I don’t think I need a cite to back up the assertion that the most popular sports in America are American football, baseball, basketball and ice hockey. Soccer runs a distant fifth. There have been attempts – back in the '70s there was a very popular pro soccer team in Tampa, the Rowdies; they didn’t last. Why has soccer never caught on here the way it has in most countries? And why is it nevertheless so popular as a middle-school and high-school sport (hence, “soccer moms”)?
I believe this has been asked before, suggest you do a search
I can only speak for myself and my own preferences.
I was never exposed to soccer until I was almost grown. I have never learned the rules to it. It’s too slow on the scoring and appears to be a bunch of guys running around a very big field and every now and then kicking the ball toward a net that rarely goes in.
I grew up on American football. Never played, but went to games as early as my seventh birthday. It was and is the macho sport for me, in spite of the appearance later in my life of hockey (another too low scoring game). I am interested in boxing but that’s not a team thing.
My hunch is that Americans (US anyway) see soccer as inferior to basketball on several counts: 1) smaller net in basketball = more skill in scoring; 2) more scoring; 3) easier to see what individuals are doing. I personally don’t care for basketball because there’s too much scoring.
Not knowing the history of American football and how its roots are in rugby and soccer and other football sports, the fact that players need helmets and pads and other protection emphasizes the extreme physical nature of American football, where being able to play in shorts seems less risky to one’s health.
Others may have more specific reasons for their preferences, but these are mine.
Indeed, you can try:
And there are others. Just serch for soccer, football, American, popular and see what you get. 
My very short answer is there’s just not sufficient spots during play to satisfy USA style advertising. If there was, it’d be all over your tv every day.
Or put another way, there’s aren’t as many opportuities to generate revenue as there are in parochial sports which have ‘evolved’ in line with commercial desires.
Soccer is very fun to play and the rules and tactics are simple compared to the big US sports of Baseball & Football. One is the national past time and the other is very manly. Might as well ask why Soccer remains more popular than Rugby. which is even more physical that football.
I think the Average American Sportsfan prefers the additional tactics of Football and Baseball. It lets us think along at home. So while many of enjoyed playing soccer, most of us have never enjoyed watching it. (Well, technically in High School, we use to love watching the Girls Soccer Team).
Jim
I personally don’t think the answer is that ‘x’ sport has more skill, or ‘y’ sport has more protective gear, or ‘z’ sport has more point scoring.
I think it’s about what you’re exposed to from an early age. Football has a long tradition in Europe and European colonies at an international level - we’ve all had endless exposure to it.
We all like to watch sports that have a high level of skill and fierce competition between neighbours (be that towns, universities, national teams etc). In Europe, that sport is football - it gets the most money poured into it, the most exposure in the media and attracts fierce competition between skilled athletes. In the US, these same benefits are given to other sports, so how can football (‘soccer’) ever be as exciting, when it doesn’t have the attention or investment of, say, basketball.
I suppose the big question is why football didn’t catch on when professional sports were in their infancy. Was there an aversion to playing a British game and a desire to stamp sport with a particular ‘american’ identity? Was it because the US broke from colonial rule before professional football could get a foothold?
I think we are reaching a tipping point in the U.S. in regards to soccer. Some extremely wealthy people are involved in a big way, and wealthy people don’t usually spend a lot of money unless they think they will get a good return on it.
MLS for the first time is getting paid for the rights to cover the sport on TV (ESPN), teams are forming partnerships and playing exhibitions with top European teams, and the teams are building smaller soccer-only arenas that will generate more excitement. A new team in Toronto sold 14,000 season tickets and had to stop selling them to ensure that the general public could still have a chance to attend.
The U.S. “feeder” system was a joke until about 10 years ago, when the women emerged. If a kid was really good, he didn’t have a coach who knew what he was doing. Now the men are getting better, too. The competitive leagues are tougher and tougher every year, and the Olympic Development Program is really developing players.
The U.S. does’t have a team sport that has any sort of international competition. Baseball and basketball throw a bunch of stars together in the offseason, with a week or two of practice before international competitions. A little more sucesss in the World Cup and soccer will start being competitive with the major American sports.
I’d suggest that your hierarchy of sports is incorrect. First three are probably right for any given event. I’d suggest that soccer might outrank ice hockey if you aggregate Spanish and English telecasts. I’d also suggest that a big PGA event would outdraw either, as might NASCAR and less frequent sports events.
People are sheep; they’ll watch what is hyped and marketed the most.
IMO, it is because Americans are not the best at the sport. Americans like to win, and support mainstream sports they are the best at. Americans and Canadians are the only people who really play American Football, and there is not question as to whom is better at it. The CFL has rules that spell out how many Americans are allowed on each team, an attempt to ensure the CFL stays Canadian.
While it could be debated that Americans are no longer the best at Baseball I don’t think its true. Yes they lost the world baseball classic, however there are enough Americans who could qualify for the other teams to have (theoritically) made every team all American.
Basketball it is the same. Americans are truly the best at this sport. Again, despite recent events such as the loss at the world championships.
This is why Americans do not like Hockey as well IMO. At least not very many, it is not a very mainstream sport. You are not the best at it.
When I was young, Hockey was as popular as Basketball. Now it is not even in the top four in the US. Nascar, Tennis and PGA can all outdraw it with ease. Like soccer, I think Americans got tired of low scoring slow-paced games. Baseball survives and thrives, as it is the most steeped in tradition and increased its offense quite a bit. It also helps that it has never fought the first run network TV shows. Basketball and Hockey both fight regular TV viewing for ratings share and each other.
Soccer has never had a foothold and is slow and boring by NFL & CFL standards but should do well as a summer sport.
Jim
Baseball and football, in particular, were obviously the most popular team sports in the United States long before they were “Hyped” or marketed. Basketball was a wildly popular participation sport for a long time before the NBA existed, and the NBA itself was a league of marginal success for a long time, even as the popularity of collge hoops grew. In those cases, participation came before spectation. I’m sorry, but you’re exactly wrong; the media in the cases of the Big Three sports was following the general public, not the other way around.
We’ve had a zillion threads on this and I’m amazed a charter member would ask this, but let’s restate the facts:
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**Soccer is immensely popular in the United States. ** It is arguably the single most popular team participation sport in the USA, and is certainly no worse than second. Soccer is only “unpopular” in the sense that its professional league is not as popular as those for baseball, football, basketball, etc.
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The United States is not alone in this regard. Soccer is not the most popular spectator sport in Canada, Australia, or Japan, and probably not in some Caribbean countries. It’s very popular in most countries to be sure, but this isn’t unique to the USA.
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The other professional sports simply have a longer history in the USA and so have longer established fan bases. Baseball’s National League is the oldest continuously operating pro sports league in the world, so far as I am aware; the NFL dates to 1920, the NBA to 1948, the NHL to 1917. There simply isn’t a lot of room left on the team sports calendar. At the time that professional sports in the United States were becoming established, in the pre-WWII era, soccer didn’t have much of a following in the USA. It does now, but now other sports have established their legitimacy as major league sports.
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Since soccer’s major pro league developed in Europe, there is no impetus for top tier players to play in the United States.
Basically, with point 4, what I’m saying is that MLS, or the NASL, and any other pro soccer attempts in the USA, suffer from the same problem you would have if you tried to make NFL Europe a major football league; it’s impossible to draw true primo talent to a minor league. Yes, I know the Galaxy got David Beckham - because he’s old and isn’t very good anymore and couldn’t even get playing time with Real Madrid.
I’m sure MLS puts on a nice show but it’s a third grade pro league at best. It’s not in the same galaxy (ha!) as the Premier League. So if you’re Ronaldinhiniso, the budding new star striker from Sao Paulo, and you’ve got a choice between playing in the Premier League or MLS, you’re going to take the Premier League for the same reason a baseball first round draft pick would rather sign with the New York Yankees than the Chinatrust Whales. This has a corresponding effect on the popularity of the league.
5. It hasn’t been around long enough. Why would anyone expect pro soccer to be as big as pro football or pro baseball when THEY took a generation or two to matter? Professional baseball was a sea of shifting franchises and failed rival leagues for the first forty years, and was still a regional league well into the 1950s. The NFL was founded in 1920 and was a fly by night outfit until well after WWII. The NBA was founded as an amalgamation or two unsuccessful leagues and was on life support for years.
As others have said, the popularity of soccer has squat to do with tactics, or it being boring, or whatever. Football games, especially college games, are painfully slow affairs, packing maybe 10-12 minutes of action into three to three and a half hours. Baseball games are only a tiny bit slower and then only because they usually end before three hours. For all the talk of tactics, most plays and situations are routine and predictable. All sports are boring if you don’t watch them often enough to understand them, and all sports can be thrilling if you do understand them.
Of course that’s your opinion and little else, for as footy addict of over fourty years – and my moniker can attest to that. It’s our NT’s nick – I can easily fall asleep by the first quarter of an American football match. For every minute of play there seems to be ten consumed by advertising, huddles and special team exchanges. Yaawn.
Meanwhile a football natch goes full speed from the opening whistle to the end – with small breaks for injuries, the six (overall) allowed substitutions if the coaches so wish and time to set up for different fouls, corners and other contingencies. Which only result in added time at the end of the match.
Thus in conclusion I completly agree with you. Only in reverse 
PS-As for strategies – or their cliamed lack thereof – I’d invite to wtach a match each from Spain’s Primera Liga, Italy’s Serie-A and England’s Premiership.
I think even a neophyte such as yourself might be quite taken aback by the difference of the game in each of those nations.
I personally dislike Serie-A, La Liga’s my obvious favorite and I also enjoy The Premiership.
Pardon all the typos, but typing from my smallest laptop…and I am all thumbs and rather blind up close. Thus it’s rather useless to try and correct them all.
This is exactly it. Claims that Americans need more “tactics” are just silly.
I recommend Offside: Soccer & American Exceptionalism for a pretty comprehensive look at this subject.
I offer no cites but, as a parent of school age kids I can tell you anecdotally that soccer is poised for a huge upswing in the next few years. I don’t know any kids that play the tradional baseball or football around here like I did when I was a kid. They all, including my own, play league soccer. I figure as these kids age, soccer will take on increasing popularity.
For what it is worth, based on kids playing soccer, people have been predicting Soccer’s big popularity boost since I was a kid and Pele was playing for the Cosmos. I will believe it when I see it.
I think the increasing hispanic demographic might do more to increase soccer as a TV sport.
RedFury: You are right, but as someone who enjoyed playing soccer and does not enjoy watching it, I have to wonder, what are the strategic parts of the game that I am missing at home. The game is constant action, things evolve very fast, and yet nothing actually appears to happen.
Jim
Except kids have been playing soccer for 30 years and it still isn’t a major sport. I’m 40 years old and soccer had just as many players as baseball when I was a kid, and many many more than American football. Soccer has been a major sport for kids to play for a generation, but those same kids that played soccer don’t go on to follow professional soccer.
Excellent Simul post and we are the same age. 