Do you have the fever yet? I’ve been hearing about that fever for at least the last twenty years, haven’t you?
You know – World Cup Fever! Got it yet?
Nope. Me, either.
For one month every four years, the rest of the world celebrates their version of the game of football as the World Cup gets underway. With 211 countries trying to qualify for 32 spots in this year’s 2018 FIFA World Cup hosted in Russia, the United States television audience has gone back to sleep once again.
Fox Sports is covering this year’s soccer extravaganza. According to Bloomberg, television ratings for the 2018 World Cup are already down by a whopping 44% in the United States. The average viewing audience has dropped from 3.55 million in 2014 down to just under 2 million in 2018.
Even with a continuing surge in Spanish speaking US television viewers, even Telemundo’s ratings are down by a similar percentage (from 3.3 million to 1.87 million in 2018).
What gives?
The primary reason given is that the United States is not one of the 32 participating teams in this year’s World Cup. No question, the absence of America’s soccer squad is the main reason for a precipitous television viewing decline.
Though plausible, I can’t imagine that Super Bowl ratings in the US would dive by more than 40% if the NFL’s championship game pitted two smaller market teams such as Indianapolis vs. New Orleans (oops – that game in 2009 was one of the highest rated Super Bowls!).
If soccer in the United States was such a rising star (as we have been told for years and years), fans of the sport should be just as willing to watch last Sunday’s match-up of Columbia’s 3-0 shutout over Poland, right?
Wrong.
The reason why the World Cup is so popular in countries around the world is that the game really only requires a ball and two goals to play. Countries such as Tunisia, Iceland, Morocco, and Senegal have qualified for the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals while the USA and even World Cup mainstay, Italy, did not.
It is fine with me to have a great mix of worthy and talented teams in Russia for the 2018 World Cup finals this year.
Soccer has an undeniable worldwide interest. In 2006, over 700 million viewers across the globe watched the final game of that year’s World Cup.
If you are under the age of 40, it is very likely that you had a chance to learn and play soccer at a young age. You would think that, by now, this population segment would fuel a growing interest in television viewership for the sport of soccer.
In the US, it hasn’t.
Some of us more mature viewers may find soccer a wee bit boring to watch on television. The matches are generally low scoring, feature long periods of no significant scoring opportunities, increasing numbers of faked injuries, and few identifiable names among the talented athletes on the field. Though the world may embrace a low scoring defensive game, American television viewers are known for having less patience and other viewing choices they may prefer.
Just as many sports fans may not prefer to watch golf, tennis, or baseball for similar slow-play reasons, those sports are not touted by the sports media as “the next big thing” as soccer has been made to appear.
Sure, I may tune in for a portion of a match or two by the time the World Cup ends (thankfully) in mid-July.
But until then, my sock drawer may need sorting.
Gooooaaaalll!