Sunday, 11th June 2006
World Cup Soccer anyone ?
The 18th soccer World Cup got underway in Germany a couple of days ago. While the rest of the world is about to stop for a whole month, the indifference toward soccer by mainstream America is startling. And why, might you say, is the indifference towards soccer in America, the home of football (American style), baseball, basketball and ice hockey? You might even be led to believe, that there wasn't even a world cup going on. While people from Oslo to Athens and from London to Vladivostok were avidly following the European football championship in June, Americans are ignoring it. Such has been the indifference towards soccer, especially in the Midwest and Northern parts of America. There are two television channels which broadcast soccer exclusively, and all 64 games at this World Cup will be broadcast live in the US but it barely has any takers. Infact US has qualified yet again for the world's major sporting event and scheduled to play its first match tommorow.
This is in sharp contrast to even my home country of India where television companies and advertisers were expecting to cash in on a growing football craze in otherwise cricket-loving India as the countdown to the World Cup started with an expected viewership of 100 million and that may even go up to 200 million also. Advertisers cash in on this global spectacle by installing several giant TV screens at strategic points in the city to facilitate the public to watch the matches day and night. This despite the fact that India aren't even playing in the world cup. Infact they are miles away from even qualifying. Having seen the fanfare that goes with a global sporting event such as the soccer world cup, i try to figure out why the indifference towards soccer in US. There are several theories that try to explain the indifference.
A Girls Sport
Americans try to make it a girls sports so they can better market their American Football as a masculine sport. Women's soccer is huge in the US and the country has even won the Women's World Cup, something the men have yet to emulate. It is true that the soccer success story has not been reflected at the senior men's levels within the US.
Americans don't think that the game is physical enough. That is why people like football and hockey. Americans think that soccer is for whimps and like sports that have to do with beating someone up i guesss.
Low Scoring
Americans like high scoring sport, soccer is very low scoring. Another factor is that the American sporting community is largely uncomfortabel with tied scores / a drawn result, which is quite common in football. Americans want conclusive results from their games. Imagine explaining to an american that after 5 days of test cricket, a drawn result might be a common occurence.
Popularity of the big 3
Another reason has to do with the existing popularity of the big three. Even in as large and wealthy a country as the United States, where the national appetite for playing, and even more so for watching, games is enormous, the cultural, economic and psychological space available for sport is limited and that space is already taken. Baseball, American football and basketball have long since put down deep roots, claimed particular seasons of the year as their own (although they now overlap) and gained the allegiance of the sports-following public. A fourth team sport, ice hockey, is widely played across the northern tier of the country.
Soccer remains highly popular in the U.S. as a youth sport, played by both boys and girls usually under age 12; so much so that the term "soccer mom" entered the American vernacular.
Role of the media
Soocer also doesn't follow the kind of time keeping that every other American sport does. American TV advertisers tried to change the game to allow more ferquent pauses for ads. This really did not work, so American TV stations were unable to make soccer profitable. In the United States, the only way to watch world cup matches was to make a special, costly arrangement with a satellite broadcasting company or to find a pub that was showing one of the games. Any such pub would invariably be located in an obscure corner of a large city and filled with (European) people speaking languages other than English. Television stations would be crazy to broadcast the games since the American public only has a passing interest in the sport.
Posted by Nikhil on Sunday, 11th June 2006 in Sport | Humour | Fun | Events