly, soccer fans here do show up for games, and will do so in great numbers if given an opportunity to see an elite team.
As a personal aside, I will say that I am probably the archetypal MLS fan in that I enjoy going to games, but never bother to watch on TV; although soccer is no better than my own 4th favorite sport, the fan experience at an MLS game is more fun and cheaper than NFL, NBA, or MLB games, so it is easy for me to see why this is the metric by which MLS stacks up most favorably to the big boys.
The thing that will always limit MLS’s ability is that it simply isn’t the best soccer league around. The willingness of Americans to go watch a friendly that actually involves a real top end club is rather telling.
The NFL, NHL and MLB are the absolute, no-doubts-about-it best leagues in their sports in the world. No other league even pretends to be better. Indeed, the problem MLS faces is rather like the problem faced by the CFL, which is remarkably unpopular in Toronto simply because the perception is that they’re a minor league outfit. The Bills games held in Toronto draw more than twice as many fans despite the fact they’re a dismal team representing another city Torontonians make jokes about - but that’s the REAL big league, so people go.
MLS is okay soccer, but it’s just not the best. It might be in the bottom of the top 10.
I’ve seen it rated as the sixth best league in the world behind the big four in Europe and Mexico. It is getting better fast, especially with the Americans in their prime coming into it.
What were you smoking when you saw that? You may have seen that on the Onion, maybe. But you shouldn’t believe everything you see. Turkey, Portugal, France, Netherlands, not to mention Brazil and Argentina, are miles ahead of MLS. Those are the leagues that are supplying the players to the world cup!
There are 31 MLS players on World Cup rosters. There are very few European players in MLS because they can make just as much money on lesser clubs or in lower leagues in their home country.
There are some very high quality players in MLS whose national teams didn’t make the WC. Robbie Keane to name just one.
I don’t have an answer for the question. But I feel this is a good place to mention a wonderful little 1999 Bhutanese film called The Cup, about some young Tibetan refugees at a monastery in India desperately seeking the means to watch the World Cup.
The fact that they choose those other clubs makes those other clubs better clubs and it makes the leagues those clubs are in better leagues, and it makes MLS a lesser league. It’s a simple money story.
That’s obviously true for numerous other leagues, and not in anyway unique to MLS. Besides which, Robbie Keane is not a high quality player. MLS is to players what the crawlspace is to cats: it’s where they go to die.
You are basing your opinions on information that is at least five years old. You clearly have no idea what has been happening in recent years. Clint Dempsey left Spurs for Seattle. Michael Bradley left Roma for Toronto. Landon Donovan could have been playing for any number of top clubs in the top Euro leagues.
Robbie Keane is not a has-been. Neither was Beckham when he first came over. Neither is Tim Cahill as you saw today.
I checked my link and saw that it included alternates. There are actually 22 players that made the final 23 man rosters. Only one of them is from a European team. So, the same as play in Portugal, more than the Netherlands, and trivially behind Turkey. Next time around there’ll be a lot more.
I think your examples here merely prove the point. Would any of them have moved to USA clubs if they were able to hold down a position in a major European club?
Ouch. As it happens, I do know what is happening, I’ve attended a handful of MLS games as well as European games and I’ve watched hundreds more. It’s fine if you disagree with me but don’t assume it’s because I don’t know things.
Cite? If they could be, why aren’t they? They don’t like money? Here’s one: Didier Drogba left Chelsea to go to Galatasaray. Think the Super Liga’s better than the Premier League?
Tim Cahill is a never will be. Robbie Keane is 33, I hope nothing but the best for him but his career is clearly over. He’s older than me! And I’m in my 30s!
IOW you were wrong. Sure, but right now you’re well behind those other countries in this metric. Previously you asserted that MLS is only behind the European big four and the Mexican league - still stand by that? Let’s note for a moment that Turkey isn’t even in the World Cup, if they were, the numbers for their league would surely go up.
To see two additional reasons why the MLS is not really strong at all, let’s compare it to the Dutch league. At this time, more MLS players are at the World Cup than Eredivisie players, so if we’re just looking at this metric, the MLS beats the Eredivisie. However, for two reasons, I’ll argue the Eredivisie is the better league. This argument can easily be extended to neighboring leagues.
The Eredivisie players in the World Cup play for the better countries.
A lot of the Eredivisie players at the World Cup are playing for the Netherlands, which is a really strong side. The only MLS player coming out for a strong country time is the Brazilian keeper. There was also Villa, who did not get to play, but who’s on the Spanish team. Of course, they’re not really strong any more. Then there’s a bunch of players from Iran (1), Honduras (4), Costa Rica (4). And the US, which also is a comparatively weak side. Most of them will likely go home after the group stage. The number of MLS players is clearly inflated due to the overrepresentation of CONCACAF countries at the World Cup.
The Eredivisie produces more value and sees players move ahead
As a further comparison between Eredivisie and MLS, consider that while not many World Cup players play there now, a lot of them used to. In fact, Feyenoord, one of the Rotterdam teams, beats out even Barcelona in that metric. The reason the Dutch league is such a Mickey Mouse league (because, frankly, it really is a shitty league) is that all the good players get swept up and go to the big four competitions. If they don’t, their careers will be failures, basically. And it’s not just the Dutch players, the Dutch league has also been a stomping ground for players like Zlatan, Luis Suarez, Salomon Kalou, Litmanen, Ronaldo (the fat Brazilian one) and Romario. None of that is happening in the MLS, in spite of the massive US population, they do not produce players that stream upwards into the higher-tier competitions. That might be because they’re afraid of getting homesick, but it certainly isn’t because the money in the MLS is so great, because it really isn’t.