If I am remotely representative of the potential North American audience, does soccer have any chance of ever becoming a major sport in North America? Will it ever be as big, by some measure, as MLB or the NFL? [notice I omit the NHL because soccer probably does have a chance of surpassing hockey by some measures; in terms of participation, it already has.].
- One big plus for soccer is that its games typically last less than two hours, which is great for the television market. This scheduling (with a half hour studio show between each game) allows us (in Canada, anyway) to watch three UK Premiership soccer matches every Saturday in 7 hours, about the time it takes to see two NFL games. Instead of the NFL double-headers, we could easily have soccer/football triple-headers on weekends and double-headers on Tuesday and/or Wednesday evenings. Also, even if soccer/football games begin to take more time (see below) as has happened with both MLB and the NFL, they are unlikely to become much longer than 2 1/4 or 2 1/2 hours, which would still permit the weekend triple-headers with no difficulty [I know, I know: the NFL has Sunday triple-headers now, but they take for-friggin'-ever].
- At the same time, to make the product more attractive to potential sponsors, soccer will almost surely start guaranteeing that there will be 10-second or 15-second breaks when the ball goes out of bounds or especially when a team is granted a corner kick or free kick near the goal; mark my words, this will happen in FIFA even if soccer never takes off in North America. Purists will hate this, but purists also hated all the commercial time-outs that have become so prevalent in the NFL and that have added to the time baseball games last. Adding time-outs for commercials is, after all, a minor alteration in the game, and doing so would not unduly lengthen the games, so this is a change I can imagine would be comparatively easy.
- Lots and lots and zillions and tonnes of kids grow up playing soccer/football in North America these days. So there is some interest in the game at the young participatory level. But that interest does not necessarily translate into yuppie, high-income spectator interest [reductio ad absurdum?: kids like lots of things that do not translate into major adult markets].
- To capture the young adult, high-income, and corporate-account market segment, soccer/football will have to be more exciting for North American spectators. Some possibilities might include:
- loud music during every break. MLB seems to think this is a good idea, but I hate it; as one MLB executive once told me, "Doc, your demographic isn't really the one we're targeting..."
- Scantily clad cheerleaders?
- More body contact; this change in the NBA over the past fifty years seems to have played a role in the growth of interest in the NBA. At the same time, though, it hasn't helped the NHL, which seems to be trying to reduce the amount of contact to some extent. Maybe the marginal revenue product of body contact in team sports is diminishing as the amount of contact increases, becoming negative at some point. [note: Brian Goff thinks there is already too much body contact in soccer.]
- Scoring. I'm sure I'm revealing my ethnocentric loutish ignorance, but soccer/football is boring when there are so few goals scored. What a drag! We watch for a couple of hours and maybe there's a goal scored. And maybe it's the result of skill, but some/much of the time, it seems to be the result of randomness (in play, in officiating, in wind currents, in hair length [Peter Crouch's big goal last summer in the World Cup], etc.]. But nobody can agree on what to do to increase the scoring.
