The FIFA World Cup is a huge deal. Wikipedia says worldwide the sport of soccer brings in $400B every year. Despite this, the sport is still not widely accepted in the US. I hear about the games happening, but I could not care less about the results. But for most of the world, this is the biggest sporting event of the year unless its a Summer Olympics year.
But why don't we like soccer? Its a very physically demanding sport, as demanding and competitive as our football or baseball or basketball. Even with that, it still has not become a mainstream sport in the US. I understand why sports like fencing (which is my favorite sport of course) and cricket are not popular in the US. Those two probably are not the best examples, because cricket is a lot like baseball from what I understand. But Fencing is a understandably side-lined due to its archaic nature and even internationally it is not a big sport.
So what other reasons are there to dislike soccer? I assumed the term soccer originated here since everywhere else calls it football and we already have a football. It actually started in England as an abbreviation for "association." But I digress. It may seem like a strange reason, but I think it has to do with the number of goals earned per time spent. Look at hockey. It is another sport which is present in the US, but is not what I would call a mainstream sport. Both sports are very similar in many respects. There is a goalie and teams move back and forth between the goals attempting to score points. Both typically have small scores.
This, I think is the root cause of why Americans are not excited by soccer. I have no scientific evidence, but perhaps we do not like hockey or soccer as much as football, baseball or basketball because of the number of scores the teams of each sport score. Sometimes baseball and football are low-scoring, but you will NEVER see a 21 to 10 score in a soccer game. This is not terribly uncommon in baseball. Football sometimes has low scores also, but again, scoring 50 points in football is not uncommon.
So this sport of soccer, while competitive, rough and exciting, is not widely accepted in our country. The point I am making is that Americans are more likely to enjoy sports where scoring is often and expected. We expect instant and continual gratification. Also, baseball, football and basketball all go into overtime when there is a tie. In soccer, you can tie and the game can be declared a draw. I do not know all the rules for soccer, but I understand there can be a situation where a tie is broken, but it does not have to happen. The rules I read say "a tie may end the game or an overtime may occur." In baseball, games definitely can go on 10 extra innings if necessary to break that tie.
My hypothesis is that soccer cannot become a widely accepted American sport because we perceive it as not exciting due to the lack of goals. Personally, watching hockey or soccer is like watching paint dry. Back and forth back and forth almost goals but rarely a score. I have never watched a soccer game, but I am trying to figure out why. Ive seen baseball, football, tennis, hockey, fencing, volleyball, cricket, etc etc. We need this immediate gratification and ongoing scoring to be excited. Sports are not about the competition or the game to us. No matter how much we love the game of football, would you be stoked about a football game if a tie just ended the game? Overtime is more exciting than the actual game! We are about winning and losing and scoring big points. What do you think?
