ESPN Fan Feast: World Cup Soccer

Just saw it.

Good on ya Kenny!

 

Awesome.....................although ESPN is being nice to American SPorts with that 2 Billion.................soccer is around 3.5-5.5 Billion fans with the emergence of China,India,USA, and Austrailia to the Worlds Game.

 

Kenny used the same arguement that I use against my jock friends...Excluding field goals, soccer games have just as much scoring as football games especially since a soccer game is typically twice as short as football games.

 

Common man, if you really think over 80% of the world's population cares about soccer, you are demented.

 

Huh? Dude this is Soccer.............show me what country in the year 2009 Dosent care about soccer in some way.

and btw i put 3.5-5.5 Billion so looking at around a range of 53%-83% no exact number can be calculated

 

There's a difference between knowing something about soccer and actually caring about it.

Shit I know something about 20-25 sports, I only truly care about 3 sports. If you think 80% of the world truly cares about who wins the next World Cup, you are wrong.

 

True. None cares about who wins it, but 80% of the world that can still qualify to S.A.2010 care about their team being there, and they care about the game. Heck! I am already planning on BR2014, and for sure I don't care who wins it there either.

 

Uh, yeah, no...There are 6.7 billion people on the planet, you honestly are trying to tell me that 50-80% are soccer fans?

Edit: I should have known this was covered, but still, no chance.

 

Just saw the vid on SC.

It was really weird to see kenny mayne (who i love) be like serious and talk about soccer.

he was defending it and making cases for it. It's for the money of course, but it's nice to see ESPN pretty much all aboard the soccer bandwagon.

 

Have you ever been outside of the US before????? The fact that you would not even agree to 50%, just shows that some us dont have a clue.


the official estimate a few years ago for soccer was 3.3-3.5 Billion......then you add in the explosive popularity rise for the game recently in India and Australia........................i mean Vietnam has never made into a World Cup and yet they are estatic about the sport and the whole country watches the World Cup every 4 years. MAybe that would give you an idea to how HUGE it is.

 

Do you think 50-80% of Americans are American Football fans? Some people, people all over the world, just don't care about sports. The viewership for the world cup final was a little below a billion, and what soccer fan doesn't watch the world cup final??

 

- You can't just add up the total populations of all the soccer loving countries. Most people just aren't sports fans.
- I wasn't aware of this soccer popularity boom in India that suddenly accounts for 1.5 billions extra soccer fans.
- A country the size of Australia (20 million) will not boost the fan base to 3.5 billion from 2 billion either.

 

FIFA reported that roughly 1/9 the population watched the FIFA 2006 final between France and Italy - now if take the people who had work/other obligations + people who were piggybacking tvs (watching with neighbors, in crowds, in stadiums) + people who didn't have access to a tv but who would want to watch it if they could + people who were ****ed or whatever that their team didn't make it so they didn't watch it + people who like soccer in general just don't care about France/Italy..

Well then I think a conservative estimate of true soccer fans in the world would be roughly 1/7 the population.

EDIT: with the assumption that the final in the world cup is the most important competition in the soccer world and that people with at least a marginal interest in soccer would want to watch it

 

A) thats just neilson ratings.

B) People watch the World Cup Final in Massive numbers together whether it be in Bars,Restuarants, or outside on large TV's. Im just gonna show the US.....to make my point.


Boston:



NYC:



San Francisco:



B) Becuase the whole world is watching./or wants to watch..it means a portion of the world would have to be up at 3-5 AM in the morning to watch it.....which is why replay viewings are also very high the day after.

Do you really think that 50% of the world does not care or like soccer? it means alot of people have yet to leave the US. Forget that range of 50%-80% Like i said before..we will put it at 50%.......lets just say 50% and yet your still saying its not that high the official estimate was 3.3-3.5 Billion a few years ago for people who watch,pay or play soccer without the rise in India and Australia recently.

 

50% of the population are women. Most women don't care about sports. The other half is men, and not all of them care about sports. Some people just don't care.

 

Mmmm, love me some stereotypes.

 

It's truth.

 

From a personal perspective, I just got back from Germany, Czech Republic, and Rome and I was surprised by the amount of people I talked to who didn't care all that much. It's not so much that they're not soccer fans, it's that they're not sports fans in general. Just because soccer is the national sport doesn't mean that the whole country follows the game. Does 50% of the US care or like American football? I'm not sure that it does. I'll give you 50% of the world but anything more than that is way too generous IMO. And yes, as stated above, I've been out of the country.

 

Dude, I love your enthusiasm, but you crack me up. You're always throwing around these made-up statistics. It's even funnier because they're so specific -- like, "3.3 billion" and what have you.

Good stuff.