So, in case you didn’t already know this, I am a huge soccer fan. This means that, for about one month every four years, not much in my life matters. Because, for this month at least, the events of my life pale in comparison to the glory that is the World Cup. I will wake up early to watch games; I will catch replays of the ones I miss on espn3.com; I will cheer ecstatically for every positive move from my team, U.S.A, and I will experience the inevitable sorrow of their trademark early dismissal from the tournament. But I will not stop there. I will loyally watch every game from the round of 16 up until the final; because for me, the Cup does not end when America’s chances end: it’s usually only just beginning.
But I’m not a typical American. The typical American is skeptical, at best, of soccer. They may not hate it, but they vastly prefer fast-paced, action packed sports like football or basketball, or sports steeped into American tradition, like baseball, golf, or racing. A Harris poll conducted almost annually since 1985 confirms this. When American participants were asked to choose one sport as their favorite, only 2% chose soccer as their favorite, which put it in 9th place. Unfortunately I can’t compare apples to apples on this, but for rough comparison, 46% of adults in the UK follow football(soccer), and 10% participate in it…
The point I’m trying to make here, is that FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, is largely missing out completely on the U.S. market. 97% of FIFA’s income comes from event related revenue. Among other things, this covers licensing, marketing, and, primarily, broadcasting income. What is their one chance to gain ground, and therefore increased marketing, licensing, and broadcasting revenue in the U.S. market? The World Cup. This is the only time in four years that America watches soccer. And a large percentage of Americans watch only matches in which the U.S. is involved. So, based on a typical U.S. performance, that gives FIFA: 4 games. Four games to capture our nation’s attention. Four games to prove to the great god of sports, espn, that their investment was worth it. So you’d think that, in those four games, FIFA would want to make sure that Americans were seeing soccer at it’s finest. You’d think that FIFA would want these games to go flawlessly. Right? Right?
Well they didn’t.
Our country is one built on justice and truth, above all else. One is innocent until proven guilty, and has a right to know exactly what is being charged against them. This translates to our sports. Football has coaching challenges, tennis has line-judge challenges, baseball has replay to some extent, and basketball coaches always get explanations of calls with which they disagree. Not so in the World Cup. In two of U.S.A.’s four games, they had good, fair, beautiful goals disallowed. I won’t go into details, but if you want more, google Koman Coulibaly, the Malian ref who presided over, or rather, tyrannized over, the U.S.’s second game. And what did FIFA do? Essentially nothing. Coulibaly was not required to explain his goal-stealing call, and FIFA made no public review of his officiating job. They did relieve him of his duties for the rest of the World Cup, but refrained from making any comment about refereeing until more established soccer nations, England and Mexico, were robbed on goal calls. FIFA’s president, Sepp Blatter, apologized to both of those countries and said he would reconsider adding replay… which means that FIFA may add goal-line technology (to see whether a ball crosses the goal-line, the error in the England game), but likely do nothing else.
This, to me, is a punch in the face to any American. Blatter made absolutely no mention of transgressions against the United States, and failed to extend any apology to them. Are they purposely trying to isolate Americans from the sport of soccer? For the casual fan, who watched only the 4 games the U.S. played, 50% of the games he viewed had results that weren’t reflected by the final on the scoreboard. He, like others, was outraged that such an atrocity could occur, and his complaint, along with thousands of others, to soccer’s governing body were met with silence. Then, a week later, he sees the same thing happen to his country’s two biggest rivals, and sees an immediate, profuse apology from FIFA. Does this fan not feel isolated from this sport? This sport where justice is not served, favorites are played, and his country is completely disregarded.
So listen to me FIFA. Listen to me Sepp Blatter. You get 88% of your revenue from Broadcasting, Marketing, and Licensing. America is the home of many of your biggest sponsors, like Coca-Cola and Visa, and the home of 300 million people, the most of any world cup nation. It has the highest GDP of any nation, and perhaps most importantly for you, it is home of ESPN, a network with 99 million subscribers that deals with yearly revenues and expenses in the billions of dollars. For this World Cup, America, and ESPN, have given you a trial run. The ratings have been off the charts, and enthusiasm for soccer in America really does seem to be picking up. So shouldn’t you be trying to take advantage of this? Shouldn’t you be making friends with us, instead of isolating and ignoring us? Please, make this sport I love so much: fairer, less corrupt, and less scandal prone. I know I have my own biases making me want an apology, and positive action, but it’s just plain idiocy on your part to ostracize these people with loaded pocket books with whom you’re just beginning to make friends. Now is your chance to make amends. Do it.
Well, reverse psychology wins again. Due to the fact I am not a soccer fan I normally wouldn’t read an article such as this, but you said people wouldn’t read it so of course I had to. It was an interesting read with many great and convincing points. Before I say more I should admit I only watched 15 minutes of world cup soccer this year, but kept up to date on the outcomes.
The problem with comparing the mistakes of officiating and the handling of them is when they took place. Mistakes made against team USA in the end didn’t change anything. They were made during the group stage and they still won the group stage. With the possibility of the USA making it out alive and the fact that he would continue officiating, FIFA saying anything that could diminish Coulibaly as a Referee wouldn’t have helped anything. It simply would have opened up possibilities for turmoil to keep growing. The other two large mistakes were during a single elimination setting. All they had was that one game and any play can be made out to change the outcome of a single game. However, if all of these errors had taken place in the same stage I believe that at best team USA would have been lumped in with England and Mexico as an afterthought. Clearly not because they want to apologize to the USA, but simply out of necessity.
As for the economics of it all I won’t say much. Speaking strictly about income and not morality, yes the USA should be a higher focus point. Its just not something I care to see done at every opportunity as it has been in the past. I don’t know how else to put it, but hearing all the talk of justice and fairness followed by facts based on the monopoly we have on marketing seems hypocritical. You explained it very well that marketing in general, but especially in sports, is virtually completely controlled by the USA. Where there is that much control a choice must be made. Give in to it and gain along side it or don’t and try to succeed without it maybe even against it. It seems they have clearly chosen the latter in this case.
Chaz, thank you for your comment. I appreciate you reading and you raise many good points. You are right to distinguish the difference between the stages in which errors were made, and that may factor a bit into FIFA’s response. But what I’m saying is that it shouldn’t have. People like me aren’t just going to stop watching soccer because of a mistake like that, but I think many Americans could be turned away by it, because they want correct results, even if they don’t affect outcomes. So in that sense, it doesn’t matter when they happened, just that they happened at all, with virtually no response.
As for the economics of it, I will admit, it is mostly just a crutch for my argument. I would desperately like to see soccer succeed in America, and I would like to see it succeed with FIFA’s backing. The reason I talk about money, is because I don’t believe that FIFA, an organization that is in many ways stuck in its traditional ways, could be swayed just by the argument that replay should be included to make the game fairer. So, if I point out monetary incentives they may have, maybe it will get through to them better. (not that they will actually read my article) So, yes, maybe it is a little bit hypocritical of me to talk about fairness and justice and then refer to profit motives, but if those are the tactics that need to be used to achieve justice and fairness, to me, it’s the right thing to do.
Awesome comment though, thanks. Good to hear from you.
I completely agree that it doesn’t matter when the incorrect calls took place. They shouldn’t have been and since they were the United States should have been included in their apology. All I was trying to say is that either was part of their reasoning in leaving us out of it or they say it was.
As for the overall popularity of the sport I’ve been thinking of how it can be improved over the last few days. Comparing it to the other major sports right now I noticed one major thing. I think the reason soccer isn’t able to increase its popularity is a lack of stats. In all the other sports there are a wide range of various stats, but in soccer I only counted 14 total categories. I think that is also why baseball is becoming less and less popular. With steroids being addressed more and almost completely wiped out of the game at this point (which I’m all for) offensive stats are going way down. It seems like both in soccer and baseball the percentages are rather low when compared to other sports.
With more and more focus going toward highlight/stat shows like “SportsCenter”, a large variety of the two seem to be a necessity. In my opinion soccer already has great highlights, but without stats its very unlikely it will become more popular. I don’t know what new ones can come along, but if they can it would help the sport tremendously. Football is probably my favorite sport, and in my opinion it became a favorite in America around the 1980’s. During that decade a lot of new stats such as sacks started being tracked along with more focus towards offense. Its those two thing, highlights and stats, that drove the NFL into becoming the most popular sport in America.
I think there may be a little bit more to it than just the lack of statistics, and I touched on that in my original post, but that may be part of it. I think maybe it takes a little more work to follow soccer than some of the other sports, because you’re right, you can’t just read a bunch of statistics in the paper and know how well each player, or even each team did. You actually have to read an article on the game, and even then those often don’t do it justice. Then there’s also the issue of games that end in 0-0 ties, in which, to the American public’s eye, nothing happened. But to me, you can see a team completely dominate a game and it end up a 0-0 tie. And maybe they didn’t win that game, but I think they still take positives away from it, and it bodes well for the team that dominated in the future. But a ten second clip on Sportscenter can’t capture that, and sadly, that’s often all the time that Americans give to soccer. I could be wrong, but I think it comes down to Americans having short attention spans, and as a result, because of less scoring, no commercials, and no stats, etc, it’s gonna take some time to succeed.