Jul 18 2007
Here Come the Haters
The totally predictable Beckham backlash has begun. Newspaper sports columnists all over the country are using the hype surrounding Golden Balls’ arrival to bash Association football.
We’ve seen it before, albeit on a smaller scale, when Pele came to the United States in the 1970s to make soccer as popular as the Ford Pinto. It didn’t work then, and it didn’t work in 1999 when Brandi Chastain and the U.S. national team were hailed as saviors of the game only to see their attempt at a professional league flop miserably…
Beckham isn’t going to change that, no matter how much ESPN, Adidas and Motorola try. Americans may be fascinated by beautiful people, but for the most part they’re bored by a game where one goal is cause for celebration and is often played so defensively that even open shots are a rarity.
Yet, soccer was supposed to be the sport of the 1970s in the United States. Then the ’80s, then the ’90s, then the new millennium. It has never quite gotten there. Boys and girls play soccer, then move on to other things. (A majority of) people in the U.S. who didn’t immigrate here from other countries don’t seem to care much about soccer unless a women’s team wins a World Cup championship and Brandi Chastain celebrates by twirling her jersey. Most people in this country are interested in 1-0 scores only when The Rocket hurls or Bonds homers.
We already have football here. That’s our game and we love it. Until we stop calling our favorite sport “football” and start calling it “incredibly massive men on steroids and human-growth hormone trying to dismember each other,” and start calling Beckham’s favorite sport “football,” no amount of his celebrity will change the fate of American soccer.
It’s basically the same tired old argument from the same tired old sports media establishment. Soccer failed in America before. It’s never been more than a niche sport played by kids who always outgrow it. It won’t catch on here. We’ve got our own football game. Yadda yadda yadda.
Most of these guys have probably kept this column in a drawer since the 1994 World Cup. They bring it back out whenever some big soccer-related event happens in America, re-edit it and republish it, just so they can remind us that this foreign football game will never really catch on here — as if there’s no room in America for a different football code.
Seriously, have you looked around the developed world lately? Have you noticed how many countries are perfectly capable of supporting multiple football codes? Half of Europe plays both soccer and rugby. Ireland has its own football, plus soccer and rugby. Australia has its own form of football, plus two forms of rugby, plus soccer. So why does the American media keep acting like the gridiron game must be the only football game Americans should ever accept?
Sure, pro soccer isn’t quite a major American sport. Rugby isn’t a major European sport, but it seems to get along okay there. The Guinness Premiership is the top rugby union competition in England, but it’s average attendance is only 11,662, smaller than both the Premier League (34,363) and the Coca-Cola Championship (18,221). The top rugby league competition, Super League, pulls only 9,026. Yet rugby union and rugby league keep right on going, don’t they?
And what about Australia, where the soccer haters are just as fierce as they are in America? Has this stopped the A-League? The average attendance for A-League matches is 14,042 — less than the Australian Football League (35,250) and the National Rugby League (16,485). NRL and A-League are awfully close, though, aren’t they? Perhaps the rugby fans feel a little threatened by the socceroos? Perhaps the old guard media in Australia feel the same way?
Maybe that’s why these columnists are lashing out against soccer. They feel threatened by a game they don’t understand. They grew up with the gridiron, just like Aussies grew up with their games, and they can’t stand some foreign football game encroaching on their territory. Never mind that there’s plenty of room for all these games here. MLS actually has higher average attendance (15,504) than the A-League. Neither league is perfect, but they aren’t exactly on the verge of collapse, either, much as the old-guard pundits would like to see that.
So soccer may never be the dominant form of football in America. So freaking what? Does that mean MLS shouldn’t try to market itself a little? Does that mean people who actually like this football code should just give up on American leagues and stay home? Does it really matter that much if a successful Association football league always comes in second to the NFL in America? Come on, guys. We’re perfectly capable of enjoying multiple forms of football in this country, just like they do in plenty of other countries around the world.
But I’m preaching to the choir here. Newspaper columnists aren’t paid to be this reasonable. It’s like Scott at Battle Red Blog said:
Why is the blogosphere exploding? Because our sports columnists choose to try and incite readers by calling them names and trashing their favorite teams rather than engaging in any thoughtful analysis or commentary.
That’s today’s mainstream sports media for you. They provoke for the sake of provocation. It’s the only way they know how to keep your attention.
(Sports attendance figures taken from Wikipedia. Thanks to Gary and Stephanie for some of those links.)
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Soccer will never be popular in the united states. Yeah sure, it can surpass hockey as the number four sport in America, but I think it will never go mainstream.
Also, I don’t really know of a country where a football code serves the same niche. For example, take Australia. Before the socceros insurgeance recently, soccer in Australia was seen as an ethnic game. Team names were divided on ethnic lines like “Brisbane Hollandia”. Rugby union appealed to the rich. Aussie rules football and rugby league appealed (and still appeals) to different parts of the country. For example, until recently with the success of the swans, aussie rules football did not appeal to fans in sydney.
That said, I think the United States will be in new territory if it takes on soccer.
I don’t see it taking over in the US either. Yes its the world game. But being that it probably has more ground to lose than to gain in the future. Many countries have for a long time just massed around their traditional sports, but with access to information and coverage of other sports their may be some dilution over time. And as far as Aussie crowds, in Melbourne which probably has the biggest A League crowds many of the same supporters that attend Aussie Rules games in winter are in the A League crowds in summer i.e. they do not compete.
Compare the following.
8,086
16,746
20,814
What are these figures? Average attendance.
8,086 - Wilt Chamberlain’s first NBA season
16,746 - Babe Ruth’s first season in NY
20,814 - L.A. Galaxy pre-Beckham (’06)
Compare the # US households viewing…
1993 World Series - 14.5 million
2006 World Cup - 17 million
Soccer today is far bigger deal than ‘the good old days’ of the traditional big three American sports. Soccer will likely always be a smaller slice of the pie than the NFL and MLB but the pie today is massive compared to even the days of the New York Cosmos, nevermind Bill Russell and Johnny Unitas. The LA Galaxy will draw about as many fans as the Houston Oilers did in their last year in one of America’s largest cities. Just because sportswriters think anecdotes about Dan Pastorini and Earl Campbell are more interesting than anecdotes about Pele and Giorgio Chinaglia doesn’t mean soccer is irrelevant and football is important. It means lame sportswriters like to tell the same stories again and again regardless of context, accuracy, or relevance.
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My completely unresearched thoughts are that Soccer will eventually slot in as a 4B, sharing with Ice Hockey, and like Ice Hockey, depending on things other than TV revenue (e.g. Butts in Seats) for the lion’s share of its revenue. This could take another decade or more, though, and is dependent on MLS not doing anything especially stupid.
Comparing attendance numbers across sports is somewhat ridiculous - and is occasionally ridiculous within sports too. The largest NBA arena, Chicago’s United Center, can hold roughly 23,000; the smallest NFL stadium, Indianapolis’ RCA Dome, can hold 57,900 (which makes it larger than all but two EPL stadia).
And sure, we can say that average EPL attendance is 35,000, but that’s spread out over a range that last year included Old Trafford (cap. 76,212) and Watford’s Vicarage Road (cap. 19,920).
Rather than goof around with attendance figures, I’d rather look at media coverage as a sign of popularity. And in this, soccer is pretty well off - MLS is on ESPN at least once a week, soccer has its own cable channel, the World Cup was pretty well covered last year, and I’m not even including the David Beckham media circus (which got a mention on Colbert - I guess that puts soccer about level with Ontario junior league hockey).
[...] me a hater too. I wasted almost two hours of my honeymoon watching ESPN’s soccer abortion coverage of [...]
Well you cannot ask a reporter (the ones covering other sports) to know about soccer, they can cover baseball, football, or any other sport, they won’t learn to watch soccer, so for them is like my job gets cut in other half, so do not expect those guys to talk about soccer.
In the other hand about some of the reporters writing there , is not like the boys and girls play soccer and move to other stuff, it is because at this moment high schools and colleges have not seen the potential of soccer and that’s why there are no more soccer programs at those levels, once they start knowing that more money will be entering to them by playing soccer then you will see how “other stuff” will be soccer.
Not all boys and girls can play football, basketball, baseball and hockey, they will like to play other sports that can help them to do exercise and lose all those mcdonals and burger king that you as parent give them every day cause your wifes do not cook, so no doubt that if you do not understand the concept of the game then you are against it. Simple, it is like no learn other language cause …?, cause you can’t that’s it and better to be against that than try it.
that’s the fact.
If the haters were ignoring soccer, I would be worried. The fact that they have to go out of their way to bash soccer proves that soccer is winning. Soccer doesn’t have to become the biggest sport in the USA to win - that’s absurd. It just has to persist and build its fan base.
What the bashers don’t want you to notice is that more and more MLS clubs have their own SSS and are finally at or near breaking even financially, that lots of new revenue is coming in to the league, that soccer is getting more and more TV coverage, both on existing non-soccer networks and on three soccer only or mostly soccer networks (FSC, GolTV, Setanta), etc. MLS is doing fine. USL, the “soccer minor leagues”, are doing fine, too.
There are an estimated 20 million soccer fans in the USA who follow European or Latin American leagues, who haven’t even been tapped into yet by MLS. Once this starts happening, the growth will be even more impressive (and MLS will attract these fans by not insulting their intelligence the way the early MLS was wont to do).
Professional soccer is here to stay. The haters are just mad because the arrival of Beckham makes it impossible for them to ignore soccer, which they would prefer to do.
As to soccer being only for kids in the USA, well, duh - as soon as kids get to junior high or high school, they have to undergo the anti-soccer hazing rituals from the knuckle-dragging neanderthals who run organized sport in our public schools. Now that many soccer players in the USA can actually earn a living in their sport, both here and in Europe, this reactionary rear-guard will prove less and less effective in preventing young soccer players from persisting in their favorite sport as they grow older.
soccer is the only pro sport where n american fans don’t watch the best athletes in the game. the world’s best baseball, basketball & hockey players all end up here, where the big $ is. in soccer, that $ will always be in euro, & casual n american fans won’t follow a sport where the best players regularly leave town. soccer will continue to grow by adding afficianados, but won’t ever break thru.