Soccer dominates the global spectrum when it comes to fan support, yet here in the U.S., it falls way down on the list in terms of viewership.
World Cup qualifying is entering the fifth and final round before the big games begin, and the U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT) is sitting at fourth in the table at nine points following a loss to Costa Rica on Friday and a draw with Honduras on Tuesday. Its next match is not until Oct. 6 against Panama in Orlando, Florida.
But the excitement here seems lackluster in comparison to the rest of the world.
According to Sports Illustrated, the only soccer match to even break the top 50 most-watched sporting events in 2016 was the Copa America game between Chile and Argentina. And even that only came in at 37, behind the Masters, every single NFL playoff game and the Daytona 500. It’s clear that Americans only care about the big three: football, baseball and basketball.
Americans love to win, but, more importantly, they hate losing.
In the history of the USMNT, it has never made it past the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup. The last time it even made it that far was in 2002. And before that, 1930. If the U.S. isn’t winning, the U.S. loses interest.
Sports like baseball are popular because we dominate the global scene. The All-Star Futures Game is an annual baseball exhibition held by the MLB during All-Star weekend, and the U.S. is so dominant that teams are divided between the U.S. and rest of the world based on birth place.
Basketball’s popularity might come from the same place; in all 18 appearances made by the United States men’s national basketball team, it has medaled, and in 15 of those appearances, it has won gold. On top of 15 gold medals, it’s also one of only two teams to have won the quadruple crown (the FIBA World Cup gold medal, Olympic gold medal, FIBA AmeriCup gold medal and Pan American gold medal). When it comes to the United States’ pastimes, no other country comes close to matching our level of success.
Another one of the largest reasons soccer isn’t as successful in the United States is the clear lack of network profit. In the average NFL season game, a 30-second advertisement will run for upwards of $700,000 dollars; during the Major League Soccer regular season, an advertisement running during an LA Galaxy game, one of the largest markets in the U.S., will cost about $20,000. Fewer people are watching, and less time is given for advertising.
In football, there is ample time to run an advertisement; there’s halftime, the end of each quarter, injury timeouts, regular timeouts, two-minute warnings, stoppage after turnovers and stoppage after a score, punt or kick return. Advertising time is seemingly endless.
Soccer has a continuous clock.
Even baseball has a designated two minutes and 30 seconds between innings before a pitcher has to be in his windup. Soccer has halftime, a quick 15-minute break before both teams trot back out onto the field for another 45 uninterrupted minutes. That just is not enough time for networks to make the kind of money they do with sports like football in the U.S.
In the Premier League, the top tier of football in the United Kingdom, teams average about 90 million euros a year in profit on advertising alone. In the MLS, it’s a fraction of that. The audience isn’t there, so the networks aren’t there.
Soccer has always played second-best to typical American pastimes, and even though the rest of the world embraces it, the U.S. has yet to do the same. Unfortunately, until someone finds a way to squeeze in extra advertisements and it gets more screen time, soccer will remain a backyard sport in the U.S. that’s played religiously in other countries around the world.
