I’m loving this FIFA club World Cup
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Devil’s advocate here…how much of that viewership is Canadian, tho?
Fun fact, in Brazil its actually “Futebol” because it’s Portuguese, bot Spanish…
Also, it’s (hilariously) pronounced something like Foo Chi Bowl in Brazilian Portuguese 
Great atmosphere
2016, 2017, and 2024 when I went to Mexico and stayed at a resort everyone played soccer. I played soccer every day with people from South America and Europe there. 7 8 year old kids were very talented I’d say. The quality of soccer from your average south american and european was impressive.
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I would disagree. I could even say that after the NBA and MLB, NHL and NFL, you could go down to the college game (Basketball, football women’s basketball, baseball) and they are still more popular than soccer, even those leagues that you mentioned.
Keep hating on soccer. You want to be good at it. It seems you take pleasure in it. Historical perspective:
Baseball comes from cricket and rounders.
Football comes from a combination of soccer and rugby.
How do you know we do not have passion for soccer?
You clearly do not know what you are “talking” writing about it.
Now let’s look at the actual high school participation numbers.
Which sports dominate in High School?
Where is soccer?
How far is soccer from football?
Where is baseball?
Where is baseball vs soccer?
Again clearly you have no clues.
Is soccer going to take over baseball overnight? Of course not we never said that.
Soccer growth is on par to surpass Baseball. It might not happen in the next 10, 20 or even 30 years but demographics are very clear.
Business people do not invest to lose money. Why do we have an explosion of soccer franchises across the entire country? Do business people want to lose money? The answer will be no.
In the 80’s you had to be an electrical genius to find soccer on tv. Now you have multiple games on all networks daily.
An interesting statistic about baseball is the number of African American playing baseball. I will let you know discover what it is. One of the biggest data point in sports advertising is how the general public identifies with its “heroes”
Demographics are changing in one direction. What trend do you see? It is pretty obvious. Again before hating on soccer do a minimum of research.
Soccer improving its market share is not a myth. Again getting to #3 is no longer a myth. Hate it all you want. I am not going to change your mind. Educate yourself first on the sport than it will be easy for you to understand.
This one for you.
Surpass baseball?
Uhhhh……no.
Not during our lifetimes.
Just compare the viewership for the MLB versus any pro soccer league in the USA.
Not close.
Hey listen. I’m not a soccer hater, but soccer is well behind pro football, basketball, baseball, hockey, I-FBS football, d1 basketball and even NASCAR in this country when it comes to fan popularity and viewership, regardless of how many kids may be playing it in school.
There is little chance of that ever changing during our lifetimes, if for no other reason than that soccer is simply too impossibly far behind.
I’ve been hearing how soccer would surpass a lot of major sports in this country ever since I was a little kid.
Yet strangely, here I am in my 50s, and it has never come true. I don’t see how that will change either.
I can imagine it getting closer to hockey, but nowhere close to football, baseball, or basketball.
Is the number of soccer franchises on a upswing or not? That is a clear metric that clearly shows you where the sport is heading. You can’t deny that.
It doesn’t matter if the number of franchises is on the upswing.
That’s also been true for decades. There are way more MLS franchises now than there were when the league started decades ago. That’s nothing new.
That hasn’t helped soccer catch up in viewership or fan following.
Keep ignoring facts and let me ask you and others that think soccer will stay in the “analog data ages”
Why would Billionaires invest in soccer franchises? Are dumb, idiots, know nothing about business?
Billionaires know about money…that is why they became billionaires.
What you keep ignoring is that the U.S. demographics are changing. I never wrote that this would happen overnight. You keep thinking about overnight success. You keep ignoring business facts law. If there are has been an “explosion” of new professional soccer franchises this is not by coincidence. These business owners know about business. You do not. You know about the law but not about business. Stay in your lane.
Not happening overnight?
Come on now.
It ain’t happening during our lifetimes.
You can predict the future law?
I have some intent to play the mega lotto today. Which numbers should I select?
I’ll wait for your response before I head out and get my tickets.
The MLS has be likened to a Ponzi scheme with its growth.
MLS relies heavily on new franchise expansion fees for revenue. For example, when a new team joins the league, they pay a substantial fee (often hundreds of millions of dollars). Critics argue this creates a system where existing clubs benefit financially from the continuous addition of new teams, rather than relying solely on organic income sources like ticket sales, sponsorships, and media rights.
This is likened to a Ponzi scheme because the system depends on “new investors” (new franchises) to sustain itself.
Sure, then major nfl owners are going to jail. Many nfl owners own MLS franchises. Is the nfl a ponzi scheme too? nfl franchises value keeps going up same for MLS franchises.
I said “likened” as it requires new investors. The NFL owners are getting in as they want the shared revenue from franchise fees.
MLS franchise valuations have grown significantly over the years, often outpacing their actual profitability. Some argue this mirrors speculative bubbles where the perceived value of an asset is much higher than its intrinsic value.
Argue about what?
Tell that to the nfl owners that own mls franchises and other billionaires. They are all in this scheme. Seriously?
I am not saying its illegal, it just looks like one in structure as it requires new investors who pay franchise fees that are distributed to existing owners.
Without those franchise fees the MLS is not profitable across the board.
I don’t know why you are arguing. I love soccer. I too wanted the MLs to take off in the US, it hasn’t and it likely won’t anytime soon.
The level of play in MLS is also not good. Americans who are hardcore fans now have the ability to watch clubs in european leagies and many are fans of those clubs and leagues but don’t watch MLS.
I watched Seattle vs PSG and they were in over their heads. Inter Miami vs Palmerias was a great game a David vs Goliath kind of game. But Inter is loaded with european talent that has gas in the tank and a generational player in Mesi.
Americans like soccer like they do the olympics, it is something to rally around every 4 years.
I’m not saying as a league. I’m saying as an overall sport. The difference between soccer and the other sports is it’s easy to tv ratings for the primary sport in Football, Basketball and Baseball as there is really no competition globally for elite talent with the NFL, NBA and MLB. However, that is not the case for soccer. Saying soccer isn’t as popular as hockey because of ratings between MLS and NHL is silly. On any given regular season Saturday, 1,200,000 Americans are watching either the Premier League, LaLiga or the Bundesliga. That doesn’t include fans of LigaMX, Serie A, MLS (Which admittedly gets lost on Apple+. I’m a soccer fan and rarely go look for it. I hope the cash is good for the league!), National Teams or women’s soccer. The NHL averaged 486,000 for their ESPN broadcasts.
Soccer is a different viewing experience than any other major sport in the USA. Just because Houstonians don’t go crazy when the Dynamo or Dash win doesn’t mean this isn’t a big soccer town. There are pockets of soccer fanatics all over this city and country, they just aren’t primarily concentrated for one team in their community like football, basketball and baseball. Football and basketball are definitely 1-2 and I’ll grant baseball is 3rd, although the gap to soccer is closer than most here want to think. However, collectively soccer is a solid 4th and I don’t really think any other sport is close.
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It’s not.
1.2 million per week for ALL soccer games is puny as a collective total.
Hell, INDIVIDUAL college and pro football games often get more viewers than that on any given weekend. Collectively they’d get MANY TIMES more.
Attendance at pro hockey games is twice that (at least) of pro soccer in the USA.
D1 College hockey outdraws D1 college soccer by a wide margin.
And while ESPN NHL broadcasts average 486K viewers per game, you are not comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
Much like MLB, most NHL games are locally broadcasted.
Also, ESPN often shows more than one NHL game per week, so you can easily double that number weekly, even considering just ESPN.
TNT’s weekly NHL broadcast adds another 440K.
Add in ESPN+ and local broadcasts, and it is well over 1.2 million in weekly viewers for NHL hockey.
Far more than all pro soccer put together.
Not close Bro.
Soccer is no better than number five in the USA in popularity, probably number six if you count NASCAR with its ‘Neck following.