Why Americans Don’t Like Soccer

Every four years, the world holds an international soccer event called the World Cup. And every four years, there is a full court press to convince us that Americans should love soccer. We don’t. We won’t. There are basically two reason for this: one economic and the other political. . . or more precisely, political correctness.

Americans don’t care about soccer. Indeed, every year Harris does a poll to ask people what their favorite sport is. Soccer doesn’t rate. Here are the top eight from 2010:

• NFL (35%)
• Major League Baseball (16%)
• College Football (12%)
• Autoracing (9%)
• NBA basketball (5%)
• Hockey (4%)
• Men’s golf (4%)
• College basketball (4%)

Soccer hovers between 1% and 4%, where it has been for the last 25 years.

A lot of reasons are given for why Americans don’t like soccer, but I think what it really comes down to is a matter of economics: soccer presents a poor value for our time.

As strange as it may sound, people are economically rational creatures. That means that before we act, we look at the value of each of the alternatives and we pick the one with the highest value for our time. Value is simply the benefit we expect from the activity less the costs of engaging in the activity.

The problem for soccer is that it presents a relatively low value to the viewer. Indeed, while I agree that most goals and a great many near-miss shots on goal can present the same thrill as a running back breaking away from the pack for a touchdown or a baseball speeding toward the fence, the problem is that soccer presents too few of those moments for a two hour event. Indeed, in baseball, any pitch can result in a home run. In football, any play can result in “that moment” of the great hit or the great escape. Soccer simply does not offer anything like that. In an hour and a half soccer match, you’re looking at a couple of minutes of excitement and an hour plus of set up.

Even compared to hockey, soccer still comes up short. In principle, hockey and soccer are nearly identical games. But hockey has three times as many shots on goal per game, and the game is only 2/3 as long. Moreover, the majority of time in a hockey game is played in the danger zone where a strong shot could score. By comparison, most soccer is played in the middle of the field where scoring is essentially impossible.

Thus, even though soccer can achieve the same highs as other sports, it simply does not offer enough of them for the time commitment involved to attract an American audience.

But why are American audiences unique? Because Americans value their time differently. The rest of the world by and large values leisure time more than work time. They are obsessed with holidays, short work days and early retirement, and they are willing to give up economic progress for that free time. American’s aren’t. So when it comes to finding leisure time activities, Americans have fewer leisure hours, and they value each hour more highly. In other words, Europeans are much more willing to blow an afternoon than Americans are. This means that when Americans are looking for ways to spend their leisure time, they are much more selective, i.e. they are more concerned than other people with finding “the biggest bang for the buck.” Soccer just can’t compete with the other activities available to Americans.

Moreover, soccer is hurt in this country by its advocates. For example, too many of the attempts to get Americans to like soccer sound anti-American. We’re told that Americans aren’t smart enough or erudite enough to “get” soccer. . . could you imagine Coke using a similar ad campaign? We’re given vague (and sometimes open) parallels between soccer and socialism, which never sits well with Americans. And we’re told that we should like soccer because the rest of the world does. . . as if Americans have ever liked being told to act like the rest of the world.

Frankly, reading some of the articles on the exit of Team America, you get downright angry. These articles vacillate between insults at the public for not getting with the program and lies about tens of millions of Americans suddenly falling in love with soccer (the same lies they give at the end of each World Cup). They also love to present misleading statistics to give the impression that everyone but you is watching -- “soccer ratings up 68%”. . .twice nothing is still nothing.

Finally, soccer has become the weapon of choice for leftist in the United States. Soccer has been the vehicle that feminists have used to demand that Americans start treating women’s sports on a par with men’s sports. . . actually, that's not quite accurate: feminists have been trying to shut down men's sports for years and they see requiring equal outcomes with women's sports as a way to do that. And soccer is the sport where daffy anti-competition socialist nuts keep demanding that kids games be played without keeping score. . . so nobody feels pressured or gets their feelings hurt. None of this endears the public to soccer. It's like having Hitler endorse your aftershave.

Soccer will have a hard enough time ever breaking onto the American to-do list because of the lack of value in the game. And as long as it is a political tool of the politically correct left who are trying to remake America as a commune, it might as well forget trying.