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Old 12-13-2010, 07:59 PM
 
28,896 posts, read 54,049,794 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Interpol76 View Post
1. Jogging is not an organized sport. I'm talking about organized participation rec. sports. Oh, and by the way... where exactly do all those adult soccer players come from if the sport is so unpopular, hated, and so many kids give up on it to play other sports?

2. 4 percent----> SoccerAmerica - MLS attendance on the rise 10/26/2010


Hah. Two percent. What. Do you think I make this stuff up? And The Results Of MLS’s 2010 Attendance Stats Are… - - The Offside - Major League Soccer Blog

Personally, I think MLS is inflating its gate with things like giveaways deep discounts on tickets.


If you don't believe me just google it. NBA, MLB, NHL, and NFL have all seen attendance drops over the last few years. But, that really isn't the point. The point is MLS keeps up with many of those leagues attendance wise. If MLS were to have attendance figures comperable to Major League Lacrosse (4,000 ish game in and game out) then I could see your point.

3. I never said there is a conspiracy to keep soccer out of prime time, good god, man. And, yes...MLS DOES get great fan support. 38,000 fans cheering on Seattle every single game is not great fan support? And, every other team that regularly puts 13,000-20,000 fans in the seats has fantastic fan support (including the 2 teams playing in small transitional stadiums). And, it's only going to get bigger as soccer crazy Portland and Vancouver join up next year.

Anyway, I'm done arguing this. So, just keep listening to your Tony Kornheiser, Jim Rome, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reily's of the world.
But let's get back to the original argument. You're pointing to trivial attendance and viewership numbers and making the claim that soccer has indeed caught on.

Tell you what. Let's just try a little experiment. Pick 1,000 people out of the phone book and ask them which they'd rather attend if given a free ticket: A college/NFL football game, a MLB baseball game, a basketball game, a hockey game, or an MLS soccer game. I think we know how the vast majority of people will answer.
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Old 12-13-2010, 08:15 PM
 
Location: Tejas
7,599 posts, read 18,380,771 times
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That still does not mean that Soccer has never caught on though! It has and it is growing in popularity.
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Old 12-13-2010, 08:23 PM
 
96 posts, read 124,623 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
But let's get back to the original argument. You're pointing to trivial attendance and viewership numbers and making the claim that soccer has indeed caught on.

Tell you what. Let's just try a little experiment. Pick 1,000 people out of the phone book and ask them which they'd rather attend if given a free ticket: A college/NFL football game, a MLB baseball game, a basketball game, a hockey game, or an MLS soccer game. I think we know how the vast majority of people will answer.
(1) football; (2) MLS; and (3) hockey. I pass on MLB and basketball.
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Old 12-13-2010, 09:08 PM
 
1,643 posts, read 4,429,089 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
But let's get back to the original argument. You're pointing to trivial attendance and viewership numbers and making the claim that soccer has indeed caught on.

Tell you what. Let's just try a little experiment. Pick 1,000 people out of the phone book and ask them which they'd rather attend if given a free ticket: A college/NFL football game, a MLB baseball game, a basketball game, a hockey game, or an MLS soccer game. I think we know how the vast majority of people will answer.
But, you are trying to pigeonhole MLS as the barometer of how popular soccer is in this country. MLS is doing great, but that is just a part of the bigger picture. You have to take into account people that play the sport (a pretty substantial number), people that only watch the Mexcian and Euro leagues...stuff like that.

If the fact of the matter was very few people play the sport, MLS was on the verge of folding and 10,000 people show up to watch exhibition matches involving major European clubs then I would agree with everything you have to say.

20 years ago, soccer was pretty much dead in the water in this country, and now nice, brand new soccer-specific stadiums are popping up every single year. That is huge progress. Especially during these rough economic times..So, yeah, somewhere along the line the sport definitly caught on.
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Old 12-14-2010, 07:17 AM
 
Location: Scotland
7,964 posts, read 11,824,224 times
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football (soccer) is 10 times more entertaining than american football, i TRIED to watch a few games and honestly it was a joke you get a few minutes of action here and there, anyone who understood football (soccer) and watched the last barcelona real madrid game or warched the liverpool ac milan champions league final 3-3 game or ANY glasgow derby would admit its truly the beautiful game, passion, entertaining and the WHOLE WORLD cant be wrong, 90% of the world LOVE football, be it europe, africa, asia, the middle east, south and central america, and increasingly north america
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Old 12-15-2010, 10:42 AM
 
Location: Kansas City, MO
5,765 posts, read 10,974,822 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
Seriously? Are you saying that, in comparison to football (College and Pro), baseball, basketball, or even hockey, that soccer is anywhere close? As I said before, I don't hate soccer. But soccer fans are really grasping at straws if they think MLS is anywhere close to capturing the American imagination.
I never compared soccer to those sports at all. The popularity of soccer has nothing to do with those sports. I am not sure why people feel the need to compare soccer to those sports to gauge popularity. We have over 300 million people in this country so there is room for lots of things to be popular.

Also, you seem to be using MLS as the only measurement as the popularity of the sport. There are lots of soccer fans that dont follow MLS and also lots of fans that just like to play the game.

I'm not sure what "capturing the American imagination" means but MLS is doing very well. There are successful business people lining up to pay 50 million dollars just to join the league with an expansion team in addition to the tens of millions in other expenses it takes to run a professional sports team. Not exactly a sign of something not popular.


Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
Need proof? This past summer, the average ESPN viewing audience for MLS soccer was 251,000--a negligible amount. On the Fox Soccer channel, the number is a miserable 53,000 per game. Further, of the top ten soccer game attendances in 2010 in this country, not one was a MLS game. In fact, it's look as if Fox will drop its affiliation with MLS pretty soon. Just to give you a little context, the lowest rated college bowl game last year, Middle Tennessee State vs. Southern Miss, drew somewhere close to 2,000,000 viewers. In short, MLS has a long, long way to go.
It isnt really proof. There is no denying that MLS ratings are low. TV ratings is something that the league has struggled with for years for a number of reasons.

But, everything outside of that shows signs of growth including sponsorship deals, TV deals, attendance average, expansion, media coverage, etc.

You cant just point to one of the leagues problem areas and use that as proof of your point while ignoring all the positives. You arent a politician.
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Old 12-15-2010, 10:59 AM
 
Location: Kansas City, MO
5,765 posts, read 10,974,822 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
Huge fallacies in your statement. Shall I enumerate?

1) By #1 participation sport, do you mean youth soccer leagues? Of course you fail to mention that the kids lose interest and move on to sports such as football, baseball and even lacrosse by the time they get older. And as far as participation sports goes, that is an utterly meaningless yardstick. Most Americans have zip for time to play on a team sport, and if they were, they sure wouldn't be playing football. That's a good way to get killed.
Participation is a meaningless yardstick? Why is it that something that supports your argument such as TV ratings is useful but something that supports an opposing viewpoint, is not?

I know lots of adults that play soccer. In fact, I probably know more adults that play than kids.

While football is a rough sport, their are still adult leagues but I actually know more adults that play rugby and Aussie rules than American rules football and those sports are far rougher than American football.

Participation is certainty a yardstick to popularity. If something is not played by hardly anyone, wouldnt you call that unpopular?

While some kids lose interest in soccer, lots of them continue to play to adulthood. Lots of kids lose interest in anything they play. My daughter use to dance and she lost interest. It has nothing to do with popularity. Interest change as people grow.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
2) MLS has the 3 highest attendance of any sport in the country? Let's see, baseball had 73,000,000 attend games last year. The NBA had 24,000,000 fans attend, the NHL had 23,000,000, and the NFL had 17,000,000. Meanwhile, MLS had 4,000,0000. So, I'm not sure where you got your figures, but they're nowhere close to accurate.
You do realize that every single one of those leagues play a different amount of games?

MLS teams only play 15 home games yet you compare it to the NBA which plays 41 home games?

Think about that one for a moment and let me know if you can figure out what is wrong with that.

Even so, you are still using comparison between sports to determine popularity when it isnt required.

Comedies, dramas, documentaries, indie films, etc are all types of films and all are popularity despite other genres being popular as well. Do you see how that works.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cpg35223 View Post
3) You don't even take into account the abysmal television viewership for soccer, which averages less than 250,000 viewers PER GAME. That is an astonishingly low number in a country of more than 300,000,000. That means less than one American in 1,000 is tuned in to any given MLS game. To sit here and tell me, then that somehow MLS is anywhere close to the sports I cited above is just laughable.

There you go comparing again. You said it yourself, there are over 300 million people in this country. Do you know what that means? Lots of sports can be popular.

What's laughable is your lacking ability to debate properly.

As I said before, MLS TV ratings have struggled and there are a number of reasons for that including MLSNet Live which is used by lots of fans. Despite low ratings, every single team has a local TV deal in SD and HD and many also have a hispanic TV deal too. In addition, the MLS has national TV deals with ESPN, Fox Soccer Channel, Telefutura, and Galavision. On top of that, they are close to signing a new deal with Versus. It sounds like low ratings is a major concern, doesnt it? Regardless, pretty much every other category is growing. Why do you fail to mention those?

The MLS is actually quite close to the NHL if not past it. The NHL is on the verge of contraction as several teams are hemorrhaging millions in losses. The MLS has much more lucrative and more TV deals and leads the NHL in several categories.
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Old 02-10-2011, 08:21 AM
 
161 posts, read 141,299 times
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It'll catch on. You finally have big games on TV and with the internet Americans can see what the world sees. As more kids of immigrants get older, you'll have a larger fan base that actually will know more about the sport than your typical soccer mom. Just give it time, it'll catch on more and more. Of course, you'll still have your ardent American that will do and say whatever to bash soccer or say it's boring, while trying to tell you Nascar is amazing.
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Old 02-10-2011, 08:34 AM
 
59 posts, read 46,322 times
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The best athletes in the US don't play soccer. Until that happens(probably never) its not going to be that popular.
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Old 02-10-2011, 08:37 AM
 
Location: Tejas
7,599 posts, read 18,380,771 times
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Wut ? Do you know how fit you ahve to be to play soccer? You obviously dont. They run for 10 miles a game, constantly. Compare that to the NFL where you can throw a fat guy in tights on teh field, let him play for 30 seconds and rest up for 5 minutes while they cut to commericals. That comment sir, is a joke.
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