Posts Tagged ‘premier league’

The social network age means even the USA is falling in love with “soccer”

Written by Mike on . Posted in Blog, International

Ann Coulter hates it. Soccer is apparently for the weak, derides individual achievement in favour of collective endeavour and more strikingly:

Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation’s moral decay.

But the USA is starting to love soccer (or football as it known in its home, England). The current World Cup has seen the largest US audience figures ever for international football. Over 20,000 turned up to Chicago’s Grant Park to watch the football with fellow Americans. Tonight’s match against Germany is expected to be the most watched football match in American history.

The domestic game is starting to heat up as well. It isn’t just minority groups (as Coulter semi-claims) who are football enthusiasts, as the New York Times reports, Hipsters form a major block of passionate football supporters:

There was a time not long ago when Americans — even worldly New Yorkers who regularly logged on to The Guardian website and claimed knowledge of the best little out-of-the-way pub in Shoreditch — could float along in a happy bubble of ignorance, pretending for all practical purposes that the world’s favorite sport, soccer, did not exist.

That time appears to be fading quickly.

America studiously avoided catching any form of football enthusiasm regardless of the waves of European migration in the first decades of the twentieth century (at the same time as football reached South America via Scotland). It held out even during the rise of televised global football from 1954 onwards and after hosting the World Cup in 1994.

Yet, the rise of social networks and our increasing connections with people from other countries, means Americans are more aware of what the rest of the world is interested in. The USA’s strong performance in this World Cup, plus the sheer exposure through social media of football to ordinary Americans is increasing both their appetite for football and their interest. The more you see what the rest of the world respects, the more doing well at a sport they care about is important.

Social media is normalising a sport once considered overtly foreign. As Americans become more exposed to football through social media and through NBC Universal’s $250 million contract to televise English Premier League matches, could the US fall in love with the world’s global game?