News: Recent polls and stats on soccer popularity in the USA

i'd be curious about the Twitter ratings since a lot of networks/organizations hold those rankings in esteem.

 

879347966854791170 is not a valid tweet id

 

275,000+ attended soccer games across the US tonight!!
 #FCB-#MUFC: 80k#PSG-#Juve: 44k#USA-#JAM: 63k#HalaMadrid-#MCFC: 90k

🔥⚽️🔥 pic.twitter.com/9QczclfGwY

— World Soccer Talk (@wsoccertalk) July 27, 2017

Barcelona vs Manchester United: 80,162 (FedExField, Landover MD)

Paris Saint-Germain vs Juventus: 44,444 (Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Gardens FL)

USA vs Jamaica: 63,032 (Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara CA)

Manchester City vs Real Madrid: 93,098 (LA Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles CA)

 

Philadelphia vs Columbus 15,413

 

MLS/adidas deals, for historical context:
2004: 10yr/$150m. ($15m per)
2010: 8yr/$200m. ($25m per)
2017: 6yr/$700m. ($117m~ per)

— Ian Thomas (@byIanThomas) August 2, 2017

Comparison to other recent sponsorship deals for perspective.

NBA: Nike = $125 million/year for 8 seasons (30 teams in 2017-18)
MLS: Adidas = $117 million/year (!) for 6 seasons (23 teams in 2018)
NHL: Adidas = $70 million/year for 7 seasons (31 teams in 2017-18)

 

How has sports participation changed in high schools over the past 5 years? Good news if you like lax or indoor track (Data @NFHS_Org). pic.twitter.com/u1cXmDYVSa

— NCAA Research (@NCAAResearch) August 9, 2017

 

There are definitely some anomalies there. Girls rowing down 61%

 

Obviously, as with any survey, take the sample size with a grain of salt, but an interesting sports survey on the Washington Post website with 50+ questions related to different sports. Here are a couple that relate to soccer's popularity. You can also sort survey results by different demographics. The Avid vs Casual sports fan, Age 18-29 vs Age 65+, Non-White vs White, and Urban vs Rural divide when it comes to soccer isn't surprising, but still interesting to see.

Q: What is your favorite sport to watch? (Football), (Baseball), (Basketball), (Soccer), (Auto racing), (Ice hockey), (Tennis), (Golf), or something else?

Q: Do you consider yourself to be a fan of professional soccer? (Asked of sports fans, non-fans included in results)

 

And right when the NFL began to struggle.... US soccer, just ran off a cliff.....

 

Washington, DC, October 24, 2017 —According to a series of recent online surveys conducted in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada by Ipsos on behalf of the United Bid Committee, just over half (55%) of all adults report having watched the men’s international soccer/ football tournament known as the ('FIFA' in Canada) World Cup in the past. However, viewership in Mexico (83%) is nearly twice as high compared to the U.S. (45%) and Canada (47%) – including a significantly greater proportion of adults in Mexico who say that they are avid watchers of past World Cup matches (33% vs. 17% U.S. and 11% Canada).

A third (34%) across North America consider themselves to be occasional watchers of the World Cup, although this is more likely to be the case in Mexico (50%) and Canada (36%) compared to the United States (28%). The other 43% of all respondents say that they have never watched World Cup matches in the past, with Americans (53%) and Canadians (50%) driving this trend (compared to only 15% of adults in Mexico who have never watched World Cup matches).

A majority report being at least a little interested in the sport of soccer (61%), including two in five (40%) across all three countries who report being very/somewhat interested in the sport. Adults from Mexico are much more likely to say that they are very/somewhat interested in the sport (67%) versus respondents in the United States (30%) and Canada (31%) who say the same thing. On the other hand, nearly two in five (38%) of all respondents say that they have no interest at all in soccer/football – with a greater proportion of adults from the U.S. (47%) and Canada (43%) lacking interest in the game (versus 13% in Mexico).

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/United-Bid-Committee-North-America-Survey-2026-FIFA-World-Cup

 

Good article... Thanks for posting.

just a reminder:
45% of USA > 83% of MEX

Population:
Mexico - 127.5 million in 2016
USA - 323.1 million in 2016

 

Here's how @MLS viewership looks for 2017 playoffs, up 18% vs. 2016 on ESPN/ESPN2/FS1 combined. https://t.co/zu45RIvZs1

— Paul Kennedy (@pkedit) November 27, 2017

 

MLS Cup viewership across the U.S. and Canada:

TSN 1,300,000
ESPN 803,000
UniMás/UDN 304,000
TVA Sports 93,000

— Jonathan Tannenwald (@thegoalkeeper) December 12, 2017

 

huge HUGE trouble ahead:

https://www.socceramerica.com/publications/article/76121/new-study-finds-big-drop-in-soccer-participation-i.html

The top three team sports children ages 6-12 played on a regular basis -- basketball, baseball and soccer -- saw declines in participation, but none like soccer has.

In 2010, 3,016,000 children 6-12 played soccer on a regular basis, but that number was only 2,303,000 in 2016, a drop of 23.5 percent.

 

It's all Michael Bradley's fault.

 

That makes no sense unless 6-12 year-olds kids stopped playing soccer and switched to another sport.

 

yep video games and lacrosse

 

if say Jozy...I will agree

 

Which is not really what happened. What's going on is kids are leaving sport in general. Interestingly, they're getting out as much as were in the recent past, maybe a little more, but they're gravitating toward medium-intensity activities and away from high intensity ones (probably with consequences down the line, but it's better than nothing).

Now, as far as this bodes for the future of the game, I'm not sure they aren't losing the kids who were already least committed, but we'll see.

 

I would pull my kids out of soccer too if I knew no one was keeping score and everyone earns a trophy. (I don't have any kids that I know of yet.)

 

But why so many leaving soccer specifically?
That doesn't make sense.

I actually am suspicious of this particular study. I suspect it is flawed in some way.

 

It isn't specific. More kids left basketball and baseball as a percentage and by raw number. One million kids left bicycling.



The number of kids who played at least once held pretty steady, the number who played on a regular basis dropped for sports overall.

 

Birth year mandate? Kids that were beneficiaries of the relative age effect (Aug-Dec births) who also got to play with friends hit with having to play with a new group of kids that had previously been one year "up", and they are also now at the bottom of the relative age.

 

New Gallop Poll on sports viewing:

http://news.gallup.com/poll/224864/...e=Politics&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles