By Mark Baber
August 19 – As the NFL inches gradually towards possibly setting up a franchise in the UK with the official support of the ruling Conservative Party, a set of data-points drawn together by Texas-based data specialists UMBEL give an insight into how soccer is rapidly becoming a mainstream sport in the USA.
The first data point revolves around women’s football with 25.4 million US viewers having watched the recent World Cup final. The key part of this data is that the FOX network earned $4million in ad revenue for the 2015 World Cup series – up 45% from ESPN’s earnings in 2011.
Secondly, more people in the US watched the Women’s World Cup final than the NBA Finals or the Stanley Cup finals.
Looking at the development of youth sports, soccer is now second only to basketball for popularity among 12-17 year olds and 3 million children are registered to play football (up from 1,6 million in 1990).
Major League Soccer has seen a 40% increase in attendances over the last 10 years with both the Seattle Sounders and Orlando City averaging 30,000 fans per game, whilst European football is also more popular than ever, with last season’s English Premier League games on NBC averaging 425,000 viewers each.
Remarkably, data from the Adobe Digital Index shows U.S. social media buzz for events like Europe’s annual UEFA Champions League is doubling year-over-year.
On the demographic front there is good news for soccer as those identifying themselves as Hispanic are expected to reach 23% of US population by 2035. The growing audience for soccer means over 13 networks are now carrying the sport and major US corporate sponsors including AT&T, Visa, Anheuser-Busch, Nike, Nestle, General Motors, Marriott, Allstate, Pepsi, McDonald’s providing the funds to improve soccer training and to build infrastructure and facilities at all levels of the sport.
So whilst Alistair Kirkwood, CEO of NFL UK, may kindly suggest American football is not aiming to make soccer and rugby extinct in the UK but to “grow to the extent we can support and complement those sports. We do not want to replace them,” the data suggests it is in the NFL’s own backyard where the relationship between soccer and football will be played out.
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