My list would be: College football, college baseball, NFL, MLB, Paint drying, NASCAR, NHL, NBA, Soccer, GTech anything!
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 it’s their favorite championship to watch. The World Series is the only other championship to reach double digits—12% of adults say it’s their favorite.
One-fourth of all Americans (25%) say they don’t 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 NHL’s 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 they’re 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 nation’s 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.
No idea what a gridiron is, but I always though American football a bit of a nancy game, mincing around in pretty outfits patting each others butts and doing silly dances, give me British footy any day.
Cheers Tony
A puzzle (which explains a lot):
"Take the name of a major international sport, in six letters. Remove a 'c', and rearrange the letters to name something they don't do in that activity."
But that's regional, not local. You're not comparing apples-apples.
As for Nascar, I lost interest when they started using those wimpy restricter plates on the carburetors. Buddy Baker still holds the fastest average speed at the Daytona 500 from what year? LOL!
Every kid in America was exposed to soccer for the last twenty years. This is the best it can draw, the amount of illegal aliens in America. Soccer sucks.
Every kid in America was exposed to soccer for the last twenty years. This is the best it can draw, the amount of illegal aliens in America. Soccer sucks.
Ha...right on. If only they would give Yellow Cards for bad acting, the game would improve. It sometimes seems that that has the best actors will be the winner.
If I really wanted to watch a soap opera, there is always daytime TV.
Of course, in an average weekend, there are over a dozen NFL games on Sunday, to say nothing of the approximately 50 college football games in I-A alone. This estimate accounts for bye weeks.
Even allowing for ARCA, Craftsman, IRL, etc, plus the Nextel/Busch races, I somehow think football draws many times the number of spectators in person.
LOL! Sounds right to me!
Soccer is also a cheaper sport to maintain for schools & towns. There are no football helmets to certify as safe every year and tons of gear to buy for every player.
Personaly speaking, I don't care for either sport. :)
My list would be: College football, college baseball, NFL, MLB, Paint drying, NASCAR, NHL, NBA, Soccer, GTech anything!
Europeans think our baseball is as boring as we think their soccer is. Spaniards think our boxing is as disgusting as we think their bullfighting is.
Interesting timeline for Martinsville. They stared with 750 seats but the timeline through 03 shows massive growth especially in the last 10 years.
http://www.martinsvillespeedway.com/track%5Finfo/track%5Ftimeline/
BTW - there are a number of college stadiums that hold 100K + and they're full for every game.
'No idea what a gridiron is, but I always though American football a bit of a nancy game, mincing around in pretty outfits patting each others butts and doing silly dances, give me British footy any day.'
A bit nancy? Crash helmets, padded bras and eye liner to play Rugby? They seem to enjoy dressing up like the sixth member of The Village People and once or twice a game they run 10 yards on a tiny pitch! Must be the gayest sport of all time. Hard to believe it was originally proper Rugby until the sponsors took over and re-wrote the rules to make it more 'commercial'.
In it's favour it is not quite as boring as Nascar - dozens of ultra low-tech redneck-mobiles lumbering round a gentle oval and pretending to race! Like watching a freeway webcam. . . . . :D
Soccer is very popular among the "elitist" crowd in the US.
I tried rugby...once. That's tough!
Can you read? The article says the World cup is having higher ratings than the NBA Finals & the Stanley Cup Finals, both being at night while the World Cup is being played during work hours. And we just got to the knock out rounds in the World cup.
It'll never make it in this country (assuming we stem the illegal immigration flow) until they do away with the B.S. offsides rule which will open up the scoring. Americans would love to see games where 6-8 goals are scored. And get rid of the running clock & "added time" crap, too.
Comerica park has been selling out this season. Last night we got to watch Roger Clemens get his cage rattled and leave the game before he was thrown out.
Though I'm not following the WC closely, I have watched several games and I'll watch more now that it's getting near the end. In contrast, you'd have to drug me and tie me up to get me to watch NASCAR.
It's not the number of rabid fans sitting inside a stadium that brings in the Big Bucks.
It's the number of coach potatoes sitting in their living room wearing their "official" jerseys and hats watching the event and the Bud Lite commercials on TV.
Pro Sports Industry Revenue Projections (Ranked by Projected Revenues, 2006, in $ mil.) Total Revenues: 2006
NFL ................. 6,524
MLB ............... 4,030
NBA ............... 3,838
NASCAR ... ... 3,423
NHL ................ 2,129
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