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The NFL is the most popular sport in this country for several reasons. Teams only play 16 games - so every game means a lot more than say a baseball game. The season itself is pretty short. Your team will only play once a week, so it's easier to follow them. Fantasy sports - fantasy football has brought in a lot more fans and suddenly a Titan fan would have interest in watching Seattle play Miami if they have a player on their fantasy team going. The game itself is exciting - in a blink of an eye a team can score. You don't have that in soccer for example as it takes time to build up an attack.
I would agree there are far too many commercial breaks in the NFL. However, you also don't have ads on their jerseys like you have in soccer and you also don't see the LED boards surrounding the field showing ads during games.
Tam explained it best. NFL is a Sunday ritual for most of the US, with one game a week on Monday & Thursday. So they are more "events", while many casual sports fans only watch baseball & basketball during the playoffs/postseason, due to their seasonal length. Also, though it's not my favorite sport, it is exciting in that there are many different ways to score in football compared to basketball, baseball, soccer, etc.
I'd say popularity as a whole by sport in the USA would be: 1. American football 2. baseball 3. basketball 4. soccer/world football. Baseball used to be the most popular but has steadily declined in popularity to football over the years, and may eventually fall behind basketball as well.
Football, and its not even close. Why? Because the game is unique, intense, physical, tactical. Though I prefer ncaa football over it, the nba over both, and soccer over all. The world cup is easily my favorite porting event, champions league two, nba finals 3, pac 12 football 4
Football is the most popular sport in the US. It's physical, action-oriented, and able to be played in all of the country.
The latter is an overlooked factor when it comes to popularity of sports, and a large reason why soccer is so popular throughout the world. You need a ball, and (optionally), shoes. It can be played anywhere, by anybody, in almost all climates.
By comparison, hockey is physical, and action-oriented, but can't be played casually in a large portion of the US because the gear is (by comparison) more expensive and it's climate-dependent unless you want to schedule ice time at a rink, which only increases the expense.
Baseball is strategic, and can be played pretty much anywhere, but lacks the action that a lot of modern sports fans demand.
Mixed martial arts are gaining HUGE popularity increases, but some find the nature of sport too violent, which ostracizes a lot of its potential fanbase.
Re: athleticism. When it comes to being a fan of the sport, very few people are concerned with athleticism. Baseball was the most popular sport here forever and it's one of the least physically demanding sports (relatively speaking); it's more of a skill game. Water polo takes RIDICULOUS athleticism, but nobody wants to watch it. It simply isn't that big of a factor to fans.
If someone is already a fan of a sport, they can certainly appreciate athleticism, but it's not a driving factor for most people to become a fan in the first place.
Football, and it's not even close. Just look at the TV ratings. Baseball has slowed to a snails pace, and basketball isn't very interesting until the playoffs.
Football, boxing and horse racing are the most athletically demanding but football has a social aspect that the other two can't match. Yeah, Mayweather vs PAC must've had an intense atmosphere comparable to most football games but try watching a bout between two local fighters. Contrast that with a meaningless football game and the difference in the atmosphere is just unbelieveable.
Morning all I was just wondering the above as a Londoner I'd guess it was between American football, baseball and basketball?
In the uk the most popular is football ( soccer ) by a million miles.
Yeah we know you blokes love your football, mate.
As far as here in the USA, we have a saying about soccer in America: "Soccer is the sport of the future. And it always will be."
It has gained in popularity over the past several years, but I don't think it will ever crack the Top Four of NFL; MLB; NBA; and NHL. The MSL will remain forever a distant 5th. And if you add NASCAR into the mix, make it a distant 6th. Right down there with the WNBA.
The quality of the MSL is still dismal, when compared with, say, the EPL; La Liga, or Bundesliga. The EPL is of course the best in the world. If you can play there you can play anywhere.
Oh, by the way, I'm an Arsenal fan.
Go Gunners! LOL.
Every time I turn on an MLS game the ball is going out of bounds. WTF? These knobs can't even keep the ball in play half the time. We tried to ramp up some popularity for soccer over here with the whole Beckham thing in LA a few years ago, but that experiment failed miserably. No man in the history of sports ever got easier money than did Becks from that fiasco.
It will always be NFL football over here. And baseball and basketball, in that order. I think soccer is at its height right now in our country, and if anything will decline. Americans demand excitement in sports, along with scoring, and we just cannot fathom sitting for 90 minutes to see a 1-1 tie. Oh, I myself see some of the nuances and the beauty in soccer, the flow, the subtle strategy, but even then it bores me a good deal of the time. And most Americans are simply unwilling to invest the time to learn the intricacies of the sport, which is required in order to render it more interesting.
I guess its the aggression and the spirit in football that we love. there are a lot of similarities between football and combat and war. same lingo: blitz; offensive firepower; defense; "the red zone." Acquire territory. Defend. the whole gladiator thing. we just can't get that from soccer.
(I watched a college football game last night. Oregon and Arizona State. Final: 61-55 in TRIPLE Overtime! How can you expect us to embrace soccer the same as that? LOL)
And you can argue that baseball is hardly exciting, but there is a different sort of allure there. tradition. Strategy. intimacy with the players, as they are un-hidden by helmets and face masks. the pastoral fields. summer day, green grass, cold beer & hot dog American deal. (a lot of this you guys probly get from cricket, right?)
And in NBA we just marvel at the sheer athletic prowess. And the hip hop culture has embraced they NBA so thy are almost One. The NBA has done a tremendous job at marketing its product over the past decade. Their ratings were down and there was a lot of worry after the Golden Age ended when Magic and Larry left. But the NBA marketing suits coat-tailed on the street ball, urban, hip-hop, rap culture and revitalized the league's following. Brilliant, really, on their part.
Hockey we like for much the same reason we do football. It is not truly an American sport but the NHL IS an American brand of hockey. Read: Thuggish! LOL. Otherwise, all the stuff I mentioned that we love about football some of us do for hockey. I like it better, myself, since there is more non-stop action. American football has way too many stops in the action and it is getting worse all the time, especially in the NFL, which is now almost unwatchable on TV because of the commercials.
Last edited by Slap_Shot; 10-30-2015 at 03:18 PM..
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