I’m not really sure how to address this topic so I guess I’ll just pose a question and then wax on aimlessly. I suppose that’s not so uncommon on BigSoccer.com … To what extent did the internet help to make soccer in the USA what it is today? I tend to think that the answer to this question is that the internet helped soccer in the USA tremendously. I might even dare to say (and had I a few drinks I might even believe) that if not for the internet soccer in the USA wouldn’t be half of what it is today. The leagues would be struggling even more than they are now. The fans would be far more casual and much less knowledgeable. Without the internet I doubt there’d be much of a core of hardcore soccer devotees to sustain the sport through these lean years. I say this for two reasons. First, the only way I can find information about soccer is on the internet. Without it I don’t think I’d ever have become so hooked on the MLS when it started up. I certainly wouldn’t have started to attend PDL matches. Hell, I wouldn’t even know what the PDL is or that there’s a team nearby. I don’t think I’d know about the US Open Cup and I’m quite certain that I wouldn’t know when any of the national teams play. And I’ve said all of that without noting how reliant I am on the internet for day to day soccer news. Second, if the internet is great for anything it is connecting people with obscure interests. Folks, I’m sorry to say it but soccer in the USA remains an obscure interest. (Actually, no, I take that back. I kind of like that soccer is still a bit obscure in the USA.) The best example of this today is BigSoccer.com. The ability to talk with other people about soccer in the US is actually a pretty rare thing. But here it’s not. Before I got involved here (back in the Soccerboards days) I wasn’t nearly as serious about soccer as I am today. It was talking about the game here as much as continuing to go to games and watching games on TV that elevated my interest to the (perhaps unhealthy) level that I maintain today. But before BigSoccer (in its various incarnations) came around there was NAS, alt.sports.soccer and various email lists. I remember the day when the women’s boards opened on BigSoccer in order to give a home to the massive group of refugees from – what was that place called? – WWContheWWB (Women’s World Cup on the World Wide Web). That was a real community there and I bet some of what was formed there helped to get WUSA going – even if it might not be enough to sustain that league. In short, you can’t usually talk about soccer around the water cooler or on talk radio but we had the internet to step in and fill the void. That was and remains important. So, yeah, I’m rambling at this point. But I just don’t believe that my experience is unique. For me the internet was pivotal in my becoming a supporter of soccer in the USA. If not for the internet I just don’t think it would have happened.
Well, for me, I still have to point to WC94 as THE event which got me going. My first effort after that was desperately trying to find any games on TV (I remember DASHING home from work to watch what turned out to be Coventry vs Swindon Town). And I recall getting on, ahem, Prodigy, and finding listings of televised soccer games that some guy (Ollie, of course) would post and that would get circulated around the primitive electronic network of soccer fans that existed then. For two years, I guess, until I *really* got on-line, I just followed the sport via whatever I could find on TV - there was no MLS yet of course, and my RSN carried one tape-delayed EPL game/week and, happily for me, a weekly Serie A highlight show. And the Champions League was on ESPN. It wasn't until 1996 that I got real access to the internet. Then things really picked up and, certainly, made it a lot easier to follow the sport.
I cound not agree more. My interest and passion for the game simply exploded when the Internet gave me the ability to find out more about the game. In the old days, growing up in the rural south, the only news regarding soccer was buried in some boxsocres on the second to last page of the USA Today. That was it. I would also point towards the explosion of Cable TV as a big driver. I remember stumbling across the 1989 FA Cup final (I think) on what must have been ESPN. I must have watched this game like 100 times for the next two years just to get my soccer fix. Now, I think there were like 8 televised matches for me to watch last weekend. I'd also agree with SueB. Prior to 1994 this was a sport I played but wished I could follow. After 1994 it became a sport I followed. Then it grew into a passion once I had access to it.
Bingo, the world cup was the catalyst to everything that we see today. IMHO, without the WC MLS is never started, and we are stuck with A-league as the top division in the US. I'll even say that without the World Cup, bigsoccer wouldn't be as popular as it was. No World Cup = Smaller or No bigsoccer
Bradley wrote a pretty good column about the US Soccer community and its relation to the internet during the last World Cup. I'd really suggest checking it out. I can't really speak to other niche sports but I think that new media like the internet are perfect for things like the interent. Because as much as I wish it wasn't so, I can't really call up sports talk radio, or go down to the local sports bar to chat up soccer. Furthermore, because Sportscenter isn't exactly going to become soccer-centric any time soon, I think the interent has become absolutely essential for people like us who follow the sport. Certainly FSW and other networks have been a beacon of warmth in the coverage they provide, but it's still limited. Being that soccer is such a global sport I'm not sure that theres ever going to be any type of network or show in the US that will be able to give as much information on a consistant basis as going on the net does. On a different note: I too really got into soccer following the '94 World Cup. I'm pretty much the quintiscential fan that MLS is looking to market to. I was 14 years old at that time and was a big soccer playing kid, I came home every day for a month to watch all those games from school. That had a HUGE impact. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It's not like there was a whole lot of soccer on TV those days. I also think it's signifigant that's the time that the Web really began to take off, so I could punch "soccer" into webcrawler or "Alexi Lallas" and read about stuff that I wasn't finding in newspapers. After that I got my dad to bring me to a bunch of Revs games during MLS' first two seasons and have pretty much been hooked ever since. The 2002 Cup and Bigsoccer have just flamed the fires of my soccer passion. And I for one am absolutely gratefull that a place like this exists because it's really turned soccer into an obssession for me.
For me, I think cable TV was the key. People talk about a "long tail" in product offerings and I think cable TV was a good example of that as it allowed low-viewership soccer games to find a home. The internet has had a mixed effect. The negative is that it undermined newspapers. Coverage of minor sports ended up getting dropped and effectively forced people to go on the internet to follow their team. But as you say, the positive is that it allows more interaction between fans at an individual level. So it's easier for serious fans to connect but general sports fans are less exposed to soccer content on a day to day basis.
Newspapers undermined themselves by giving away their content for free on the internet. By the time the newspapers realized that their print subscriptions were dwindling at a rapid rate it was too late. Then they decided to start charging for the web content they had been giving away for free for a decade or more. They didn't value their product, and were too shortsighted to notice the coming seachange. They've been scrambling to play catch up ever since, and not making nearly enough ground up.