those rule changes are pretty minor. Every sport does minor stuff.
I was talking about bigger changes like instant replay which baseball just added a few years ago. Or changing the shot clock time which college BB did recently. NFL changed their OT recently so that a team can no longer win on a FG if they get the ball first. That was a big change.
Like when the NFL moved the goalposts? I remember that. :dubious:
To your point, Fifa added goal line replay which was a huge deal and has changed the game for the better. The biggest issue that Fifa has is they have a really stupid notion that if a change can’t be implemented at all levels of play down to park leagues, it shouldn’t be implemented at all. They made an exception for the goal line thing, but they really should do more with implementation of technology. I think hockey pretty much gets it right in terms of replay and would love to see an eye in the sky system implemented in game.
Lots of association football fans want these kinds of changes but Fifa is about as bad as mlb when it comes to moving forward with things.
That said, the changes that are invariably suggested in these threads are equivalent to saying that baseball would be better if the fences couldn’t be more than 200 feet out, American football would be better if you had 8 downs instead of 4 and hockey would be better if you doubled the size of the net. Do you think that any of those changes would actually make those games better?
Low scoring is only an issue for people who don’t follow the game and only understand what is happening when a goal is scored.
one other major change has been the use of “golden goal” extra time in knockout competitions which meant that the first team to score…wins.
They realised that it made teams even more defensive rather than going for all-out attack. In short, they tried it, it didn’t work, so they dropped it. The governing bodies are certainly conservative but they do try new things.
Agreed. I used to officiate your soccer and talking to the kids most couldn’t name a pro player besides Beckham nor had ever watched a game on tv. Can you imagine a high school football player never watching the NFL or only being able to name one pro player or not watching it on tv?
Most never watched the game and likely never will.
They may be playing it but that doesn’t translate to viewership.
“Used to.” So, probably before the immense growth of the past two years.
NFL used to have an odd rule - for a tackle you not only had to knock someone down, but then you had to jump on top of the guy. That was changed > 50 years ago.
The kids in my school and my neighborhood–mentioned in a post above–seem no more interested in professional soccer today than their counterparts 2 years ago, or for that matter 5 or 10 or 20 years ago. I hear conversations about pro basketball, baseball, and football all the time, probably in that order, with professional players name-checked on a regular basis. But I think I can honestly say that I have never heard a kid–even those who I know play travel soccer, which is pretty popular around here–say anything about MLS or the English Premier League.
There is a boy at school who wears a “Messi” shirt from time to time; maybe I’ll try to ask him about his knowledge of the players and teams this week.
Anecdotal, of course. But a suggestion that what **Laggard **is referring to may still be the case.
In case anyone is interested, here’s the real answer: MLS has by far the youngest and most diverse attendees of any major sport in North America. Attendance is at an all-time high, So the answer is an unequivocal yes. NFL and MLB sans are old.
<Anecdote> I used to be able to get four tickets, four hot dogs, and four sodas for $40 for Colorado Rapids games (5 years ago). Now the tickets by themselves are $30 each.
As a side note, I’ve heard that MLS wants to be a test bed for instant replay next year.
The oldest thing on that link is the data - almost 6 years.
Fwiw, this says MLS is the third highest in attendance in 15/16:
Yes. My anecdotal evidence is that the young people I know tend to have far more knowledge of players than I did at their age. Many of these players didn’t play at a really highwe level than AYSO.
Soccer truly is the McDonald’s of sport.
It depends on what you classify as youth, and also where you’re located I believe.
It think there is no arguing that soccer is infinitely more popular now than even a decade ago, but just how it’s popular has a lot to do with where you’re living and what you’re watching.
It’s been my experience that my “older-but-still-technically-a-millenial” crowd is very into European soccer, however I see it as a frat-boy “I’m so cool because I like international sports, I’m so much more worldly than you”. So it’s less true fandom, and more selfish.
Where you’re located has a lot to do with it too because if you’re in a market with an MLS team you are much more apt to liking soccer. I can tell you that the soccer scene here in Orlando has EXPLODED. To the point where ESPN Radio has debates as to whether or not Orlando City is more popular than the Magic. Even our women’s team (The Pride) has a lot of press. I can’t say the same soccer attention is happening in Phoenix where there isn’t an MLS team.
An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about new phenom Christian Pulisic had this interesting quote.
Soccer has been growing in the US for decades, and it will continue to grow for several more decades.
Yeah I would imagine immigrants with a lot of love for the sport would be at least a big driver of a new generation of Americans getting into it.
I was never into soccer at a young age even though my father was it’s biggest fan - was never really into sport in general at all actually, outside martial arts. Surprisingly enough it was the young, white, american preppy guys at my work that got me into it. They even got the partners to watch the world cup, and had it running on a large TV in the conference room. They’re enthusiasm is contagious.
Times, they are a changing.
This isn’t necessarily a meaningful number, since MLS stadia
It is physically impossible for the NHL or NBA to have the same per game attendance as MLS. (They have greater overall attendance, though, since they play more games.) Toronto FC draws about 23,000 fans per game, which is more than the Toronto Maple Leafs draw, but to suggest Toronto FC is a more popular brand than the Maple Leafs would have you committed to an insane asylum.
The problem with comparing attendance is quickly apparent if you compare NFL attendance to MLB attendance; just going by numbers you would conclude baseball is ridiculously more popular than football, which obviously is not true. It’s just that baseball teams play ten times as many games; football is centred around fewer games and is less live-attendance driven and more or a TV program.
There are sports that people play in great numbers (golf, tennis, bowling and youth soccer) that don’t translate to good ratings on TV. There are also sports (baseball and football) that many more people watch than play.
St. Louis is supposed to be “the cradle of American soccer.” At one time or another probably every schoolchild (male and female) during the last 75 years has played it.
St. Louis has had a variety of pro soccer teams since it got an original NASL franchise back in the 1960s. It’s also LOST them because people just don’t come out to watch soccer after the novelty wears off.(Our latest indoor team has averaged less than 6,000 per game over the last three years. The franchise before that averaged less than 5,000.)
Soccer in America is doing just fine, which will frustrate both those who wish it were nothing, and those who wish it were everything. Though I should note that around Boston it’s definitely the European leagues that are the most popular, in no small part because of the terrible stadium situation for the Revolution. (Massachusetts also doesn’t have the demographics that lead to some of the big Liga MX interest you see in some parts of the country.) Though honestly, having most games between 8am and 1pm on weekends is pretty perfect, and makes me appreciate the west coast NFL schedule.
Soccer will continue to edge up in ‘sports market share’, though there’s going to be a natural equilibrium well south of NFL or NBA as long as the best players in the world aren’t either from or playing in the US. MLB is an odd duck among sports leagues in general (super strong regional ratings and attendance, relatively weak national ratings).
(TBD: what happens if the NFL changes fundamentally 15-20 years from now due to the concussion issue!)
I’m not sure a gradual change in the way the NFL is played, made to reduce brain injury, would matter a whole lot, really. I can’t guarantee it, but that’s my suspicion.
The NHL is a much softer league in many ways than it used to be; everyone wears helmets and there’s less fighting. It is, however, at an all time high in popularity. Baseball has taken recent steps to reduce violence, and was already much less violent than it used to be, and people still show up in the tens of millions to watch it. Basketball has changed a lot over the years and remains very popular.