How popular is Soccer in USA and what is its future

So how popular is Soccer in the USA, well youth soccer is alive and kicking. Interest in the sport is at its highest level ever, with more than 19 million children six to 19 playing the game on city streets and suburban pitches. More kids are participating in organized soccer than peewee football, youth basketball or Little League baseball. For these children, soccer is more than a pastime, it's a passion.

So why do Soccer kids follow NBA, NFL and MLB once they stop playing soccer.


The factors against soccer being popular in the USA.

• The perception of soccer fans of the MLS and the manliness of soccer
• There are not enough spectacular plays to show in sportscentre
• Majority of talking heads in USA hold soccer with disdain
• The soccer games could end in a draw, US public need a result when investing their time in watching a game.
• Its takes to long to score a goal in soccer so not good for majority of sports fans who have attention disorders
• Competition for time of NFL, NBA and MLB and other entertainment sources
• There doesn’t seem to be a soccer tradition in US eg Hall of Fame and old soccer players talking about their past experience
• Only one game every week
• There is no fantasy league

The following is the Major League Attendance. Interesting that number of fans has increased every year for the last five years but not substantially. Attendance to MLS is not a good indicator though as a significant number of soccer fans in USA hold the MLS with disdain due to the quality of the competition but interesting that MLS season-ticket sales rose by 25% this off-season, the highest jump in league history, I also like the way new Houston team is being marketed

MLS ATTENDANCE SUMMARY 1996-2005
Year	G	Total	Average	Growth	Median*
1996	160	2,785,001	17,406		15,093
1997	160	2,339,019	14,619	-16.0%	12,733
1998	192	2,747,897	14,312	-2.1%	11,871
1999	192	2,742,102	14,282	-0.2%	12,973
2000	192	2,641,085	13,756	-3.7%	12,690
2001	158	2,363,859	14,961	+8.8%	13,431
2002	140	2,214,878	15,821	+5.7%	14,108
2003	150	2,234,397	14,898	-5.8%	13,719
2004	150	2,333,797	15,559	+4.4%	13,285
2005	192	2,900,716	15,108	-2.9%	12,619
TOTAL	1,686	25,303,092	15,008	-13.2%	13,188

As people reading the Really blog will know that I am sports mad but I don’t post much about soccer.

In fact the World Cup soccer is one my best sporting events, but the number of soccer matches I watch in the world cup would nearly match the number of matches in the four year period between World Cups.

Actually last year I watched my first live soccer match in over a decade when Fiji played India and it was enjoyable. But for me there is a strong social barrier in watching soccer as Fijians watch rugby and Indians watch Soccer. I am guessing in USA that may also be a factor but once the soccer kids have kids of there own and their kids favourite sporting star is a hyped soccer player then soccer will threatening one of the top three sport in the US.

Soccer is easily the most popular game in the world but the three countries in which I have lived soccer has been one of the most popular sports played but not watched as Aussie Rule and Rugby is a similar game but has more action and violence.

My Experience in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji is that there is a social barrier in terms of the type/enthnicity of people that follow soccer. Mainly because we didn’t play competitive soccer as kids.

For Soccer to be more popular, the following needs to happen

• Add extra value with a viable fantasy league and betting
• Need talking heads to start supporting soccer which will happen as more soccer playing presenters/reporters get into the media
  
• Promote players not teams as that is how the best sports are presented in US.
• Promote the meme of home grown talent playing the sport
  
• Percentage of Soccer playing parents with soccer playing kids hits criticical mass.
  
• Perception of MLS changes to be a strong competition which means one of the MLS teams will have to beat Champions league winner and Brazilian club champions.
• Have old soccer players talks about the sport in the old days so start the perception of soccer tradition.
• Continuing trend of Latino’s/immigration taking up more of the US population
• Soccer becomes financially competitive for US kids growing up e.g more money being a soccer star then a NBA star which means get rid of the 2 million dollar salary cap eg New York Yankees
  

I think the most important factor for the populatity of soccer in the USA will be a cultural change which is happening now as the kids that played soccer get older and have kids, the perception of soccer followers will change. I would bet that by at least one more generation soccer will have made significant inroads against Basketball or Baseball. The edge for NFL though is homegrown talent, violence and non guaranteed contracts.