Nutmegger

Or washed up British/European stars looking for a final payday before retirement.

Orangepants

OH is in the Soccer world here in the US. He would agree there just isn't the money in pro-soccer here.

He wrote an article about the length of games, the continuous action format, lack of natural breaks, no timeouts etc, being inconsistent with the demands of the networks to increase their returns with more and more commercials. Also another article (rather tongue in cheek) regarding the attention span and eating habits of the average sports fan! I think he titled it - A Dog at a Fair Mentality"

Guindalf

Surprised there's no mention of the lack of scoring!

For the World Cup (which should NEVER have been held in the USA!), they wanted to add time-outs (for commercial breaks*) and increase the size of the goals.

Not surprisingly, the rest of the world said no!


* They also argued that because of the heat at some of the venues, water breaks were needed. This was alleviated by having small water bags thrown onto the field during the game.

Pulaski

And that the final result for a sizeable proportion of the games is a draw. The concept of a 0-0 final score is an especially thorny problem!

sir_eccles

Was it Jack Charlton got very irate about that at the time?

To be fair to the US there are some places where the soccer culture has been grown very carefully and is very popular. I have been to a number of games at Sporting KC. they have a purpose built stadium in the European style and it has been a sell out every time I've been there. Standing for the full 90 minutes and chanting. They have really built up the supporters clubs and the north stand is insane.

From a few years ago but worth a read http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/sp...rmed.html?_r=0

Marc_ely

My experience of sports events over here is that many Americans don't go for the sport at all. They go to eat and drink constantly and tell their friends next day they were there.

I took my eldest to see Barcelona vs LA Galaxy last year. The lazy gits Messi and Neymar didn't even show (even though they were all over the advertising merchandize). Even without them they made LA Galaxy look like a bad pub team.

It's a shame because my boy plays in the Ayso and every weekend there are thousands of kids playing, and some are really pretty good. Like everything in the USA it all comes down to money in the end.

Steve_

Nope, what I've heard quite often here is that people are worried about it because soccer players don't wear helmets, but they bash into each other and the ground quite a lot. And there are other far more established alternatives to soccer, like baseball and basketball. Or in Canada, people say they'd rather play lacrosse. Yes, I'm not kidding.

For example: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/27/sp...er-player.html

Pulaski

Anybody who thinks that having someone throw a chunk of rubber or cork wrapped in leather at you at 100mph is in any sense "safer", needs their head examined.

Duncan Roberts

Since pretty much everything in MLS is owned by MLS, including contracts, all the player salary information is published yearly. Take a look and then think how much the support staff earn if the base player salaries start at $36,500 and the base plus endorsements/bonuses are only a few hundred more.

morpeth

It is not uncommon for competitive soccer teams , as opposed to AYSO, to pay the coaches and even assistant coaches. Of course then you have to deal with parents which can take a lot of patience.

morpeth

Money definitely an issue, if MLS paid more then that would raise the profile of the league.

Other issues include middle parts of the country basketball or football being ingrained in the local culture for generations, so soccer considered a secondary sport. Also, competitive youth soccer can be quite expensive and time-consuming for parents who often have to travel far distances most weekends- I have often seen parents of good players in AYSO refrain from kids moving over to competitive soccer because of the cost or time commitment.

Guindalf

Compare that to MLB's minimum salary of $507,500 and the NFL's $450,000, you start to get the picture! The NHL is even higher at $575,000.

Of course, minor league players get a lot less, but the target is there!