UK Dopers--follow any US sports?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m well aware of the popularity of soccer, rugby, and cricket in the U.K. I also know that NFL Europe tends to be usually well-attended. I’m asking about the U.S. big 4–Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League. How big are they across the pond?

The reason I ask I is rooted, well, in video games. Every so often at the bookstore I’ll page through the UK video game magazines, and I always wondered why they bothered to send the Madden NFL, NBA Live, NHL, baseball games over there. I wondered just how much of a market there was for it over there. The soccer games (FIFA, etc.) always generated the most excitement, but I’ve seen other reviews whose gist was, “it’s a good game, but it’s baseball” (for example).

I imagine the biggest obstacle would have to be coverage–my friend who is in London this semester had to find a restuarant with a satellite dish to watch the Super Bowl. And even if the random game did get on TV, the time difference would be a problem.

So, what say you? Do you guys follow any U.S. sports? Do you play any of the video games? Do the scores make the paper ever?

2

I think you could probably usually find in newspapers scores for US football and baseball, and perhaps NHL and NBA as well, but these will be in the small print alongside under reserve-team football and various minority sports. There will not usually be any reports, except small reports for the Superbowl and the World Series.

3

Soccer (we usually call it football) is by far the most supported sport. We have about 92 professional clubs (though a recently failed TV deal may mean a few going bankrupt). Top clubs have sell-outs every game, with around 50,000 in the crowd.
Rugby Union has only been professional for a few years. You’d be lucky to get 5,000 at more than a couple of clubs (out of the 12 or so professional ones).
Cricket only gets crowds for one day matches, held at weekends. The regular 4 day county games probably don’t get even 500 spectators.

I’ve watched the Superbowl on terrestrial TV (Channel 4) every year since John Riggins scored some touchdowns for the Washington Redskins. OK, it’s on in the early hours of the morning - I’m a night person anyway.
Channel 5 (we only have 5 terrestrial channels!) shows ice-hockey, baseball and NFL regularly, starting just after midnight. One could set one’s video recorder…

I like NFL, but only play turn-based strategy games. You get scores sometimes in a couple of papers (usually the ones with European football results).

4

There are “about 92 professional clubs” in England, not the UK. There are at least 20 full-time clubs in Scotland, and dozens of semi-professional clubs all over the UK.

5

Another Brit who watches American sports here.

As has been mentioned before we do get some coverage of US sports.

There are programmes on most nights showing some form of US sport.

During the baseball season there are several games a week, plus highlights, but they are shown in the early hours of the morning. I tend not to watch though because I don’t like baseball.

During the hockey season, the same thing happens, several shows a week showing live games and highlights.

Football usually has one game a week plus a highlight show, the games are sometimes shown live, other times they are recorded and shown the following night (in the early hours :rolleyes: )

I think basketball is only shown on digital (subscription) tv now, which is a real shame cause i used to love watching that.

I think they show the World Series and the NHL playoffs on Channel 5. The Superbowl this year was shown live on satellite tv and then the following day on Channel 5 (which sucks cause that in one thing they will report in the papers - although i was in the US at a superbowl party with my fiance (Hi Brynda) )

As for the questions, I do watch US sports, I have played some of the games, but am not a huge fan of sports games in general and the scores are in the paper sometimes, but speaking from my own experience, I have only seen the scores from finals (Superbowl, World Series etc) in the paper.

I don’t think US sports are very popular over here, but let me qualify that. They aren’t as popular as regular UK sports, don’t attract high audiences etc and they aren’t as popular as in the US. They don’t get the same media coverage though and tv coverage is poor (IMHO). Also, it seems to me that the fans they do have are quite committed to the sports.

I personally love Football.

Rick

6

Oooops - sorry! :o

(And I’m part-Scottish too)

I had just read a news story about the Carlton / Granada TV collapse, and so I was only thinking about the clubs that would affect.