[kabar]

Soccer is global and can be watched here on TV. Here in DC we have plenty of bars to watch the games from all over the world. The World Cup was a real hoot. The beautiful game is exciting and non-stop. It is also the only sport where you have a real world champion. Every country on earth plays it and is eligible to compete to be in the World Cup.

American football is a real niche sport much more so than ice hockey or basketball.

[Alberta's Child]

I hate to disagree with you, but the "beautiful game" is not exactly "exciting and non-stop." In fact, at its highest levels soccer tends to be a very slow, technical game with short periods of action that interrupt long spells of time where nothing much happens at all.

You want to make soccer an exciting sport? Allow free substitutions, even in the middle of play. This is the one thing that separated hockey from soccer once they made this single rule change back in the early part of the 20th century. Hockey used to be very similar to soccer more than 100 years ago, but this one change revolutionized the game and indirectly gave it some of its distinguishing characteristics. For one thing, it made hockey a transition game rather than a possession game, and made it an anaerobic activity marked by short bursts of frenetic energy. It also separated itself from other major sports by getting every player on the roster involved in a game, thereby adding a value to playing while injured ... which is where the game's "tough-guy" roots began.