Friday, June 15, 2007

Past, Present and Future

Stepping away from the Gold Cup for the moment, you might find this Guardian article on the relationship between British and American soccer interesting. Needless to say, I agree with most of it. But there's one issue that was raised in the comments that comes up from time to time in discussions of soccer in the American landscape: the idea that the NFL, MLB, and NBA will always be the most popular sports in this country.

The notion that the popularity of sports is somehow stratified for all time baffles me. Fifty years ago, the big three sports in the US were baseball, boxing, and horse racing. One hundred fifty years ago, cricket was more popular than baseball in the US. Now, those three sports are essentially niche products. (A topic for another blog would be the weirdly disproportionate coverage of boxing in the US--the US sports media are fundamentally reactionary, in the literal sense of the word.) In short, things change, albeit pretty slowly.

When sports change popularity, they tend to do so because of technology and demographics. In both those categories, soccer has momentum. Technologically, the internet has been an incredible boon, because of its elimination of the news gap between Europe and America and because of its beneficial effect on microcommunities more generally. Thanks to changes in broadcast technology, there are also more television outlets for soccer than they used to be. Demographically, there are many factors in soccer's favor: increasing Hispanic population, the much ballyhooed youth culture, and the weird hipster factor.

No, I don't think soccer will be the most popular sport in the US in ten, or even fifty years. But yes, I do think there's every chance that within our lifetimes, the US sports scene will change significantly, and soccer may be a beneficiary of that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great point about boxing's coverage. Not even thirty years ago, the heavyweight champion was the most famous man in the world. Now, I don't even know who he is.

There's more room for more sports these days, thanks to cable and the Internet. Hockey had its chance, but I think it blew it. I think soccer's turn is next. They could easily blow it, too, of course.