The mistery of soccer….my thoughts (my European mind):
 
First of all the US misses a history with soccer.
Soccer has been in Europe at least since 1863 when the Football Association was established in England.
Not only do we have the history of soccer, soccer also played a big role in history.
In a lot of countries soccer teams reflected groups in society.
Conflicts between these groups meant conflicts between the fans of both teams as well.
There was no separation between the game and society.
Therefore a soccer game had a big influence on the history of a country.
 
Timing
Further in Europe the base for soccer was founded in a period that people did not have much money.
They were looking for cheap ways to entertain themselves. You only needed something that looked like a ball.
These days people have more to spent and plenty of alternatives to spend their time.
In other words, soccers has strong competition which makes it more difficult to promote soccer or build a soccer culture.
 
Culture
Popular sports like basketball are quick games on a small field where players score a lot.  Fans are used to fast games.
Besides that the players become real stars. A team can be build around one star.
Soccer is completely the opposite; the game is played on a big field and usually there only a few goals during a game.
Ofcourse there are soccer stars as well, but a team is usually not built around them. Especially the bigger teams, they have a lot of stars.
If you are used to quick games and a lot of goals soccer might seem boring.
However, soccer is more of a strategic game with a lot of team tactics and highly skilled individual players.
The aim is to beat the opponents as a team; there is no place for individual stars on the field.
On the field you act as a team. This might seem strange for a highly individual orientated country.
 
To establish a soccer culture in the US will take a lot of time.
In the meantime they should show more European soccer to show them how it can develop over time and to help them appreciate the game.
 
A got so inspired that it is too late to watch a movie now, but hey a night with soccer is always good, haha
 

 I have one more thing to add:
 
soccer was a sport that could be played by everybody; rich and poor.
Because background did not matter it created solidarity between people.
Solidarity made soccer become part of a nation’s culture and therefore becoming a tradition.
 
This solidarity still plays a big role in soccer.
Look at the atmosphere around games betwoon f.e Holland and Germany.
The history (second world war) between both countries causes rivalry.
However, within a country this creates solidarity.
If you are Dutch, even when you don’t like soccer you don’t want Germany to win.

Let me know what you think.
 
Talk soon, Marieke

The mystery of soccer

Soccer is not a professional sports Americans care about very much.  It does not rank in the top 20 sports (as pictured) and it actually comes in below equestrian jumping and tractor pulls. 

This is a mystery. 

After all, soccer has four passionate fan bases in the US:

1) immigrants arrived from soccer mad countries (South America, Africa, Europe, um, like, the whole world)

2) women under the age of 55 (thanks to the triumphs of Mia Hamm and company at the World Cup events in the late 1990s)

3) kids now participating in school and neighborhood programs that have embraced soccer because it is 3.1 inexpensive, 3.2 co-educational (if required), and 3.3 easy to play badly.   Are there a lot of these kids?  I believe there’s a reason we call their mothers “soccer moms.” 

4) kids who have graduated from said programs.  Kids have been passing through these programs in big numbers for at least 20 years.  This means that the first cohort is now in its mid twenties and in possession of the disposal income to support a local club and a national league.

This is what a marketer would call an “installed base.”  Millions of people have followed or played the game.  If only 20% become fans, it should be more or less easy to sustain a professional league play.  But this has been really hard to do.  Soccer has struggled.

But things are looking up. 

According to an article in BusinessWeek, the money is now in place with investors pouring $1 billion dollars into the league in the last two years.  Red Bull putting down $100 million to buy a New York franchise.  New stadiums are being created.  Ticket sales are up 20% this year with attendance approaching 20,000 a game. 

This is good news for fans of dynamism because soccer is a dynamic game in a way that football and baseball are distinctly not.  George Will once said of the former that it combined two of the worst aspects of American life: violence and committee meetings.  Baseball would be improved by either one.  Soccer is all about pattern recognition on the fly.  Says the striker, “if this is true, and this is true, and this is true, then this pass is called for.  No!  He moved.”  One of the real pleasures of the game is watching patterns form and reform on the field as these two little universes reconfigure themselves in a spectacular display of “sense and respond” as Steve Haeckel would call it. 

But there is room for product development.  Specifically, something has to be done about the physics of the game.  There is too much time and too much space.  A 90 minute game is too long and so is the field.  Both tax players so heavily that dynamism is actually suppressed.  I am not suggesting dramatic reductions.  Otherwise, soccer would become merely basketball played with one’s feet.  But I think 60 minutes and a smaller field would bring the game alive nicely. 

Will this happen.  Absolutely not.  Soccer fans are religious zealots.  There will be no reformation.  I think this means that while soccer will climb from its present obscurity, it will never be ready for prime-time, and the present marketing opportunity will be wasted.  Too bad. 

References

For more on the ranking of sports, go here. 

For more on Steve Haeckel and his ideas, go here.

Holmes, Stanley.  2006.  A breakout year for soccer?  BusinessWeek.  May 1, 2006, p. 86.