Americanizing Soccer for the U.S. Sports Fan pt. 4

The most pop­u­lar rea­son that U.S. sports fans give for not watch­ing soc­cer is its lack of scor­ing.  In order to attract more fans, a pro­fes­sional soc­cer league in the U.S. must, above all things, try to cre­ate more offense. 

Though many fans of the sport appre­ci­ate the skills, the pass­ing, the mid­field game and all the other aspects that make soc­cer ‘the beau­ti­ful game’, in the end, a league can not have suc­cess unless it con­cen­trates on giv­ing sports fans the oppor­tu­nity to see more goals.  This is soccer’s real­ity and its dilemma in the U.S. 

For soc­cer purists and enthu­si­asts, a score­less game late in the 2nd half is dra­matic, tense and edge of the seat enter­tain­ment.  But, in order for U.S. sports fans to have sim­i­lar feel­ings, they must first expe­ri­ence the offen­sive pas­sion of the game. 

Fans will only get accli­mated after see­ing lots and lots of scor­ing.  After fans have been accli­mated to soc­cer in all its won­der and glory, they too will find the awe­some feel­ing of wait­ing for that first goal that doesn’t hap­pen till extra time of the 2nd half. 

The aver­age score for the other major team spec­ta­tor sports are all higher.  Bas­ket­ball is the excep­tion because scor­ing hap­pens fre­quently minute to minute.  But, for the other three, scor­ing is not elu­sive and is some­what reg­u­lar in its occur­rence.  In base­ball, runs are scored at more than 8 a game.  In hockey, goals are close to 6 a game.

Of all the team spec­ta­tor sports, foot­ball (Amer­i­can) is the most inter­est­ing to ana­lyze because of its unique sys­tem for scor­ing.  An aver­age pro­fes­sional foot­ball game scores between 40 to 42 points.  Because an extra point after a touch­down is hardly ever missed and safeties in foot­ball are rarely seen, it is impor­tant to cal­cu­late exactly what fans are wit­ness­ing.  By using a for­mula that con­sid­ers 1 point for a touch­down and half a point for a field goal, foot­ball is pro­duc­ing 6 points per game.   

Pro­fes­sional soc­cer around the world is aver­ag­ing between 2–3 goals per game.  The Amer­i­can sports fans will never accept only 2–3 goals per game as an aver­age.  Scor­ing must increase in order to get U.S. sports fans to the soc­cer din­ner table.  Accord­ing to how other major spec­ta­tor sports in the U.S. are func­tion­ing, it appears that 5–7 goals a game is nec­es­sary to get the atten­tion needed in order to be main­stream and part of the pro­fes­sional sports land­scape in America.

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Tagged as: average scoring, baseball, basketball, fans, football, hockey, offense, professional sports, scoring, sports, U.S. sports fans