Soccer in the USA

Football commonly known as soccer in the USA, is rising since the country hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1994. The term soccer is commonly used to refer to that sport due to the term football being used for another sport,  American football. The number one sports in the States  are still basketball, American football, baseball and  ice hockey. These sports are making billions of dollars every year, while soccer just makes 300 million dollar a year, soccer is still less popular in the USA than in Europe. 
The United States Soccer Federation is trying hard to market soccer in America. Last year they appointed German football legend Jürgen Klinsmann as the men’s national team coach. Last year New York Red Bulls signed two big players from FC Barcelona, Thierry Henry (Mister Arsenal see my last week’s blog and Mexican superstar Rafael Marquez). And of course the signing of David Beckham for LA Galaxy, the contract was 250 million dollars for five years.

Although MLS is also much younger than most other countries divisions, and has 19 teams in 2012, it is already the 12th most-attended premier division in the world. In 2006 MLS broke its all-time record for attendance at a regular-season match, which saw 92,650 spectators fill the  LA Galaxy. Although that claim is somewhat misattributed to the MLS game as it was one of two games played that night, the second being a match between two very popular football clubs in the Spanish speaking world FC Barcelona from Spain and Mexico's Guadalajara. On August 1, 2009, a friendly match between the Los Angeles Galaxy and Barcelona at the Rose Bowl, drew a crowd of 93,137 fans. The last time a soccer match drew that many people in the United States was during the 1994 FIFA World Cup. barcaloco.com

The biggest impact of course has been the internet. Soccer fans in the States are quite different. But sites like bigsoccer.com and blogs, both for teams changed that. Reading these blogs I believe that the passion was there they just needed the outlet. Another big change has come on the TV side. ESPN Gol TV and Fox Soccer all show games live from Holland, England, Spain, Germany and Italy.  It is now much easy to watch the highest levels of world soccer on just about any day of the week in the States. This all was unheard of fifteen years ago. Now the market is also marketing big Europeans games via social media.

Football marketing in the U.S. will never be like here in Europe but it continues to grow. A recent review of attendance shows that soccer is enjoying higher per game attendance than basketball and ice hockey. It is at least going the right way.