Eighty thousand fans wait on the edge of their seats with bated breath as the clock moves into stoppage time. They’ve spent the last two hours yelling and chanting their team’s fight song in hopes of seeing that elusive goal to seal a victory.
Almost every day soccer fans around the world devote their time in hopes of witnessing any sort of magical moment that could happen at any time during a match.
“It’s a sport that bridges all sorts of genres and it kind of speaks to you and evokes to you the kind of magical part of what soccer’s all about,” said Longwood men's soccer coach Jon Atkinson.
This sort of ‘fever’ that the rest of the world has for the sport used to be absent here in the United States, but has slowly caught on in the last eight to 12 years due to the success of the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams.
“If you see some of the seasoned teams like Valencia,” said Atkinson, “if you immerse yourself in those environments, it would be hard not to become spellbound by that kind of excitement.”
The problem is the fact that the MLS (Major League Soccer) is so young compared to the most prestigious leagues across Europe, leagues like the Barclays Premier League in England, ‘La Liga’ or the Spanish Primera Division in Spain, and even Bundesliga in Germany.
“I think the biggest thing in America – again, we’re still building our culture – our league is still very young compared to European leagues, so it takes awhile to build that culture,” said Longwood women’s soccer coach Todd Dyer.
Americans can list a number of reasons as to why the sport has taken so long to catch on. A few that people quickly point to are ‘We’re on our own continent,’ ‘It’s just not an American sport that really originated here,’ or even ‘It’s just boring to watch quite frankly.’
“I think the big thing right now in America is we have kind of a short attention span, we want immediate feedback, and so the big hang-up with soccer is there’s not enough scoring, there’s not enough goals,” said Dyer. “Whereas you go to a football or a basketball game, you’re going to get that instant payoff and feedback as a fan.”
Atkinson was born in Newcastle, England before coming to the U.S. for his Master’s of Business Administration in 1990, so he has seen first-hand just how much things have changed since he arrived and how different the American culture around the sport is from most of Europe.
“When I first arrived here, you’re pretty much getting pioneer players that were either rebelling against their dad or playing an opposite sport just to upset them, or something was really just calling them in,” said Atkinson. “I just saw the growth and it was still very underdeveloped and it’s still continuing developing. It’s still got a long ways to go.”
The sport has gained some traction in American culture and drastically changed within the last 20 to 25 years from when Atkinson left England. The introduction of academies and youth leagues, television deals with the MLS, as well as international friendlies helped lead to the change.
“The (talent) pool’s becoming a bit more expansive and the qualities are getting better,” said Atkinson. “The introduction of U.S. soccer for the academies, which is kind of mimicking the youth academy in Europe and Latin American leagues as well where U16’s and U18’s follow a bit more of a model where it’s a bit more akin to the kind of professional and business development side. Its help just develop the game of soccer itself.”
Dyer agrees that the talent level in America overall is slowly starting to catch up with the rest of the world.
“(Players) are getting further developed at a younger age, but just the size, the strength, the pace and speed of the athletes and of the game itself, as with most sports. Everything is just continuing to progress and advance.”
As Atkinson had mentioned, the introduction of the U16 and U18 national teams by the latest men’s national team coach Jürgen Klinsmann has set the foundation for a possible future where the U.S. can compete on a global scale.
“The talent pool has grown, so there’s more good players out there to choose from, but the trick for us right now is the timing of recruiting has sped up so much,” said Dyer. “So there is more talent out there, but you have to identify it and evaluate it a lot sooner now.”
Americans have also been hesitant to catch onto the soccer culture is because it’s ‘boring to watch on TV,’ or ‘I never see any games unless I go out and search for them.’ This is highly reflected when it comes to television ratings during the Super Bowl (football’s biggest event of the year) compared to the World Cup final (soccer’s biggest event that occurs once every four summers).
The last few World Cups have seen a drastic incline in viewership within the United States, but it is nowhere near the magnitude of the Super Bowl.
The last Super Bow, had over 114.4 million viewers nationwide making it the most watched television show in American history. Of the seven programs that have amassed over 100 million viewers, six were previous Super Bowl games. The lone exception was the finale of the American hit series, M.A.S.H., which aired back in 1983.
The 2014 Men’s World Cup finale in Brazil between Germany and Argentina also set a record of 27.3 million viewers as the most watched soccer game in American history. The second most watched game also occurred in 2014 when the U.S. took on Portugal in the group stage. That game had over 25.5 million people watching.
The number of viewers does not include all of the people that participated in any of the massive viewing parties that took place in cities such as Chicago, Kansas City and Philadelphia.
The hype around the men’s World Cup last summer, as well as the success of the women’s team back in the 2011 World Cup led to the anticipation of the recent women’s tournament in Canada.
“I think the excitement of the last (women’s) World Cup, even the Men’s World Cup has kind of generated that buzz where I think a lot more people will be following along on television,” said Dyer. “But you have to put a product out there that people want to watch.”
In the 2011 women's World Cup, USA made it to the finals and was favored over Japan. They ended up falling short of expectations, but the fact that they made it that far created a sense of excitement in people across the country that had never watched a game before or kept up with the sport.
"The women’s have always been pioneering," said Atkinson. "I think the women’s game has always been ahead of the men’s game, and that’s something culturally sometimes the male fan has to fight with; but for the growth of the sport, just phenomenal. The women’s (team) has been out there ahead and have really become the pioneers of sport over here and has always done well.”
Atkinson continued, “You’ve got a name recognition there like with a Mia Hamm, or Brandi Chastain who all of these youth, male and female, can identify with. I think that’s probably one thing that’s missing from the male side is that we don’t have that recognizable, identifiable, household name."
Since soccer is a sport that is still growing in this country, it will always draw the casual fan that is testing out the waters to see exactly what it has to offer. In this case, many people turn to the World Cup since it is the biggest stage for any soccer player or fan.
Television ratings over the past four World Cup events have shown the evidence of how much the marketing and coverage of soccer has helped it to expand.
“As you get TV interest, you get TV revenue and dollars,” said Dyer. “You can put that back into the league, which is going to strengthen the league. You can pay better players better salaries so more people will want to come here. I think it’s kind of a trickle-down effect.”
This past summer, an average of over 4.5 million views per game blew away the previous record of nearly 3.3 million in the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa. Before the Germans hosted in 2006, less than 2 million Americans tuned in to the average match.
“These new deals where ESPN, FOX Soccer and NBC are getting involved is huge for the development of the game,” said Atkinson. “I think that’s something we’ve seen with the explosion.”
Broadcast stations aren’t the only businesses that felt the impact of the most recent World Cup. Many sporting apparel companies such as Nike, Adidas and Under Armour had stocks drastically rise due to the huge demand for soccer gear.
In North America, alone, orders rose over 15 percent in the first quarter of the fiscal year for Nike, which exceeded their estimate of 9.8 percent. To put that into perspective, the company made just under $8 billion in those four months.
Many of these purchases didn’t come from the Nike website, but from other websites that sell Nike brand equipment. The most popular site for this past World Cup was Fanatics.com, which sold an astounding ten times the merchandise in the first two weeks of 2014 compared to the first two weeks in 2010.
In fact, those first two weeks saw more merchandise sold than the entire Word Cup in 2010. These levels aren’t quite up there with huge American events such as the Super Bowl and World Series, but that’s not too bad for a sport that is as low on the totem pole as it is in America.
Nike sold 10x more items during the first two weeks of sales than they did in the 2010 World Cup.
“I think the US National Team has done a phenomenal job in their growth to compete with some of the biggest countries in the world on the national stage,” said Atkinson. “It’s something we can kind of buy into and put our name on as a support of the U.S. National Team and U.S. Soccer.”
The MLS moved forward recently and added two teams to the league, Orlando and New York City, for a total of 20. There are also plans to establish more teams in Miami and Atlanta in the next two or three years.
The upcoming Atlanta team will feature David Beckham, who has already experienced life in the MLS when he played alongside USA star Landon Donovan on the L.A. Galaxy from 2007-2012. He was the first real player that Americans could recognize without having to ask 'who is that;" that led to the expansion of the salary cap and the incoming wave of European stars within the last two years.
"While it might not have been highly touted back 10 or 15 years ago, the type of player coming in is getting to a higher level," said Atkinson. "We’re not just getting the leftover European player that’s ready to hang up his boots, we’re getting a high caliber of European player that’s ready to hang up his boots. So the Stephen Gerrard’s, the Frank Lampard’s, the Kaka’s in Orlando; these are highest level players."
The recent and continual growth of soccer in the eyes of Americans will continue to create interest over the next few generations, especially with the world being as connected as it has ever been.
Dyer added, “I think the more we continue to grow our sport, the stronger our leagues become, and the more we start to mimic and build the culture of the European leagues in our own country, the better off we’re going to be.”
