America and the World: The Difference in Sports
There are a lot of sports in the world, but when you look at sports in the United States and sports across the pond, there are a couple of differences. There are many opinions as to why the US seems to have a very distant outlook on sports as the rest of the world. Just as well as, there are many reasons as to why certain sports have seemed to make their way to the international stage.
The two biggest sports when it comes to the individual regions are football for US and soccer for most of the world. The two big leagues that dominate their markets are English Premier League (EPL) and the National Football League (NFL). Both leagues have been felt the down side of TV viewership last year, but soccer was able to make it up with their deal with NBC. Though they lost 19 percent of their viewers in England, they gained 16 percent in the US. That new range of viewers has come out of how the two leagues have done things outside their respective regions.
One of the biggest things that is evident viewership. It is a hard thing to come by. Especially when it comes to a sport that it is new to the world. Though a study done by indy100.com says that only 58.7% of the NFL fans base are people who live in the United States. The next country that had the most NFL fans was Mexico who had 23.3 million fans. That is almost a 100-million-person difference. Yet another difference between the soccer and football is how many viewers the EPL has around the world.
According to the Independent, there are a total of at least 160 million people who watched the EPL back in 2007. That number was also over 16 countries. Today, over 12 million watch a just an average EPL game, according to context. That means over 120 million people tune into the EPL a week on average almost. That is just in the EPL. The league also has eighty broadcasters in over 212 countries. This is something the NFL has yet to get to.
Both leagues have tried to make an impact on the other community. For example, the EPL has sent down a team to face the All-Stars of the MLS (Major League Soccer) for the past couple of years. Vis versa, the NFL has tried to expand its audience by holding three or four regular season games across the pond in premier league stadiums. The NFL has even gone as far as adding a game to Mexico City this year, which was sold out.
Even though the NFL and EPL have a lot of viewers, but they are not the only sports that are out there to watch, and there are a lot more people to reach out to. So, what would happen if all the sports were put in a bowl and ranked based on how they are viewed?
A company called totalsprotek.com did research on what are the world’s top watched sports. They had many factors such as TV rights deals and global viewership among other categories. After breaking down the numbers, the site declared the soccer, or football in Europe, is the most popular sport in the world. Second and third belonged to basketball and cricket. Even tennis scored in the top five. US football on the other hand was very low on the list sitting at twelve on the list.
When reading the descriptions of each sport in the top ten, the common trend is that there are many leagues around the world and athletes come from different countries. The description of football in the US is the “biggest sport in USA”. It is also called the most lucrative sport in the country. So, that begs to ask the question why is basketball higher on the list when it is not the top sport in the US?
According to Joshua Newman, Florida State University sports media, says that there were many factors that went into basketball becoming globalized such as Nike.
“As media and more commercial aspects became more global; as Nike was selling its brand around the world; the NBA was being broadcast around the world”, Newman said.
He went onto say that there many players, who were in the NBA, that the world such as Dirk Nowitzki (Germany), Tony Parker (France), and Yao Ming (China) helped give basketball that connection to the world.
The NBA was the first way the US and the rest of the world interacted with the same sport. There are many events that connect the world. For example, the most international watched event, especially in 2014, is the FIFA World Cup. Tennis has Wimbledon and the US Open which brings a lot of viewership, and there is even golf with The Masters. Even though the US, participates in these great events, they still are different.
Just like the NBA, each sport has different and very marketable players that help them get their product out. The big marketing tool was the fact that this could be Peyton Manning’s last game. The NFL saw its largest audience the past Super bowl. According to CNN, there were 167 million people who watched the event on Feb. 7th.
Now, this number is nowhere near what FIFA received (3.2 billion), but it did reach a global audience. FIFA always gains a huge audience because it is a once every four-year event. It calls on the world to stop what they are doing and to watch people like Messi, Ronaldo, and Dempsey do what they enjoy best. But that is a global event, which is something football does not have. Yet, soccer is a sport that brings the world together so how is that.
Well, besides the EPL, there are many countries that have their own leagues which are still big. Such as in Italy, they have Series A. As well as, Spain has La Liga, and both leagues receive millions of viewers for their games. The difference is staggering in the US as viewership has yet to crack a million people.
Even though England has so much viewership and fans, why is the US in that mix considering that England populated the country.
Newman explained that after gaining independence from England they wanted to change everything over to make it “Americanized”.
“Rugby became football; cricket became baseball”, Newman said.
Though both sports have seemed to be put on the “backside” or in the background, they both have been trying to gain traction back in the US.
With rugby, colleges have seen a huge surge in interest in the past six years. There are over 200 colleges that have rugby programs on their campuses. Along with that, the NCAA has struck a deal with NBC to televise the other version of rugby called sevens on TV when they have their national championship.
Rugby has a very big international audience. Though the United States is not ready enough to compete in the World Cup with New Zealand and other big rugby nations, they do host a sevens tournament in Las Vegas each year. The tour takes place from winter through spring and throughout the world. The US has won the little events multiple times throughout the years, but they have yet to win it all. The event in the US has gained a lot of traction.
Also with rugby, there are multiple leagues in the world such as Four Nations and Six Nations. Even the islands of Tonga, Fiji and Samoa have league of their own. Just like rugby, cricket has multiple leagues too.
Another sport that is not talked about a lot in the United States is cricket. It is the third most watched sport according to totalsportek. It has players from over 16 countries that participate in its league Twenty 20 (T20). The league has 18 teams that compete in it.
Even though cricket was replaced in the US, there is still a league here. It is called Cricket All Star Series. It began last year and takes place in LA, Houston and New York, and it followed by ESPN.
One big similarity between the top three most watched sports in the world is the fact that they all have multiple leagues around the world, but football does too. China owns a football league and so does Canada. There is a big difference between the other leagues and the other football leagues: the rules.
When looking at the rules for La Liga, EPL and Series A, they all have the same set. They play on the same size field, they have the same penalties and sets of rules. The same goes for the rugby leagues.
They all play on the same sized fields as well as have the same sets of rules. The leagues in the other countries for football play on different rules and different fields. For example, the length of a Canadian football league is 150 yards long and and 65 yards wide which is much different than a NFL regulated field.
There is a loss sense of identity between all the other football leagues, that does not exist in rugby, soccer and other sports. So, why isn’t either sport making it in the other country?
One piece is that each area’s biggest sport seasons overlap each other. Football cannot have a team in London, just as soccer cannot be big here because both regular seasons are from September to December. This is the same problem for cricket. Baseball has been called America’s pastime, and its main show time is during the summer. This does not give cricket a chance to gain more traction in the US. Overall though, history is the key to why either sport will never get big.
Dr. Annemarie Farrell, Sports Media professor at Ithaca College, said that football is not embedded in other places.
“It is not culturally embedded into other places”, Farrell said. “You can’t really play pickup football unless people understand what’s going on!”
Newman gave two reasons as to why football cannot go global.
“Football has been deemed as an American sport, and American culture is not as widely accepted as it used to be”, Newman said. “The bigger problem is there is not an infrastructure… There is no where you can go to buy a football or football helmet.”
He went to explain that it is a spectacle and that is all it can be. Farrell even commented saying that football was made for TV and that is it.
When asked the reverse, Newman said that there is no way for rugby or cricket to make it in the US at least not in the near future. He believes if one sport was going to make it it would be soccer because soccer has been for over 20 years.
The interaction will be there, but until there is a way to embed the sport into either culture. No sport will gain any ground in the other country.
