Posted on 06/28/2006 6:19:45 AM PDT by Tatze
World Cup Scores Only Small Audience
Only 6% Following Tournament Very Closely
Despite a high level of media coverage for the World Cup soccer tournament, three-fourths of Americans (78%) are not following the action very closely if at all. A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 adults found that just 6% are following the tournament very closely.
Nine percent (9%) of men are paying close attention along with 3% of women.
The Super Bowl remains the biggest sport championship in terms of fan appeal. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans say its their favorite championship to watch. The World Series is the only other championship to reach double digits12% of adults say its their favorite.
One-fourth of all Americans (25%) say they dont want any sports championships.
Despite the general lack of interest in the World Cup by the US audience, the soccer tournament is more popular than the NBA basketball championship and the NHLs Stanley Cup hockey title. Both of those events were being held at the same time as the World Cup.
Fourteen percent (14%) of Americans say they played soccer in an organized league at some point in their life.
Fifty-two percent (52%) of Americans believe there is a professional soccer league in the United States (and theyre right).
The survey was conducted before the U.S. soccer team was eliminated. However, few were surprised by the lack of success--just 5% of the nations adults thought it was very likely the U.S. team would win the tournament.
The national telephone survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted by Rasmussen Reports June 19-20, 2006. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Funny.
To me that was one of the highlights of the tournament :-)
Cheers.
Those are big numbers. But NFL football draws roughly 20 full stadiums (50,000 to 80,000 seats) every Sunday. And Saturday College football may draw even more. Ohio Stadium packs in around 100K every home game to see the Buckeyes trounce on their given opponent.
"I find football boring. A game takes four hours to watch and you have what four minutes of actual action? Five seconds of play and then thirty seconds of standing around followed by another five second of play and then three minutes of commericals isn't that much fun to me."
And just how is the TARHEEL Soccer team doing? And who draws the most N.C. fans, their football program or their soccer? You my friend are in the minority.
What part of that 6% do not speak english?
Yes, it is a moot argument because it will never happen. Given that fact NASCAR will forever have to accept the "brides maid" role and wonder "what if?"
Say, how many NFL games will be played in Mexico City this upcoming season? Looks like the NFL might be part of our problem. [chortle]
Gads, at any given time, roughly half of the Chicago White Sox starting line-up doesn't speak English. Is that the new criterion?
Pity.. fresh ginger(root) [taken fresh] combats seasickness..
Cup, who said Cup.
The Canes took it two weeks ago.
:-)
A gridiron is a football field. It is so called because there are lines drawn from sideline to sideline every 10 yards (no meters/metres for us), giving it the appearance from the air of a grille, which used to be called a gridiron back when football was invented. It's 120 yards long (the two end 10 yard spaces are the scoring zones, called "end zones") and 53 yards wide.
I'll grant you your point on the silly dances; I'd love to outlaw those. Back before the NFL got too corporate, anyone who had dared to do anything like that after they had scored would have ended up being carried off of the field on a stretcher the next time they entered play. But times have changed.
However, in the few soccer games I've watched what I see when someone scores a goal is a) the goal scorer runs around like a madman, b) sinks to his knees like he's seen God, and then c) his teammates hug and kiss and just about dry hump him. So don't talk too much about the butt patting and all.
The big problem I've got with soccer is all the acting going on. In American sports, if you leave the field on a stretcher, you're not going back out on the field for that game. Depending on the sport and the injury, you're going to be out for a couple of days to the rest of the season. In soccer, when someone's carried off you don't know whether to give them a bandage or an Oscar. If you've noticed, some of this stuff has materially affected the progress of this World Cup; just ask the Australians. In American sports, trying to draw a penalty by "taking a dive" gets YOU the penalty, as does laying around acting injured to the point that you're carried off the field when you're actually well enough to re-enter the game.
All the naysayers were going that the Tigers only got where they were because of all the games they've played against the Royals, well they demolished that other Missouri team in the same fashion last weekend.
Nothing can be more boring than your snooker. When Steve Davis is a national icon in Britain (snooker champ), and snooker is a TV ratings success on British TV, you Brits have no room to criticize any other sport as being boring.
The Dallas Burn and Columbus Crew have nice soccer-only stadiums. I remember the days of the old Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the NASL, playing in Lockhart Stadium, which was mainly used for high school football games.
Here's a question for you, then. In soccer, at the end of each half the referee adds "injury time", which if I understand it correctly is his estimate of how much time was taken up by delays due to play stoppage due to injury. This seems at the least imprecise to me. When there is an injury or other reason to stop play, why doesn't the referee blow his whistle, stop the clock, and then restart it when play is to resume? I bet that would time the half a lot closer to the regulation 45 minutes than having the referee say, "Oh, that was about 2 minutes".
Can you believe this?
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/column/jackkemp/2006/06/19/201885.html
Oh Stop! Major League baseball won't allow the use of metal bats for a very good reason as well as stopping play when it rains. Can't say the same about soccer!
Let the World Cup be every year instead of every 4 years and see how the ratings would go. What you have here is kind of the "Olympics" effect; something that's rare and has an exotic attraction of a bunch of different countries in it. Don't forget, once every 4 years, you'll get people in this country to watch figure skating! If you really want to see how popular soccer is, check out the ratings for MPLS.
Attendance just as high as NHL or NBA games? You must be talking per game, not per season. A decent NBA team will draw 600,000 people per year (15,000 x 41 home games) or more. The best will sell 20,000 tickets a game or more.
That is tempting, I admit. But I was not aware the U.S. stayed home; I thought we had a national team. The other thing is, all of our best athletes play a sport they can make a lot of money at. For example, I don't have the exact numbers at hand, but the MINIMUM yearly salary in Major League Baseball is around $380,000. The best paid MLB player is making somewhere around $18,000,000 a year. What will a soccer player make? Where's the incentive for a elite athlete in the U.S. to take up soccer?
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