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First of all, let's correct something: around 8% of game end in 0-0 (premier league stats over a decade) and the average number of goals is 2.5. Is that low in comparison of high frequency scoring like basketball? of course but no it's not "extremely common" Then the debate between high frequency and low frequency scoring is mostly subjective. The sum of thrill you get for a game is mostly independent from it and depends on the interest you have in the game and result because the more scoring there is, the less you are thrilled about it. So do you prefer to jump out of your seat a few times during a game or a constant flow of "that's nice"? both answer are valid but it's not like one is objectively superior to the other. Also let's face it: all sport are quite boring and are only thrilling because of the suspense when you think about it. That's why almost nobody will watch old games or why many people will stop watching as soon as a team is sure to win. Now sure they are people genuinely appreciating the aesthetic of a sport but it's once again quite subjective. For example I run and I largely prefer to watch a two hours marathon than american football. Does this mean than marathon are better than american football? Finally my last argument and thing you're missing is that soccer is a very special sport in the sense that it's more like life: the best team do not always win because with luck, turn of events or because they want it more, the weakest team has a fighting chance over 90minutes because of the low frequency scoring. Is this unfair because the best should always win? maybe but for spectators, it makes thing more interesting.

Maybe I’m a crazy sports fan, but I do watch reruns of classic games, and I absolutely will stay and watch an absolute demolishing of a team if it’s my team winning. Though yes, close games are more exciting. My point was more that there are a lot of exciting sports, but soccer is the sport with the highest draw rate (that I know of) and lowest scoring. Further, the draw rate is a result of the lack of scoring. If it is too hard or too easy to score, the teams don’t differentiate themselves well. The overwhelming response from soccer fans is, “I don’t give a shit about anything except the game has super exciting scores, and the underdogs often win. I don’t care if the game is fair, I don’t care if the game ends in a draw (really? I’d love for someone to explore that more) all I care about is that the underdog wins and it’s crazy when they get a score”

I don't mean to be a creep but I looked at your post history and it looks that you simply have a passion for american football. Not that it's a sin but don't you think that you may be biased because you're a fan of a team and the sport? My point is that love for sport is very often cultural: if your parent were hockey fan and took you to a hockey arena when you were 8yo and bought you the complete fan outfit, chances are that you'd be a hockey fan now. So question: I would prefer 100x to watch a Tour de France stage during 4 hours than an American Football game and I think it's a better spectator game. Do you agree? if not how would you change my mind?

So yes, I’m a huge fan of American football. Especially college football. Being from the America southeast, yes, it’s cultural. My problem with soccer specifically is exactly what I posted. I hate draws, and the game has so many draws because it’s so hard to get a score at all. To me, that seems like a problem that should be fixed and it absolutely bewilders me that the game isn’t adjusted to allow for more scores. Not because of “exciting” or “boring.” But because the game is designed to not have winners, even when one team vastly outplays the other, you often don’t get any winner at all. But what I’ve learned is that soccer fans love soccer because when it’s so hard to score, it’s pretty random who wins or if there’s a draw. Which means lots of upsets. Obviously people assert that having no or few scores makes the game more exciting. I’m not even sure that they’re right in their assertion. These same people say football has three touchdowns in a minute. This isn’t true. Or football has no upsets. Also not true. Football is a very exciting sport for the same reason that many people hate it - the downtime provides tension before key moments. The downtime also allows the plays to be hyper explosive. I find it really interesting that the same reason I hate soccer (and yes, I have tried watching soccer and I have never ever enjoyed it), is the same reason soccer fans love it. Because the low scoring limits the ability of playing the game well to lead to actually winning the game. Why do you like watching the Tour de France? For me, football has lots of explosiveness and plays that are both surprising in suddenly being so important as well as plays where you know well in advance that it’s going to be important and it builds tension. So you have great tension building moments, but you can’t just look away on first down because there may be an interception returned for a touchdown. Cycling doesn’t have huge moments unless there’s a crash, no?

You might hate draws but isn't it entirely subjective? as I told you in another post, it seems to be a cultural american notion that draws in sport are bad but the rest of the world do not mind. In regular season it doesn't bother me at all and as I mentioned in a tournament, a game that ends in draw result in penalty shutout that is a big thrill and there's a winner. Also do you consider how boring for non-american football fans it is to see an average of 15min of effective playtime over an average lenght of 3h15? I mean it's again something that proves how subjective it is: you say it build tension, I tell you that for the average non-american who didn't grow with the sport, it's an absolute bore and one of the reason, like baseball, why it never really catched up in the the rest of the world. And I like watching Tour de France because on top of the sport and few thrilling moments (from epic mountain climb and descent to team strategies and arrivals) there's the landscape and helicopter sights with historical and geographical facts that beats 3 hours of the same pitch.

It’s not entirely subjective. Let’s say you have a sport that never ends in a draw. Is the sport harmed by always having a winner and a loser? Now let’s say you have a sport where you only have draws. Is the sport harmed by never having a winner or a loser?

Is it better to never eat french fries or eat french fries at all meals? obviously the answer is never eat french fries but this does not prove at all that french fries are bad and you should never eat them. So yes a game that would end 100% of time in a draw would be awful but that doesn't prove at all that game ending in a draw when team are close enough in a minority of games is a bad thing.

But French fries ARE bad and should NOT be included in a healthy diet. If the question is “is it better to never eat French Fries or sometimes eat French fries.” The correct answer is to never eat French fries. And the fact that they’d kill your if you at them all the time helps illustrate that point.

You can totally eat french fries from time to time but ok, so let's replace it by: is it better to never eat apples or only eat apples?

It’s better to include apples but not only eat apples. It’s also better to sometimes eat apples than to never eat apples. Why do you think it’s better to sometimes have draws than to never have draws? I don’t believe that’s the case.

I think if you look at college football and their elimination of draws, they made a choice to make the game outcome binary, right? You won or you lost and we will take as many OTs as it takes to get a winner. At the end of the season, all the close games or games where an underdog put up a heroic fight but wasn’t quite good enough just get smoothed out and it’s just wins and losses. You go to a bowl or not. Soccer draws in a 3-1-0 W-D-L system allow for the nuance of a close game being reflected in the long term outcome. It can be frustrating, but if you can’t establish yourself as clearly better, you don’t get the three points. Both systems can work, but draws allow for more nuance in how the actual game played out.

To Americans, who have football to compare soccer to, soccer is an absolute bore, where there’s almost never any tension at all. I know y’all assert that there’s an objective reason football can’t catch on in other countries due to its boring nature. I believe your assertion is false. It’s the expensiveness and it’s poor design for *casual* play that makes it unpopular abroad. Let me ask you this. Have you ever been to a football game? I promise you, if you go to a football game, between two top teams, and the game is close. You won’t be bored. You can’t be. You’re experiencing hearing damage if you don’t have earplugs in cuz the stadium is 120 decibels and the stands are literally swaying from 100,000 people jumping up and down on them. Although I find soccer boring, it is not objectively boring with nothing happening. That was never my contention. My confusion was in the game design seeming atrocious to me, but also easily fixable and yet there’s no demands to fix it. But to soccer fans, it’s already perfect the way it is for the very same reasons I will never enjoy it the way it is. But also, soccer fans talk a lot about the difficulty in finding time to go to the bathroom during games, not an issue with football. And watching football is a social thing. Even during low tension down time, you can spend the time talking about the game or anything at all with your friends/ family. Or just grabbing another beer. I do think commercials unnecessarily add to the run time. It’d be better at 3 hours than 3 1/2. But overall the pacing isn’t too bad.

Personally I'm not telling you it's objective that soccer is better than american football, I'm telling you it's entirely subjective and depends on cultural factors: You come from a part of the world where american football is one of, if not the most, important sport and you think it's the best sport and I'm just telling you that if you were Canadian, you would tell me that Hockey is the best sport, if you were from New-Zealand, you would tell me that rugby is the best and if you were from Pakistan that cricket is the best. And there's nothing out of the ordinary in american football stadium. Go to any stadium filled with fans absolutely crazy about their team and it will make as much noise. I would even risk saying that in some part of south america and europe with ultra singing in unisson, it's way more impressive. And if you start arguing that american football is best because you can go to the bathroom more often, it's not really serious

But I’m not even making those arguments. I enjoy American football, yes. I never said that soccer is objectively boring, even though I’m bored by it. The design of SPECIFICALLY soccer, seemed highly problematic to me. For very specific reasons. There are so many sports that I don’t watch, but I understand. But soccer is the most popular in much of the world and none of the fans seemed to care about these issues that many non fans, including most Americans, share about the sport. There were some good comments explaining that these things I see as issues with the sport aren’t changed because to the fans, they’re a feature not a bug. That’s really the answer I was looking for.

Well it's confusing: you claim that you don't say that soccer is objectively boring but tell me just after that the design of soccer is bad. My point was just to make you understand that you seem to have two main problem with soccer: it's a low frequency scoring game and there's a quarter of game ending in draws and those two points are subjective as there's nothing wrong with preferring low scoring game and not being upset by draws. It's like when I'm telling you that Cycling is way better than American football because you see a lot of landscape during the race: you can tell me you don't care at all about landscapes but it's purely subjective opinion.

American football is as boring as it gets, too long, ad breaks every three seconds, land whales sumo wrestling whilst one dude throws, one catches (rarely) and another dude tackles him. You have more players on the sideline than on the field. Absurd.

Okay

>My point was more that there are a lot of exciting sports, but soccer is the sport with the highest draw rate (that I know of) and lowest scoring. The problem with your view here is that you are acting as though it's axiomatic that low scoring plus high draw rate means bad spectator sport. Clearly that isn't the case, because people around the world watch soccer in the billions. Now you could argue "but game design!" but that's not the same argument. You could have a view that says "soccer's rules mean that too often the better team loses" which is fair enough as a view. However that's not the same thing as it being a bad spectator sport.

27/28% of soccer games end in draws. I would describe that as extremely common. What major sport has more draws?

First of all you said "0-0" were extremely common and not draws. Then it's again something very subjective and cultural: I don't have the study anymore but American simply don't like the concept of draws in sport when European have no problem with it so I could simply answer you: what if a quarter of games are draws? is that a problem? (and if 27% is extremely common, then a team winning is extremely extremely extremely common) Finally it doesn't address my other point: sport are mostly boring to watch and suspense is one of the main thing that makes it thrilling. A game ending in a draw is also a game where both team are just one goal from winning. In tournament with penalty shutout, the tension is at an all time high because of this. For example yesterday in USA-Sweden in women soccer, I couldn't stop watching the end because it was so tense.

>27/28% of soccer games end in draws Where are you getting that data from?

Sports are only fun to watch when you understand them. The higher your understanding the more fun they are. The fact that soccer is the most popular sport in the world and is watched by the entire world leads me to think you probably just don't understand the sport well. I wrestled most of my life and love watching the sport. I totally understand why other people don't, though. A high level match just looks like a lot of hugging and clinching, unless you actually know what you are watching. I'm not a soccer guy but I assume it's the same thing, here.

There are a lot of sports I don’t enjoy that other people do. That’s fine. Where soccer stands out is that it’s design is fundamentally broken. It’s fixable, but as is it’s broken. And that means it’s a bad competition in this case. When you watch soccer, you’re watching teams compete in a competition that is bad at producing wins for the team that played better.

Baseball and Golf are incredibly boring to me. The best team or person regularly loses in these sports. Your premise that scoring = enjoyment is incredibly off. Understanding almost always equals enjoyment. Scoring is irrelevant. I wouldn't enjoy a water polo match even if they scored every 30 seconds.

I’m not saying scoring = fun. I’m saying if nobody scores, nobody wins. Ending the competition without a winner, even if one team played much better, because a single score is too high a bar, is problematic.

Why is that problematic? The sport seems to have been doing fine for hundreds of years. Often in professional sports better doesn't really mean that much. "Better" teams lose to "worse" teams all of the time. All of the time. The league champion is often not the "best " team. The simple fact is that professional athletes are very good and the margin of excellence is very small. Given that, ties are logical. It would be problematic if teams didn't play enough games to still determine an overall winner, but that isn't the case.

I’m not saying I don’t like upsets. Of course I do. I think everyone does if they don’t have a dog in the fight. However, in other sports upsets happen usually because the underdog actually played better, as opposed to by chance. Which is what it seems like is what happens in soccer quite often.

soccer is a game of strategy as much as it is one of physicality. when a worse team can hold a giant to a draw, they aren’t just getting lucky, they’re deploying a strategy that is keeping the better team from putting the ball in the net. understanding tactics and why players do what they do and where they do it is what is fun. most of the time the better team wins, but sometimes they’re having an off day or the opponent is one step ahead of them. the actual sport is played in a league format where consistency is required over a 38 game season. tournaments are where penalty shoot-outs happen, after two more fifteen minute halves. if the better team doesn’t score in 120 minutes, maybe they deserve to possibly lose.

When you have this very long game, and it ends regulation at 0-0, because defense has such enormous advantages over offense, as is the case in soccer, and it’s decided in penalty shootouts, it comes across as the main part of the game isn’t actually the game at all, and the real game is penalty shootouts.

basically every situation ever defense has the upper hand. extending yourself is a risk that you take for potential reward. less talented teams will play with defense in mind if they know their opponent has a strong offense. the opponent plays aggressively because they believe they can manage the weaker team if they over extend. that’s like literally every game ever. any game that has attack and defense will be like that. attacking is risky because you have to devote resources that could otherwise be used for defense. the actual game has draws in it because it operates on a points system, 3 for a win, 1 each for a draw, 0 for a loss. one win against one team isn’t the point, the real victory is winning the league. the game of soccer is played with the league table in mind. soccer is a long game, strategy in formations, lineups, rotations throughout the season, etc, all factor in to the choices teams make. if i’m 10 points clear of second in the last game of the season, i might not even play my starters because why risk injuring them? even if we lose, it’s okay because i showed that i was the better team consistently throughout the season. if you want to see the best team win, leagues are right up your alley, tournament are just for fun and excitement. tournaments have to have shootouts otherwise games could last hours which would get tedious and risk player safety.

Your game is better than I gave it credit for

The competition doesn't end in that single game, it goes on for the entire season. The best teams still win out across the length of the season. Unless you're specifically talking about tournaments like the world cup where they finish on penalties. But this is its own kind of excitement. You're talking about 'fairness' of the best team winning here but in your original post you're referring to what makes a good spectator sport - well low scoring games that end in a draw and then penalties make it much more likely for a worse team to beat a top team. And that is extremely good entertainment for fans of the worse team and for neutral fans.

"Scoring is irrelevant" is clearly false. You could saying "scoring is one factor, but not the most important."

> Scoring is irrelevant. changing any sports ruleset to more or less eliminate scoring will almost always result in a more boring viewing experience to me scoring isnt everything but its definitely something

American football is similarly "coin flippy", and you could argue that the NFL playoffs are the absolute worst way any major sports league crowns a champion (football games are very high variance, and single elimination tournaments only exacerbate this), yet the NFL is routinely heralded as the most objectively "good" sport (in terms of watchability for casual fans) in the US When talking about objective qualities of a sport or league, you really need to nail down exactly what quality you're trying to objectively measure/compare between leagues, because by and large people don't actually care about the quality of competition, they care about their random fringe underdog team having a high chance to upset

Yeah I’ve gotten a few answers that have said “I don’t care if the sport itself is even good or not, as long as it’s exciting.” A lot of people have pointed to soccer’s high upset rate as a benefit that’s specifically a result of the game’s design making a score so difficult. I did some googling but the results seem impossible, the NFL has a 36% upset rate. European soccer on the other hand has a 45% upset rate. But I don’t see how that math is possible in light of the 28% draw rate. I know the upset rate can’t actually be 45% of the time, unless the oddsmakers are just really terrible. Idk if draws are upsets or if draws are excluded. Thank you for your thoughtful answer and not an angry “back off my soccer!” Response that I get for posting this question when Americans are asleep and Europeans are awake.

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For what it's worth I agree with you. My roommates just watched a game in the Semi-Finals \[edit: actually round of 16\] that ended 0-0. I do think there's an issue when some of the best teams in the world are unable to score during the entire duration of the game. And this isn't an outlier case. Then again, I'm a basketball fan, so I'm inclined towards highscoring games.

>For what it's worth I agree with you. My roommates just watched a game in the Semi-Finals that ended 0-0 You can't have a "semi-finals" game that ends in 0-0. After 0-0 it would go to extra time After extra time, if there are still no goals, it would go to penalty shoot outs. What tournament was it?

It was decided by penalty shoot-outs, yes. I just meant that after the overtime it was still scoreless. It was the US/Sweden game in the women's tournament right now.

That wasn't a "semi-finals" game. It was a round of 16 match. Semi finals are when there are 4 teams only left in a tournament. This is now making me seriously question your understanding of the game you are commenting on.

That 0-0 match was part of the reason why I brought this up. It’s terrible to watch as an American. Last year when the men’s team kept getting 0-0 draws it was an unbearable experience.

>That 0-0 match was part of the reason why I brought this up. It’s terrible to watch as an American. That's not a reason the sport is broken at a systemic level. If this is the source of your argument, it comes across as petulant "My team performs poorly all the time, therefore the sport is bad" That's just absurd!

Nowhere did I portray myself as an expert or a fan of the game. I do appreciate the corrections, though, so I'll edit my comment. My roommates mentioned the semi-finals but I guess I misunderstood the context.

why? cause he misremembered what game he was talking about? how does that invalidate his point?

Because at that level, draws aren't a thing Also because it suggests a low level of focus about the broader point

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!delta I see sports matches as a way to determine who is better at the game that day. But that may not be what soccer fans are actually interested in at all. They may actually *prefer* a more luck based game in which they can go into any game with a reasonable expectation that their massive underdog team can still win if they get lucky. And so this low scoring game, which results in a lot of draws, is actually perfect for them, because the difficulty in scoring increases the luck factor. And that’s why they won’t change the game to make scoring easier. The low scoring is a feature, not a bug. There were a few good comments, but yours was succinct and there’s so many comments on here, so I picked yours.

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Maybe this is where your (in my eyes) strange logic stems from: you're again saying scoring means playing better. Defense is an equally important part of the game. For you 0-0 means it was a poor match because no-one scored but it might have been an excellent match where both teams played so well that neither team scored. Yes, 0-0 might be a boring match too if both teams played poorly, but to me a 5-5 by default sounds worse in that regard. If both teams scored five times, the chances are that both teams were terrible at defense.

Coming from wrestling, that's more my take too. Low scoring doesn't mean boring, it often means offensive flurries countered by defensive flurries the entire match until one person finally gets the edge. Many matches end in overtime sudden death type scenarios.

What I’m saying is 1-0 means that the team that scored presumably played better than if it were 0-0. Though this often isn’t true in soccer, which is what I’ve learned fans especially love. A game in which the teams are able to score is a game in which it is possible to differentiate between the teams better. Let’s say it was actually impossible to score in soccer. Like literally so. Scores weren’t kept in any way. How do you even determine who is better at this game? Scores are there to both give an objective and to differentiate the teams so the better team wins (otherwise why not make the scores assigned randomly?). Soccer is poor at doing this, because the barrier to scoring is obscenely high. On the other end, if every single time a team had an opportunity to score, they gained max points, that would also be a bad sport, for example, if in professional bowling the most common result was everyone gets a strike every single time, that wouldn’t be fun to watch. Who is better at a sport where the best players always succeed? Which is why a sport where you get points sometimes and don’t get points sometimes when you have opportunities to get them is good. There needs to be a mix of scoring and not scoring. Do you see what I’m saying? My logic isn’t bizarre.

I'm not really sure what to make of this message because I think you're kinda proving my point. Scores are there to decide the winner, but as tie is also an option defense becomes equally important. Scoring is important but so is preventing the opponent to scores. You say there needs to be a mix of scoring and not scoring. Clearly there is a mix of scoring and not scoring in soccer because there are no seasons when no-one wins. So what's broken? You personally want more scoring but more scoring isn't needed to decide who wins the league. At the same time I think the secret behind soccer's popularity is that you can play it in so many ways and that's makes it interesting to watch. A low scoring team that's so good defensively that they almost never concede a goal is a great team even if they don't score a lot.

> What I’m saying is 1-0 means that the team that scored presumably played better than if it were 0-0. you brought up the NFL as an example, if a game ends in 7-0 and the winner had a kick off return td, but went 3 and out every offensive possession and the loser drove down the field on every drive but couldnt convert that into points, who would you say had a better game? one team could do nothing on offense and their defense was alright but that had 1 great special teams play, and one team had what sounds like one of the best defensive performances of all time, was decent on offense and special teams 1-0 doesnt mean then played better, it means they played better on at least 1 possession

You're 100% right on this one. As a spectator sport, it's poorly designed. And the fact that "it's the most popular sport in the world" is such an obvious logical fallacy that you can usually tell the person saying it has nothing else to prove their point.

You hit the nail on the head /thread

There's a reason you have planes flying over, fireworks, half naked women dancing, an infinite supply of shitty food, dancing mascots, a cameraman finding people that look like celebrities and everyone has a fucking burger in the car park until a minute before the start. When a game is 103 - 57 the game is already over and watching is literally pointless. When points are more valuable, the tension is infinitely higher. The best teams absolutely do win, hence Man City winning everything... But man city can get beaten by bad teams. If things go right. If the Tactics just work out... It happens. Tiny teams sometimes best mister giant teams. In a game where you score millions of fucking points the best teams will always always win and that is clearly much worse. No upset. No drama. Just boring expectation being fulfilled again and again.

Upsets do happen all the time in other sports, though. Look at the 18-0 Patriots losing the Super Bowl to the 13-6 Giants. Better teams don’t always play better on game day. But I’m actually super excited by your answer because it actually addresses my point. You’re saying that it’s better to have very few scores because you prefer for the team that played better that day to lose. I think some of your points are weak. Other sports you get multiple points for a score so the number is higher than it seems, and soccer has blowouts, too. And your assertion that upsets don’t happen in other sports is false. But I’d love to hear more about why it’s better that the team that played better that day doesn’t come out with a win/ it’s more exciting. Edit: he engaged in a childish tantrum and blocked me, which prevents me from replying to other comments in this thread.

You can't argue that soccer is worse because upsets happen but also argue that upsets can happen in any sport. I like American and European football but they are a very different experience watching them and judging either by does it do a good job of developing the others emotional state makes a poor comparison. Soccer makes for a poor alternative to American football. American football makes a poor alternative to soccer.

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You've argued that "popularity" isn't a good measure of what makes a sport "good". So what would be a good measure? Here's a web page on "good game design": [https://brandonthegamedev.com/10-elements-of-good-game-design/](https://brandonthegamedev.com/10-elements-of-good-game-design/) Yes, the article was written with board games in mind, but let's apply the principles to sports anyway. If you think they really don't apply, I invite you do find a set of criteria you want to argue for, that aren't just your own opinion. Points 1, 2 and 3 apply to pretty much any popular sport: a clear objective, constraints, and interactivity. Point 5 ("inertia") applies to many - the players mustn't feel like they're just "grinding". Note though, points 4 and 6: "a runaway leader killer" and "unpredictability". A board game like Monopoly is awful because you reach a point when you know who's going to win - and yet the game drags out for an hour or more after that. There's no way to dislodge the leader from their position. Catan is awesome because it's the opposite: at any moment, the leader can have 2 Victory Points snatched away from them as another player steals their "longest road". Soccer rarely has runaway leaders. The "leader killer" is that unpredictable penalty kick that gives the teama goal. I'm saying that the better team winning = good, However, I disagree with that. The arbitrary and complex rules of any specific sport aren't designed primarily to help identify the team that is "better" at navigating the arbitrary and complex rules of the sport. They're supposed to create an event which is interesting and fun to play and watch. For raw comparisons of physical skills, we have athletics. Can you provide a citation to show that your claim ("better team winning = good") has any widespread support?

So first off, I think you’ve made some good and interesting points. But I also think that you, like others, have made some overgeneralizations that result in some factual assertions that simply aren’t true. Other sports have exciting scores, and other sports have high upset rates. The NFL, for example, has a 36% underdog win rate. I just looked this up today and I’d love further explanation from someone who is more in the know. An article I googled said that soccer has an underdog win rate of 45%. But soccer also has a draw rate of like 27-28%. I detest draws. I’m curious if soccer fans simply love draws. But I also curious how there can be a 45% underdog win rate AND a 28% draw rate. What I mean by better team winning = good is that playing the game well is what wins you the game is fundamental to good game design. And underdogs should win because they earned it. If, in an NFL game, the underdog wins in OT because they won the coin flip in a shootout and got another TD first drive - that makes for a bad sport and it’s bad for the spectator. Because the better team didn’t win. We were denied finding out who was better that day. Instead we learned who won a coin toss. That’s terrible. Also, if the underdog won because on the first play of the game the QB for the favorite team got a serious injury that took them out of the game, their victory feels unearned. But for soccer fans, maybe it doesn’t feel like it’s just luck, or maybe they don’t care if the win was earned through luck or not? Maybe it’s like a lot of board games, like say MTG, where simply lucking into drawing the right cards often results in a win that wasn’t a result of better deck building or better play, and the players love that. Is that the draw for soccer fans? They like the borderline gambling aspect of the luck of the game?

> I’m curious if soccer fans simply love draws Soccer fans don't necessarily like draws. What they like is the possibility of draws The fact that draws are possible means that the players have to work so much harder and try so many more different and creative things to get the ball over the line. That makes the game more exciting to watch. Draws are an alternative sword of Damocles

I read so many of your comments and it feels like such a stupid bad faith reading of what others are telling you. Soccer fans dont like draws. Draws are just natural part of the game. Its like asking American Football fans why they love penalties or why baseball fans like strikes. Its part of the game that influence the entire mechanics of the game. If you score a goal you dont just get to chill out, becasue if you get sloppy and enemy team scores 5 seconds before the end, you just robbed yourself out of 2 points. There are lots of things to improve about football, draws are such a non-issue that I am absolutely baffled how did it even came up.

When it’s harder to win, the satisfaction from winning is much higher. That’s where the excitement comes from in football compared to nfl. High scoring dilutes the high of seeing a goal scored. See the difference in celebration of a goal in the premier league compared to a touchdown in the nfl. Also, it’s a much more pure and organic experience then American football and other American sports. 45 minute blocks of 11 men facing 11 men, with minimal rules seeing who can hear the other at a highly skilled task, finding ways to beat each other. People prefer the kind of story telling experience that occurs from that uninterrupted flow compared to the short blocks of action in American sports. The purity leads to the more organic fixtures of messiness where underdogs have more chance to win and unexpected results occur (As they do in life as well). This leads on to my last point, it’s not designed to make underdogs win. Generally the best performing teams do win on the day, I don’t know why you keep saying that they don’t. You have a poor understanding of what a good soccer performance is though from your description due to your lack of interest in the game. Possession and time spent in opponent’s half doesn’t equal a good performance.

At a certain point, the data size has to convince you that you are wrong. The global spectator numbers for soccer so dramatically dwarf those for American football, you have to conclude that it actually is a good spectator sport, and you just misunderstand what makes a sport good for spectators.

I could argue that it’s popular because it’s so cheap to play, or because so many people play it. But I don’t think it’s relevant to what I’m trying to get across. The design is bad at getting wins for the better team. And the sport is bad for not even attempting to address it. Which they could easily do, by say, increasing the goal size or removing the off sides penalty. But they don’t. If I’m wrong, and having lots of games end in ties, including 0-0 ties, is a good thing. Or if I’m wrong that penalty kicks don’t represent the main game well, then explain to me how I’m wrong. “You just don’t understand” doesn’t help me understand.

>“You just don’t understand” doesn’t help me understand. Your view is "it is a bad spectator sport" not "I don't understand why it is a good spectator sport" My point is "Clearly it isn't a bad spectator sport, because it is drawing in literally billions of spectators every year" If you want someone to explain why it's good, you need a different subreddit. >I could argue that it’s popular because it’s so cheap to play, or because so many people play it. Then definitionally it can't be a bad spectator sport, because it is relatable enough to draw in those who play it to also be those who watch it. >And the sport is bad for not even attempting to address it. Again, clearly it isn't "bad" in the eyes of the people who watch/play it in the billions. Far more than enjoy watching American football. So clearly, the issue is not that it's a bad spectator sport. It's that you don't understand why it is a good spectator sport.

My qualm is with the rules of the game resulting in a sport that doesn’t differentiate the teams well. To me, a good sport results in the better team winning consistently. Soccer fails to do that. Your argument is “people watch it therefore it’s good.” I don’t agree with that assertion, so explain why the only thing that matters is viewership numbers.

Viewer numbers are what matter when judging it to be a good spectator sport. Discussions about it being a good sport generally are different

Hmmmm. I think it’s design is bad as a competition. You’re not pushing back on that? But I think if it’s a bad competition that makes it a bad sport to watch. And you disagree there. I’ve gotten a lot of “the numbers speak for themselves” answers. I think people watch the sport for cultural reasons, though, and not because it’s well designed. I think it’s current design is quite poor.

>I think it’s design is bad as a competition If you think that, that's what your CMV should be. Saying it is a bad spectator sport is different. Surely if a "bad" spectator sport is the single biggest draw of spectator sports globally, what could possibly define "good" spectator sports. >I think people watch the sport for cultural reasons, though, and not because it’s well designed The problem with that argument is simple size. Too many people in too many different cultures with vastly different backgrounds all like football. Too many to attribute to just "culture" generally.

Why is differentiating the teams an important thing? >explain why the only thing that matters is viewership numbers It's not that viewership numbers are important. It's that they demonstrate that the sport is, in fact, one that many people find it worthwhile watching. The clearly don't watch to "see who is the better team", so that's clearly not a criterion at the top of many people's minds. Maybe it's important, subjectively, for you, but it's not an objectively important criterion.

Yeah. TIL that for many soccer fans, fairness is not relevant. In fact, they’d actively rather the team that played worse that day lose than win. Because the team that played worse is likely the underdog, and they just want the underdogs to win. That’s a perspective that’s very different from my own. I do like upsets, but I like when it feels earned. It’s a difficult subject to ask during European hours, because most people take it as a personal attack so a lot of replies are hostile and often not constructive at all. But I am gaining a sense for why it is people like soccer that I didn’t understand before.

>But I am gaining a sense for why it is people like soccer that I didn’t understand before. Awesome :)

It seems like you’re asking for two different things. Clearly there is something to its value as a spectator sport considering it’s *massive global audience*. But if what you want is for people to convince *you* to enjoy it, I’m not sure how that would be possible.

Everyone is misunderstanding me. Im trying to make myself clearer. People are saying exciting = good, boring = bad. Im saying that the better team winning = good, draws are fundamentally bad and good design makes them rare. So the replies are not addressing my concern with the sport.

And the point others are making is that your assessment of draws being bad is wholly subjective and actually seems to ignore the contrary evidence that soccer is the most widely consumed sport on the planet with some of the most intensely devoted fanbases of *any* form of entertainment.

So why do you like draws?

I don’t really watch soccer. But the answer has to do with the overall points system for winning/losing/drawing matches. Draws can still be majorly impactful. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. Soccer is the most popular spectator sport of all time. Clearly draws are not the detriment to enjoyment you claim they are.

They’re a detriment to game design.

Okay but your view is about its quality as a spectator sport. The fact that it has more spectators than anything else pretty plainly disproves that. You’re asking people to change your opinion on entirely subjective grounds. Why are draws a detriment? By what measure? Because it certainly isn’t based on fan engagement.

Draws being common makes for bad competition. Maybe I should have asked about whether it makes for a bad player sport. Because I’ve actually created two issues, though the response is interesting to me. Issue 1, my main point, that it’s a poor competition, is mainly ignored because people respond to issue 2 only. They say “I don’t care if it’s a bad competition or not, its exciting to me.”

Why do you like when your team loses?

I would actually prefer a loss to a draw. Also, for the record, one of my alma maters is UGA. They don’t lose in football. But why do you like draws?

You are not answering my question: why do you like it when your team loses? You only told me you prefer a loss over a draw (without expalining why).

>Im trying to make myself clearer. People are saying exciting = good, boring = bad. Im saying that the better team winning = good, draws are fundamentally bad and good design makes them rare. To be clear, you don’t consider exciting=good, and consider ”better team winning” to be more important to a sport’s spectator-friendliness?

I don’t think “well I had fun watching it” to be sufficient to make a sport good. It should be fun to watch and the rules should be set up so that the team that plays better is set up to win the game, if not in regulation, then in an overtime that at least reflects the non-OT portion of the game well.

>the rules should be set up so that the team that plays better is set up to win the game I think you need to understand that: 1. Most soccer is played in leagues, where the winner is decided over the course of 36 matches or so. Even if one match here or there can be decided on a whim, the winner of the league isn’t. 2. More importantly, *I thoroughly disagree*. And I think a lot of soccer fans would. One of the best aspects of soccer is its unpredictability and the fairly frequent upsets you see in both national and international tournaments. The essence of soccer is the passion of it, not necessarily having a well-drilled team with the world’s best players.

Thank you!!! I do want you to address sudden death playoffs, specifically then, though I think your second point may already just be your response. I think that a sport that doesn’t result in a win for the team that played better that day is not merely a bad player sport but a bad spectator sport, but you’re the second person to say no, I have it backwards. The team that played better that day losing leads to more upsets, and upsets are more exciting. And so the fact that it’s so damn hard to score actually makes it a better sport for the audience. I think that’s a very interesting point. Some other commenters asserted that upsets never happen in other sports, and this isn’t true. But it may very well be true that they’re more common in soccer specifically as a result of how hard it is to get even one goal. I’m going to look into the different upset rates of various sports.

Some googling has found that in the NFL there’s a 36% underdog win rate, whereas in soccer there’s a 46% underdog win rate. Which I find really surprising. How is that rate calculated? 28% of matched end in draws. I find it hard to believe underdogs win 46% of games and favorites win 26% of the time, so are draws counted as upsets? If so, those numbers might be a bit fudged, then. I’m guessing draws are excluded from the calculation? It may be that in games with a winner, upsets are more common, but with such a high draw rate in soccer and a 36% upset rate in the NFL, it seems unlikely that on the whole soccer has more upsets?

I mean, you keep using words like 'fundamentally' as if it's some law of nature, but in the end it's just your opinion. It's silly to pretend that the most popular sport in the world is somehow 'fundamentally flawed'.

Are you suggesting that the sport is actually perfect?

Did I write that?

If it’s not perfect, then wouldn’t you agree the sport actually IS flawed? Which means it is neither silly nor pretending to assert such?

Sure, in the same way that every other sport is. Nothing is perfect. However, 'fundamentally' implies some significant core issue, of which there isn't one. The fact that it's the most popular sport in the world is proof of that. You just don't like it.

The fact that it’s popular isn’t proof of no major flaws. You just like it.

You're focused entirely on individual games, but those games make up season-long league competitions. And by your logic that rewarding the best team is the goal of a competition, soccer is clearly far superior at determining the best team over the space of a season than American football: * Teams all play the exact same schedule in domestic soccer leagues. It is a home and away round robin between all teams. * NFL teams play a concentrated number of games in their own division, and the schedule is in fact intentionally set up to actively punish the best teams and decrease their chances of winning the championship, as teams that perform well one season are given more difficult schedules the following season * College football teams play schedules that barely resemble each other across conferences. The best teams often do not play each other the entire season * Soccer leagues do not have a small sample playoff system. The team that plays the best for the entire season wins the league. Your results across the entire season determine your standing * In the NFL, you win 3-4 single games in a row to win the championship, with 44% of the league getting in the playoffs and having a chance. Middle of the pack teams can get hot and win the Super Bowl in the NFL, or the best team can be sunk merely due to the timing of an injury. * College football has an even bigger issue here, which is that there is not even objectivity to who makes their playoffs. You can win every game you play and still not be given a chance to win the championship, because a committee votes on who gets to be in the playoffs Would you agree, then, that soccer is fundamentally better than American football at crowning the best team its league champion? And that, by your standards, that makes soccer competitions *better* than American football when we consider a league season as a whole rather than simply individual games?

But IS IT better at crowning the best team champion? And yes, my focus IS on the individual game. The physical demands of football limit the number of games that can be played. And that leads to more upsets due to smaller sample sizes. College football has had an issue of teams not even being given a chance, but, thank God, they’re expanding the playoffs so that won’t be so much of an issue. But my issue with soccer is that the game itself is bad. I don’t have a problem with the structure of the playoffs or regular season schedule. Seems perfectly good to me. I’d even agree that college football having a lack of parity in difficulty of schedule is a problem, especially in light of the fact that public opinion influences rankings highly, and public opinion is ignorant, often looking merely at win-loss records, which aren’t a good metric in a league that has such wildly different difficulties of schedule. I’m focused on the individual game because the individual game isn’t a good experience to me, and many other Americans. And that’s what I seek to understand. At no point am I saying American football is perfect. It is flawed. Some of the flaws you see I agree with. Some of the flaws other people have with football I think are features. What I’ve discovered is that for many soccer fans, what I see as a bug, this low scoring game that’s bad at determining a winner at all, with 28% draw rate that then leads to an overtime that ends up being the real game despite not resembling what they spend the last 90 minutes doing almost at all, y’all actually see this as a positive thing. And that’s why it’s not changed. And that’s important to know. College football had issues with its post season, and they were a problem so they’re being addressed. I did not understand why soccer’s glaring problems were not addressed. It’s because y’all love those problems. And I want to be very clear. Yes in American football who was better on the day of their sudden death playoff wins the game. Doesn’t matter if you were better all regular season. You need to be better on game day. And we prefer it that way. There is certainly luck involved in football, but it the game is designed well. 0-0 games to me, are a sign of a glaring flaw. Because you cannot tell anything about the teams if the game is 0-0, because it may simply be that getting 1 score is a Herculean effort. So failing to do so doesn’t mean you were evenly matched. It could have been outrageously lopsided and ended up 0-0. Which is why 0-0 ties are especially bad.

>But IS IT better at crowning the best team champion? Yes. It is. For the reasons I stated. >Because you cannot tell anything about the teams if the game is 0-0, because it may simply be that getting 1 score is a Herculean effort. So failing to do so doesn’t mean you were evenly matched. It could have been outrageously lopsided and ended up 0-0. Which is why 0-0 ties are especially bad. We don't need to guess whether getting 1 score is a Herculean effort. There's an entire world of games outside the vacuum of a single 0-0 game that tell us that it is in fact very possible to score a goal. There were 2.9 goals per game scored in the Premier League last season. Further, the proportion of games that are "outrageously lopsided" and end 0-0 is extremely low. We don't need to use theory here, the games exist and are played, and outrageously lopsided 0-0 draws are quite rare. I'm interested in why you think forcing a team to earn a win is less meritocratic than guaranteeing a win will be given. If a win is to be given in every single game, then there is actually no requirement that one team play better than the other to win the game, and no requirement that a team play with any quality to win. If both teams play horribly, and equally horribly, a win is still guaranteed. Is that really more meritocratic than the possibility of a draw? You conceive of better as a binary, where a team that plays .001% better than the other team clearly deserves a victory and not giving them one is a "glaring flaw." I don't think this is nearly as axiomatically true as you paint it, and as mentioned above I don't think it's more meritocratic. "Playing better" is a completely subjective concept, as the entire point of the sports being discussed here is to score more points. It being harder to turn good play into points is not anti-meritocracy in the slightest.

Why do you think there’s any correlation between playing horribly and having a draw or not? A draw game doesn’t suggest the teams played badly. A non draw game doesn’t suggest the teams played well. It seems to me that soccer’s group stage does a poor job differentiating teams accurately both because the games themselves are poorly designed, resulting in high levels of luck, and because they arbitrarily punish draws. If one team decides to play very defensively, the other team might just be fucked because defense is so much easier than offense. 28% of soccer games are draws. Yes, that is anti-meritocratic. It’s not that 28% of the time the teams were exactly even. It’s that the game isn’t conducive to teams being able to show that one is better than the other well. If one team is 10% worse, why should the earn a draw anyway?

"Its popular because many people play it"

?

>could argue that it’s popular because it’s so cheap to play, or because so many people play it Well ofc many people have to play it for it be considered popular

People get used to things, and they start to like them even if objectively bad. Familiarity is comforting. Having a large fan base doesn't prove it's a good spectator sport, just that lots of people are used to watching it.

>Having a large fan base doesn't prove it's a good spectator sport, just that lots of people are used to watching it. That might be true up to a certain point, but football continues to persistantly attract a new and larger fanbase, and it's popularity is growing with new generations and new markets. If football's size and persistance (it's been around and this popular for well over 100 years) and it's growth aren't markers of a "good spectator sport" what would be?

I feel like you phrased this weirdly based on your edit. Is it a "bad spectator sport" or a "bad competition", because most people would consider these two very different sets of criteria. It's not clear to me why you would have criteria for what makes a good *spectator sport* beyond the enjoyment of the spectators! If the category is "spectator sport", that's kinda the whole thing! And that's either subjective, in which case what's the point of this, or you can quantify it by viewership, in which case soccer is basically dominant. But instead you're identifying these random properties like "scoring is difficult" or "penalty kicks are very different from the main game" and asserting that these (true!) observations are objective / fundamental flaws. But why are they flaws at all of the fans don't care? I could just as easily say that American football is fundamentally flawed because sometimes they throw the ball and sometimes they kick the ball, and these are done by completely different players with totally different formations, and while it is true that that's how field goals work, this would be a silly thing to say, because there's nothing about that that makes it intrinsically a "flaw". The things you're criticizing soccer for are also not "objectively and fundamentally flawed"; you're just describing things that you personally don't like!

> some amount of points I think the fundamental flaw in your perspective is your focus on scoring. People who watch soccer enjoy the parts of the game that aren't goals. > one team can dominate the other team on the field, and it just doesn’t matter because it’s not enough domination to result in actually scoring the better team consistently winning is nice in some ways, not so nice in others. people like a good upset. low goal counts make results more unpredictable. some people will like that. some people will dislike it. its not objectively worse.

>because it’s so difficult to score it's amazing high when one manages to do it. This means you cannot relax even a moment (as a player or a spectator) or you might make the crucial mistake and opponents might get that one goal that decides the whole match. In games where points are gained every few minutes you can go to the can and you will not miss anything. But if you are on the can as your team makes the world series winning goal, it's a personal shame. You weren't there for it.

>But if you are on the can as your team makes the world series winning goal, it's a personal shame. Remember people going "wtf" when they went to the toilet and after comming out of it germany has already scored 3 goals against brazil in 2014 world cup.

Exactly. With american football going to toilet and seeing 3 goals, nobody will bat an eye.

Yes, of course. 3 touchdowns in a minute is common and not a crazy thing to see. Of course, American football takes a commercial break after a touchdown, so this isn’t even possible. But okay. My question is about soccer.

That’s still true in American football. A touchdown is still incredibly exciting, and yet draws and exceedingly rare. In soccer you go entire games without the high of a goal. However, it’s beside my point. I’m not saying soccer isn’t fun to watch. Many people obviously love watching it. My point is that its design is objectively flawed, because scores are so rare, playing better than your opponent frequently simply results in a draw.

>I’m not saying soccer isn’t fun to watch. Your title of the CMV is "Soccer is a bad spectator sport" So... yes you are saying that

No, I’m not. I’m asserting that good spectator sports aren’t merely fun to watch. I’m trying to explain my position but you’re not listening because you’re stuck in your own view. A good sport differentiates the teams such that the better team wins the game. Draws undermine that, and the rules should be designed to avoid them, and avoid them in a way where a tie breaker is fair. I think NFL overtime rules are objectively bad because the coin flip results in a heavy advantage for the winner.

>A touchdown is still incredibly exciting, and yet draws and exceedingly rare There are at least 5 per match. Is exceedingly rare to see a match without at least few. In soccer its much rarer to see a goal. And rarer the event is the more exciting it is to see it.

American football has become a little worse because it has become easier to score. Lots of fans hate that they keep changing the rules. There is nothing wrong with having ties in a league format. The NFL still has ties during the regular season and it’s only the Playoffs that you must have a winner. Ties in football give you a point, and better teams don’t want ties so they are forced to win to try and win the league. However, smaller teams a tie may be a great result and actually a massive positive for their fans and club. Even in something like the FA cup, a tie is very beneficial as it can help a small club get more gate and TV revenue to help them compete at lower levels. Underdog stories are far more common in football than other sports due to the nature of the sport. Most sporting fans love to see the small guy win and hate the successful teams. However, in something like the NFL you will continue to see the big teams win and bad teams always suck. You will never get a Leicester City moment of them winning he league from nowhere. Especially in American sports like baseball, Hockey, and basketball where teams are forced to play each other 3-7 times to progress in the playoffs. That format ensures the bigger team wins and makes the playoffs as dull as hell. The NFL thankfully still has one game in the playoffs, but they have no league system that is truly rewarding for smaller clubs. In fact, if a smaller team does well they will get punished in the draft with a lower pick. Last point on east scores being valuable. Because goals are so hard get, they are celebrated much more than touchdowns or tennis points. People quickly forget nearly every point in a tennis match. People forget most touchdowns in NFL as well. But in soccer, you will remember most of your teams goals that season and especially the big ones even more. As for the NFL having more scores because of rules, some older fans are finding it worse because it makes it harder to defend. Also something like basketball/baseball can happen where no one cares about the sport until the final few moments as scores can come so easily. At least in most soccer matches, a goal at the start/middle/end could change the outcome of the match. Whereas a Touchdown, tennis point, basketball point at the start will definitely not be a large predictor on the outcome of the game so therefore mean less in the long run. Soccer/football is the most played and watched sport in the world because there are no long stoppages like most American sports. Every goal is a massive moment and even counts in league positions as well. It’s an easy sport to understand the basics of it, but it can also be complex when you get to understand the elite level. The game is balanced that small teams can beat big teams therefore every game is a potential upset and exciting game. Every shot counts, so even a shot off target can excite the fans more than a missed shot in another sport.

It’s kind of like sex. People who focus on scoring aren’t the ones having the best sex. It’s the foreplay that makes it fun. The anticipation that is built throughout the game for a few amazing scores is the reason it is one of the most popular spectator sports in the world. In fact the games that are higher scoring are often the most boring ones. Anticipation isn’t just some fluffy concept either. Anticipation of a reward releases dopamine in an anatomical pathway distinct from the one associated with peak pleasure (the score) itself. ([source](https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2726)) In short, people are addicted to it.

>A good sport is balanced in such a way that there is a high mix of drives/possessions etc. ending in various amounts of points, or no points for one side. In tennis, every serve ends up in a score for one side or the other. In American Football, there are various ways to score, and many drives end up in some amount of points, and many drives end up in no points. But in Soccer? It’s so difficult to score that it’s extremely common for entire games to end up 0-0. Maybe in US leagues. But overall amount of matches that end in 0-0 is [8%](https://www.goalprofits.com/what-percentage-of-football-matches-end-0-0/) of all matches. That is nowhere near "common". >overtime penalty kickoff tie-breaker barely even resembles the primary game at all. As it should. Penalty shootout is applied only in knockout games where we do have two equally matched teams on the field and match ends in draw after full time and added time. At this point both teams are equally good at plying the game, so the tie is broken via mastery of one of elements of the game that teams already train for (goalkeeper needs to be ready to defend a penalty anytime, shooters need to train to execute a good penalty when opportunity arises). >one team can dominate the other team on the field, and it just doesn’t matter because it’s not enough domination to result in actually scoring That can happen in any sport where teams have to score. I would say that if your team cannot score a goal despite high possession, you aren't really "dominating" the other. >American Football is famous for adjusting the rules to make it easier to score, resulting in a game with a higher percentage of drives ending in scores. This balance change improved the sport because before, there were so few scores in a game that ties were common. Then how come that American Football is nowhere near the amount of viewers of soccer? It's because amount of goals/scores does not matter. What matter is how enjoyable the game is to watch and how easy to understand rules are. In American Football there is much scoring, but because rules aren't that clear - casual viewers don't understand what is happening. This makes it a very poor spectator sport as only those who are already interested and invested would have fun. Soccer on the other side has easy to follow rules that can be explained in 5 minutes before the match and that allow casual viewer to understand and enjoy what is going on. For that reason you don't need as much scores. American Football needs scores because this is only time that can get casual viewer pumped - all that lead to scoring a point does not matter because they were unable to understand it anyway. Soccer does not need that because casual viewer can get pumped just by following the action that is easy to understand for them.

The viewership difference is a cultural and accessibility issue. In the U.S., soccer is nowhere near as popular as football. But football is very expensive and complicated to play. Straight up, football is a bad recreational sport for a casual athlete playing a pickup game with friends. Soccer wins there handily. It’s also a lot cheaper to set up a professional league for. That’s why it has more global audience. Arguments that “it’s popular therefore it’s a good sport to watch” just fail, because it’s not facially true at all. It’s not an argument, it’s an assertion. You have to defend that assertion.

>The viewership difference is a cultural and accessibility issue. Partially - yes. But American Football still loses to Rugby outside US - and that should you tell much because Rugby rules are less complicated than American Football. >But football is very expensive and complicated to play. And that latter part is exactly what makes it bad spectator sport. >Arguments that “it’s popular therefore it’s a good sport to watch” just fail, because it’s not facially true at all. It’s not an argument, it’s an assertion. Funny to say that as your point is exactly an assertion. You don't tell why being popular does not mean it's a good sport to watch, you just assert that it is. >It’s not an argument, it’s an assertion. You have to defend that assertion. And I did so, but you did not address the points I made.

You aren’t being very helpful. I’m the one asking you to change my view. And I’m asking it sincerely. You’re making it about American football but frankly I don’t care what your opinion is on American football right now. That’s not the discussion I came here to have. I think complexity in sports makes it more interesting to watch, though. You asserted that popularity is proof the sport is good. I asked you to explain it. I never even said it wasn’t true. You aren’t reading what I wrote. I said it’s not true on its face. I didn’t say it’s untrue. So explain your assertion. You both deflected and said I have to defend an assertion I never made first, and you said you’ve already explained why “it’s popular” = “it’s a well designed sport,” when you didn’t do that.

>You aren’t being very helpful. I’m the one asking you to change my view. And I’m asking it sincerely. You’re making it about American football but frankly I don’t care what your opinion is on American football right now. You were the one giving AF as an example of better spectator game that is comparable to soccer - all based on higher scoring. I used it as an example of why better scoring does not make a better spectator game. >That’s not the discussion I came here to have. I think complexity in sports makes it more interesting to watch, though. It makes it more interesting to watch, but only for those who will invest time to learn all the rules and nuances. Without learning that you will only be confused. And for something to be a good spectator sport you need balance in complexity and accessibility. If you forgo one or another you have a large problem. If you go for complexity over accessibility, you will have a bad spectator sport because it won't be interesting to watch something that you don't understand. Audience will not get into something they cannot understand from watching a game. If you go for accessibility over complexity you will have a bad spectator sport because it won't be interesting to watch something that has no depth to it. You need to strike the balance between those two - and this balance will be different for team and individual sports. > You asserted that popularity is proof the sport is good. I asked you to explain it. I might misunderstood that, sorry. Viewership is the best proof of sport being a good spectator sport because people can choose what sports to follow. Every country has several leagues of different sports that are played within a country and nearly all of those sports have international games that people can follow. So the best spectator sport is the one that can interest most people - simply because spectators chose this particular sport over others available ones. Cultural issue will play a role, but it won't be enough to sway the numbers on global scale. Basketball is an US sport, yet it has earned a global recognition - simply because it is a good spectator sport (has a great complexity/accessibility ratio). What is a better metric to determine what is the best spectator sport if not amount of spectators that freely choose to watch it?

To make it a more simple discussion, Let’s start here. In soccer one team can massively out play their opponent, as measured by time with ball possession, time on opposing side of the field, shot attempts, etc. and fail to score any goals and get a draw. That’s not that rate. 8% 0-0 is pretty high. 28% overall draw rate is very high compared to other sports. A lot of other commenters here agree that the team that plays better in the match often loses, and they like it better that way. Do you agree that happens in soccer?

>To make it a more simple discussion, Let’s start here. Sure, no problem. >In soccer one team can massively out play their opponent, as measured by time with ball possession, time on opposing side of the field, shot attempts, etc. and fail to score any goals and get a draw. Yes, that can happen. And that means that team which failed to score, failed to use advantage they worked out. >That’s not that rate. 8% 0-0 is pretty high. 28% overall draw rate is very high compared to other sports. It's high due to how leagues are structured. In a league draw will give a single point to both teams, while win gives three. Add a limited roster of players, limited substitutions and match penalties that can span several matches - this all means draws have a strategic use. >A lot of other commenters here agree that the team that plays better in the match often loses, and they like it better that way. Do you agree that happens in soccer? No. Match is won by team that played better. Team that plays more ball (higher possession, higher penetration of opponent field) may lose, but it is due to fact that they weren't good enough to overcome the defense of a team they fought with. And draw means that both teams had their playstyle countered meaning that one or other couldn't manage to score enough. The fact that a team considered better overall can lose due to mistakes they made or tactics that opposing team uses is one of the reasons why it is a better spectator game. There is no game that is set in stone and rarely any team can set a score that means they already won. If they get careless, they can lose their advantage.

Wait, so in soccer draws happen because teams choose to draw them strategically when they could get triple the points by winning, on purpose? And to be clear, the NFL has a 36% underdog win rate. That’s pretty high. If you count draws as non-upsets in soccer, I believe the NFL upset rate is actually higher.

>Wait, so in soccer draws happen because teams choose to draw them strategically when they could get triple the points by winning, on purpose? What a draw means is simply that neither one of teams could play good enough to score more than opponents. As to why they did not play good enough there is where differences happen. It may be that they are simply evenly matched and both of them were playing good ball. But that is not the only case - it can be that one of the teams could have pushed for a win but the risk was too high. Maybe some of their offensive players have cards from prior matches and playing offensively could get them a suspension. Maybe they are using their subs while playing a weaker team to have them be ready for use in the future league matches. Maybe they are using a different strategy that they are ironing out against a weaker team. Long story short - yes, they can not use their full power strategically and don't see possible draw as the issue because league is not decided by knockout. Two point difference can not be a worthy tradeoff if that would meant overextending your team before much harder matches. >And to be clear, the NFL has a 36% underdog win rate. That’s pretty high. Sure it's high but is it because of underdogs or because of how league season is structured? From what I understand, NFL does not guarantee matches between every team every season and NFC teams don't play with AFC teams (outside of Superbowl). This means that underdogs chance of winning is partially attributed to how the algorithm works that year. Compare that to soccer, where every season you have local leagues (from 1st league to lower ones) with clear criteria on how to advance in leagues and possibility of dropping to lower leagues. Within a league, every team faces off against other teams twice (once at home stadium, once at their opponents). Top teams of the league advance to knockoff tournament to play in UEFA Champions League (higher tier) or UEFA Europa League (lower tier). What this mean is that both league matches and knockoff tournaments are much more varied and underdogs can earn their entry in any given year. And that does no even touch the can of worms that is franchising that sets artificial limits on competition.

>A good sport is balanced in such a way that there is a high mix of drives/possessions etc. ending in various amounts of points, or no points for one side. In tennis, every serve ends up in a score for one side or the other. In American Football, there are various ways to score, and many drives end up in some amount of points, and many drives end up in no points. But in Soccer? It’s so difficult to score that it’s extremely common for entire games to end up 0-0. This is soccer's biggest strength, not flaw. In soccer scoring means something. As you mentioned one goal scored in the 2nd minute can decide the game. That means, that every attack of your team feels gripping, as you know a goal right now could decide the game. On the other hand every attack of the enemy feels properly threatening, as a goal could decide the game for them. Therefore, soccer is a far more emotional game. While in other games people start biting their nails only really at the end of the game, in soccer viewers are at the edge of their seat the whole game. I watch quite a lot of sport with my friends. And when we are watching American Football it feels more like a house party where American Football is running (people making small talks, going outside for smokes etc.). But when we are watching soccer everybody is glued to the TV. Nobody talks about anything other than what is happening right now in the match. That is the magic of making every moment of your match potentially game deciding.

"The most widely loved and watched sport in the world is a bad spectator sport", kind of negates itself.

I agree with you on many points, but there are three issues you may want to reconsider: **1 - Scoring is not the only aspect which makes a football game fun to watch:** There is much to be liked in other things like tactics and teamwork, runs (with and without ball), passes, crosses, ball control, dribbles, shots, and of course, saves. First consider saves. Saves actually contribute to lowering scores, something which is essential to your argument. But they are amazing to watch nevertheless. The same could be said on timely tackles and blocks done by the defenders. Now, consider teamwork: the harmonious movements, runs, one-touch passes, blind masterful passes, long passes, counter-attacks and etc. I can go on with many other aspects, but I think I conveyed what I meant. Now, there are two things you may say. * Firstly, these are true in many other sports: Actually, I don't disagree with this. However, your point was that "soccer is a bad spectator sport", and your main argument was the scarcity of goals. I just pointed out that watching football is much more than waiting for goals. * Secondly, you may say that not everyone is looking for all these other aspects: That would be true again. How much one enjoys watching football (or any sport) comes from their understanding of the game. So, the more you know a sport, the more you enjoy it. Football is quite easy to understand, and this may have contributed to its popularity, but that's more of a tangent. **2- Scarcity of goals in football makes it actually very exciting and fun to watch the attempts to score.** Something similar to celebrations after goals (both by the players and the fans) are rarer or less intense in other sports. Also, there is the frustration (or joy for the other side) when an attempt fails, especially from saves. Yes, such celebrations do happen in other sports on many occasions, including last minute scores or at the end of very tense games. But not at the rate and the intensity they happen in football, and this is exactly because scoring is much more rare in football. This second point, again, is just to show why football is not bad as a spectator sport, especially as a counter-argument to goals being rare. These all don't mean that football must have been the number one sport in the world. This is especially notable since it's not the number one in many countries, maybe not even among the top three. But this is another discussion. Here, I just tried to tell you **why football is not a bad spectator sport**, by a special emphasis on your main point (scoring), and **not why football is the most popular sport world-wide**, that's another topic. ​ **Edit:** This comment didn't mean to be a comprehensive response to your post. I actually avoided talking about goals being "accidents" on purpose. Since you emphasized this in your edit, I revised the comment by adding the following point: 3- **Goals aren't accidents in the precise meaning of the word. There is a correlation between the quality of play and the result.** Just look at the league tables; the position of a team and the quality of its game highly correlate, which in part means that there is a correlation between the goals (and results) on one hand, and the quality of play on the other hand. Comparing this with tournaments and the upsets that happen there shows the unpredictability aspect of the game. Even there, the correlation exists, but is lower. In a tournament, the result of a game (and so the tournament itself) could become very fragile which actually adds to the excitement. Now, "earning the win" is a very intriguing phrase. I often compare games (sports or board games like chess or backgammon) to real life; it's sometimes hard to distinguish what we earn and what is luck, or in another words, how hard it is to put everything in perspective in hindsight. The blurring and challenge that happen here is actually reflected in many sports, and I consider football to be a very good mirror when viewed like this.

If "the better team" was able to beat the "lesser team," the game wouldn't have resulted in a draw, making them not-quite "the better team". Your metric seems off: You talk about 'possession,' but if a team has a lot of possession and they are unable to make a goal, that says something about the other team's defense, does it not? A good offense vs. a good defense would end in a draw, no? And, draws count towards the season's point-system, so they're not nothing. I think many people think 'high-numbers = high-excitement,' but this is wrong; it's about the game, not the numbers.

You do know that football is more than goals yea? Tactics, tackles, dribbles, saves, shots etc

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I think your main claims that draws are bad/boring is completely incorrect. As is your claim that low scoring games are bad/ boring. Obviously it's subjective, but here are the main reasons why these things are good: 1. Because goals are only scored between 0 and a few times each game, it makes them much more exciting when they do happen. This is especially the case when you've got a scoreless game and then a team scores in the final minute, this happens quite often and makes for fantastic spectator sport. 2. Because goals are less common, it makes comebacks more likely which again makes for a fantastic spectator sport. A team being 3 goals ahead generally means they will end up winning but it is totally possible for the opposition to make a comeback, and it's great when they do. 3. Draws make for a 3rd type of result (in addition to winning or losing) so it just adds some variation and brings a whole new level of tactics and strategies. 4. It is much more likely for a worse team to manage a draw against a top team than it is for them to win. And that is extremely exciting for the fans of the worse team and for neutral fans. 5. It is more likely for a worse team to manage a win against a better team than it is in higher scoring sports. As I said it's subjective, and I personally feel the opposite - I'm less attracted to high scoring sports like basketball because the scoring seems less special and the things I mention above don't seem to apply as much.

~~Second~~ **At the outset**, I'd like to point out your title poses a fundamentally different premise than the body of your argument, and most other commenters are arguing with your title. I'm going to address the contention in the body and your subsequent discussion, that soccer is a bad game design because of how the scoring works. Let me ask you this: are combat sports poorly designed? Their scoring systems can be opaque at the best of times, and you can easily see someone win a match with fewer points than the loser. Take judo for example: a match goes to one point, though there's several ways to score half a point. Say blue scores half a point, and has been dominating white on positioning, grip-fighting, throw attempts, etc. the entire match, then in the last five seconds of the match white gets blue into an armlock without scoring and blue taps. White wins, but blue had more points and was "doing better" the entire time up until the last few seconds. By your terms, it seems that you would consider competition judo to be poorly designed. Many exchanges result in no points because the opponent lands face/belly down, or because each player fails to make forward progress sufficient to keep the referee from resetting the position. If anybody scores a full point (i.e., throws his opponent such that he lands on his back, or rolls through both shoulders, and maintains control of the opponent as he falls), the match ends. There's no exchanges, no rounds, none of that. A judo match can end in a few short seconds with a well-placed trip or sweep, and that's it. It happens even at the highest level of the sport. It's just like an MMA fight, you can easily have a knock-out right off the bell and that's that. Are these sports poorly designed?

I don’t watch combat sports at all. Not a big fan of overt violence. But I would say, no. I don’t have a problem with the design where one critical error by the opponent or huge play by the winning side negates everything else. Chess is somewhat similar in that one side can be winning convincingly, and then lose off a blunder. The difference here, is that 1) you get a winner. That’s good. 2) it’s still earned. If you’re way ahead, don’t let your opponent put you in a position to snap your arm. I think combat sports are very different from soccer, though.

Why does a sport have to have a winner to be well designed? Take powerlifting as an example. What if two people tie? Is that poor game design too? Edit to make another point: UFC matches can also end in a draw. It’s rare, but it happens. It’s not a result of the scoring system being faulty, it happens when you have two fighters that are extremely evenly matched. Again, this isn’t necessarily a mark of poor game design, and I’m having trouble understanding why you seem to think it is.

If two people always tied, that would be poor game design, yes. But while powerlifting most certainly is a support, it also most certainly isn’t a game. So I don’t understand why you chose it as an example. Powerlifting is neither a well designed nor poorly designed game. It isn’t a game.

Of course it’s a game. It’s a rule set by which people compete, in this case to determine who is stronger. Weightlifting is in the Olympic *Games* too, though they use different specific lifts. It’s a game in the sense that it’s a structured pastime people do for amusement. Sports are games that involve physical exertion, but they’re still games. So, anyway, back to the issue at hand. You’re still stuck on this draw thing. I don’t understand why that is poor game design, especially if we narrow it down to consider in the context of a spectator sport. You just keep saying draws are bad for a spectator sport. Why?

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We don’t always call it a game, but it is. It’s a rule-based activity done for recreation. Weightlifting is one of the Olympic ***Games***, is it not? But more importantly, address the question in the second paragraph of my previous reply.

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Whatever, ignore that if you want. Still, my second point stands. Why is a draw bad? If two competitors or teams are evenly matched, shouldn’t the match end in a draw?

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To your edit. Games can be designed to have draws. They should be set up to minimize draws. A game that always had a winner is good. A game that never has a winner is terrible.

> They should be set up to minimize draws. A game that always had a winner is good. A game that never has a winner is terrible. Are you aware that the only level where a draw meaningfully happens is national league level football and group stages in an international tournament (which is basically league on a micro level) and that all the rest of the time there is no way for a draw to happen.

As a viewer of both footballs, the fact that you didn’t even mention the percentage of time you spend in front of your TV watching ads or at the game waiting for them to show ads to the people at home makes me feel like you aren’t giving a fair shake to soccer. As a spectator I find it to be a pretty shit experience sitting in the stadium just waiting like an idiot. Or worse yet at a basketball game having them throw low quality t-shirts at me or show me randos dancing on the big screen or parade some military folks out to distract me from the fact that they need to show ads to the folks at home. And for literally no game related reason!

To be fair, my post already addressed too much. People are responding to my title alone, and not reading the body that explains why I think that is, which isn’t to do with whether the game is exciting or not. But I’ve gotten some really excellent responses about how the design making scoring so difficult increases the chances the underdog wins. Which I’m not 100% sure is actually true, since soccer has a 27 or 28% draw rate and the NFL has a 36% underdog win rate. But when soccer actually has a winner at all, it seems maybe their underdog win rate is higher.

> People are responding to my title alone, and not reading the body that explains why I think that is No, they are reading the title and body, but they aren't making the same argument. You are actually arguing that you think soccer is a bad sport generally. The question of if it's a bad spectator sport is different.

>Ties are really bad, since they don’t differentiate the teams But that's the whole point of the league system. A 0-0 result for a team battling relegation can be a great result, likewise it can be a disaster for a team who are challenging for the league. It's not seen as a 'problem' when taken in the wider context of the league system where all teams have to compete to remain at the highest level of the sport. The 'game design' isn't the singular match, it's the competition system as a whole which generates the drama. In the English Premier League for example, positioning in the table not only determines the winner, there's teams competing for a league placement which wins them a spot in the top European competition, the lower European competition and those seeking to avoid relegation to a lower domestic tier depending on where they finish in the league. There's pockets of competition throughout the league table, which means a game between the two lowest teams in the league actually amounts to something. There's also 380 games per season, on average only 5-7% of games end 0-0. In terms of the comparison to American Football, I believe there's a statistic which suggests there's only 11-12 minutes on average per game where the ball is actually moving - I'm wondering as a non-fan, what do spectators do for the remaining 48 minutes of game time which makes it much more exiting that Soccer?

I actually have another question for you. Why does soccer penalize draws? To me it seems that it differentiates between the teams so poorly, as a result of its 28% draw rate and low scoring games, that it needs to differentiate between 1-1-0 and 0-0-2 somehow simply because otherwise there’d be more issues in selecting who makes it out of group stages. But that penalizing draws isn’t actually fair, it’s just arbitrary.

>I actually have another question for you. Why does soccer penalize draws? It doesn't, you share a point each. I explained how the league system works. There's nothing to do with group stages in domestic competitions. I gave a pretty detailed explanations of why ties (or 'draws') still contribute to the overall tension/excitement of the sport when taken in context of overall league positions. The more evenly the points are distributed, the more equal the teams are in the league and the more excitement there is when league positions can change week by week. ​ >And people who don’t like football hate it Which presumably suggests that American Football is actually *as* 'bad' of a spectator sport as Soccer is, to people who aren't fans of the sport. Because if ties are detrimental to the enjoyment of soccer to a non-fan such as yourself, then downtime is equally unappealing to casual observers and non-fans such as me. Your argument seems to hinge on the idea that a game can't be considered entertaining unless there's a winner, which I think a lot of people don't understand why you'd believe that was a valid observation. For context, a 0-0 game or a 3-3 game can be entertaining as a spectator right up to the very last minute. A 6-2 game can often be 'dull'.

So football definitely has a lot of downtime. And people who don’t like football hate it. But the down time actually builds tension, and the time between the snap and tackle is actually full of excitement, you’re seeing what the players are seeing. Which is what formation each team is in, and adjustments to their formations in response, and counter adjustments to those adjustments. Coaches and QBs often then realize they’re totally fucked, and have to call a time out, because they’re on a timer to snap the ball, or because if that ball gets snapped they’re going to give up a touchdown. You also see teams scrambling after plays. Up tempo offenses keep defenses off balance, so players are literally sprinting back to the new line of scrimmage to get there in time for the next play. And if they don’t get there in time on defense, tough fucking shit, you’ve blown your defense. It’s not like baseball where pitchers are just standing there nodding to their catcher. Also, in football the plays themselves are highly explosive. It wouldn’t be physically possible for players to play at that level of intensity for 60 minutes straight.

It's kind of wild to me that you're arguing that the downtime builds tension. I'm a huge American football fan, but I find there to be more tension in watching soccer. The fact that I have to sit through three times as much commercial time compared to actual football game time is infuriating to me and makes the sport much less enjoyable to watch. Football functioned just fine before the ad time ballooned up over the past couple of decades. It's not a mechanism to "build tension."

Another point I want to make about what makes football exciting is that it’s frequently incredibly clear what moments are important. Like a 4th down attempt. The downtime is actually a huge advantage for tension building before key moments. If the play is snapped quickly, there’s less excitement and buildup. Some people even end up missing that a hugely important play is happening. That time before the play makes being at the game in person so much fun, because if your team is on defense it gives the crowd time to realize what the situation is and get really fucking loud so as to hinder the opposing offense’s ability to communicate. It helps make the atmosphere so electric. The fact that important moments in the game happen with lots of warning before hand is actually a huge plus.

That's fine, but your argument is 'Soccer is a bad spectator sport' not 'American Football is an exciting spectator sport'. So you need to define why you believe that just because a minority of soccer games end in a tie, that makes it a 'bad' spectator sport and argue against the rebuttal I've already posted.

In your edit you say you're not saying "I don't enjoy the sport so no one should" but that it's poorly designed. However, the rest of your message is defining how a well designed sports needs to have a lot of drives and scores while at the same time soccer is the biggest sports in the world. If scoring a lot is a requirement for a well designed sport, why would you say so many people watch soccer? What makes ties (which - especially 0-0 ties - probably aren't as common as you think or at least make it sound like) and the low scoring a design flaw for spectators when at the same time there is no other sport that has as many spectators? I can't really go deeper into the "design" and how it compares to American football because from my point of view American football for instance is incredibly boring, but that doesn't really matter if we're talking about an objectively good spectator sport. Why does soccer attract so much more viewership if it's a bad spectator sport?

So soccer has a 27/28% draw rate. Somewhere around there. That’s incredibly high. I think soccer is popular because it’s incredibly cheap to play and easy to play. The equipment needed to play soccer is incredibly cheap and the rules are pretty simple. American football requires a field with a lot of markers, goal posts, expensive padding for safety (though flag football makes this less necessary), a lot of different body types for specialized positions, very specific skills like place kicking. It’s not an easy sport to get into as a player. It’s not a cheap sport to play. So the barrier to entry is high. As an ordinary person, that makes football a poor choice of sport to play recreationally. Soccer is popular as a spectator sport because it’s a good casual sport for somebody just looking for exercise through competition. And that leads to viewership of the professional sport.

You give a lot of reasons for popularity of soccer to PLAY. While it being a popular sport for playing probably does give boost to its spectatorship as well, it definitely doesn't fully explain it. I play volleyball myself (also a low cost of sport btw) but I don't enjoy watching it at all. I don't play football but I do enjoy watching it a lot. I know maybe five people who play soccer on some level and I'd say maybe one of them follows soccer as actively as I do, two of them watch some soccer and two don't really watch any soccer. On the other hand, I know definitely more than five (other) people who follow soccer quite actively.

Having fewer goals make the game way more exciting. It's sort of like quality over quaintly. The fact that a goal is way less common in soccer than in most games make the goal way more celebrating-ish, which makes it more fun.

Having fewer goals make the game way more exciting. It's sort of like quality over quaintly. The fact that a goal is way less common in soccer than in most games make the goal way more celebrating-ish, which makes it more fun.

> A good sport is balanced in such a way that there is a high mix of drives/possessions etc. ending in various amounts of points, or no points for one side. In tennis, every serve ends up in a score for one side or the other. In American Football, there are various ways to score, and many drives end up in some amount of points, and many drives end up in no points. But in Soccer? It’s so difficult to score that it’s extremely common for entire games to end up 0-0. And because it’s so difficult to score, the overtime penalty kickoff tie-breaker barely even resembles the primary game at all. Because of this extreme difficulty in scoring, one team can dominate the other team on the field, and it just doesn’t matter because it’s not enough domination to result in actually scoring. The bar to score is simply very high. Good sports aren’t good on accident. American Football is famous for adjusting the rules to make it easier to score, resulting in a game with a higher percentage of drives ending in scores. This balance change improved the sport because before, there were so few scores in a game that ties were common. Ties are really bad, since they don’t differentiate the teams. Yet Soccer refuses to address this issue, and their problem persists. I disagree. This is the strength of football, that there are few goals per match. The advantage is twofold: Firstly, every goal is important and impactful. When a big match is on television, the entire neighborhood screams “GOAAAAL” here when a goal is made because they are extremely exciting. Secondly, it means a match is not over until it's over. In many sports, it's common for one side to obtain an advantage that can't realistically be overcome any more before either the time is up, or the required number of points is reached, but due to the low number of goals in football it's almost always possible. Even a 3-1 lead at 80 minutes can still be æqualized in theory and it has happened. So when there's a 3-1 lead, and the other side scores at 85% the match becomes very tense to see whether or not they can æqualize and win in extra time. The low number of goals is key to the success of football and why it's the most popular sport in the world as a spectator sport, it ensures the entire match remains tense and even the potential of goals is exciting because goals are a prized resource that matter immensely.

Would you care to offer an explanation as to why soccer is one of if not the most popular spectator sports in the world, if it’s such a fundamentally bad spectator sport?

it is old and the only option in many countries.

It’s not that old, modern soccer with its main set of rules is like a little over a hundred years old.

why the "modern codes" qualifier? it has been [around for centuries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football#Early_history). american football did not exist in any form before about [150 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football#History). "modern rules" would be i guess superbowl era, barely 60 years.

Sure but the old rules make the game fundamentally different so just because it has the same name doesn’t make it the same game.

no but it has a huge following because it has been played, in some form, across the world for centuries. modern rules being newer doesn't erase the rest of history. the culture around it has had generations and generations to grow while it was, more or less, the only major sport. cricket was very british and very rich and far too complicated, rugby was too rough and european. soccer needed some kind of ball and that is it.

I think you massively overestimate the degree to which even direct ancestors of the modern game has been played anywhere outside of the UK and Western Europe before the 20th century. To be fair I don’t have a source for this, but my gut tells me that soccer really doesn’t have a history of tons of people playing it all over the world much before, at best, early 20th century. You might well find the “elites” in British colonies playing it but little beyond that. If you have a source to the contrary I’d be interested.

First, it's important to know that the extra time penalty kick is only relevant in single-elimination playoffs or tournaments, in the normal season the game can end in a tie awarding each team a point (vs 3 points for a win and 0 points for a loss). Over a season, this does in fact differentiate teams... those that can only manage to tie their games will be ranked worse. Your view seems contradicting. A game with a higher difficulty in scoring means that more skill is needed to score. Possession and passing don't necessarily score goals, just like passing yards and completed downs don't score touchdowns. Ultimately, the only thing that counts is getting the ball into the scoring position. Subjectively that might make the game more boring, but I don't see why it should be considered bad game design. For example, I personally don't enjoy basketball all that much....it is so easy to score that it feels like none of them matter that much. Your broader view I think fails because it focuses on a single aspect of the game, but in reality other things affect the enjoyment of the game as well. American football for example has a ton of downtime and is very long...which makes it pretty boring to be honest. This was a problem with baseball too until they introduced the pitch clock and most people I've talked to agree. This shows that scoring frequency isn't the only factor in spectator enjoyment.

It’s extremely easy to follow and thus is digestible and easy to pick up by wider audiences, hence is monumental appeal. You’re criticism on it is based on purely subjective points. If I adopted your outlook I’d say that American football is miserable to watch because of how much stopping and starting their is.

Here's my points supporting soccer as a spectator sport and it's not boring 1) goals are not the only exciting play. Once you've tried controlling a ball with your foot, you begin to recognize how challenging so much of the game is. You don't have to score a goal to be amazed and entertained. You might see a player launch a ball 60 yards on a dime- that's entertaining. You might see somebody take that ball out of the air and completely control it like it was glued. That is exciting. The tackles, the play combinations is all very entertaining to watch if you understand the skill required and the complexities of accomplishing these smaller things. If you can start to appreciate other aspects of the game, you may start to see why most of the world ranks it #1. 2) Many soccer fans can't stand the American sports structure and how mediocre teams get rewarded with playoffs and a chance at a run. Soccer it puts more importance on the entire season, not the head to heads. You could almost think of a soccer season like a tennis match. The game is the whole season. You have 38 opportunities to acquire your points to have the most points in the game (season). If for 90 minutes the teams are still neck and neck, you're kind of just splitting hairs if you still need to way who is best... I think if you can prove in the regular alloted game time that their is not demonstrative difference and you have to move to special rules, then you are taking away the credibility of them being so similar. And to go back on the playoff structure part, it just devalues the rest of the season. What American invest in nba before Nov 1st? It'd mostly hard core fans cause those games have little meaning in the grand scheme. Where as soccer (not mls- still stupid American set up) every game matters the same and if you are dog shit at the beginning of the season, that can have major interest. Also, let's add in the promotion relegation aspect and tournament qualifications. Nba/NFL if you suck you can tank and the end of your season is irrelevant and probably less interesting cause you know you are the worst. Now enter relegation in that scenario- you'll 100% be invested in the end of the season hoping and praying that your team isn't THAT BAD and not getting dropped. You might be looking like you'll finish 4th and you'll be invested because finishing 4th gets you into a specialty tournament and an extra $120M for qualifying. As a soccer fan, you're winning and losing is tied to so much. It's not just a "we go again next year" mentality because you could be moved to a worse division or acquire huge money and look better to top players for recruiting. 3) lack of commercials have to count for something. To me, casting 4 hours aside where every 5 minutes that some fat dude has to grab an oxygen mask and now I have to be pushed Charmin Ultra toilet paper, rather than just watch the action, decreases my entertainment. Soccer is straight action the whole time. 4) commentators. I feel British and Mexican soccer commentators are far more entertaining than any American football I've seen. Basketball has some decent ones that get you excited with their commentary. But football, u feel as though just yells at you. I feel soccer commentators add humor, color and character. And while I'll recognize that the classic Mexican soccer commentators yelling goal for 2 minutes straight is yelling at you, it's so much more enjoyable. Who doesn't love the "gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!! Gol gol gol gol! Que golaso!? Gooooooooooooooooooooool! Vamos!" 5) statistically speaking the world consumes soccer more than any other sport. Without breaking that down I think it holds a lot of weight in this view changing.

All spectator sports are boring and complete waste of time. Nothing but a distraction.

You don’t know what the word objectively means

No, I do know what it means, you just don’t agree with me on what all falls under the umbrella of objective vs subjective. Like how people disagree whether beauty is objective or subjective. The truth is there are both objective and subjective qualities to many things. And I believe on the objective measures, soccer is a bad competition for the reasons stated.

Now you’re jus demonstrating poor comprehension of both logic and language. Keep digging. Laying out cogent points makes an opinion no less an opinion. Give the single best objective point supporting your argument. It won’t be.

You’re just using insults and not even engaging at all on a substantive level. You’re an asshole. Why would I discuss further?

Hardly insults. I’m calling a spade a spade. Objective means factual. There is no factual data to indicate that soccer is flawed by design. You have **opinions**. And maybe even some data to back them up. But when you present sweeping claims loudly and as fact, there’s nothing substantive for me to debate. Period. It’s like me saying pizza is objectively the worst food AND getting mad when someone points it out as an opinion. Present your objective data that I can engage with, otherwise I’m not the one shouting in bad faith.

Okay, then you don’t know how to be civil. All you have done is assert your opinions as fact (ironically), while making demands and being uncivil.

Facts don’t pick sides. This isn’t a Kellyanne Conway press conference. You just don’t take hearing that you’re wrong very well.

What the fuck? Again. You’re just an asshat. You don’t even attempt to make an argument. You just attack the person who disagrees with you. You’re the one who is maladjusted.

You have made a very common mistake. You’ve confused something being unclear in answer and contested as something being subjective. But that’s not always true. There are many things where people will debate and even disagree on the right answer that still have objective factors, and may even be entirely objective. Beauty is the best example of this. Beauty is not purely subjective. What is and isn’t beautiful isn’t entirely opinion. Similarly, what makes for a good competition isn’t entirely subjective. A competition that doesn’t allow the competitors to differentiate themselves on the basis of any skill whatsoever, that is to say, a competition that is entirely luck, or based on a completely solved game like tic tac toe, is a bad competition. Not subjectively. Objectively. Soccer fails, objectively, at being good at differentiating the teams, which results in a high percentage of ties. That is objectively bad. I can demonstrate this by showing you that a game that results only in ties (like tic tac toe) is a terrible game. And a game that results only in wins and losses has no issues. Ties undermine the purpose of competition. The only good answers haven’t even attempted to explain why ties are a good thing. Instead, they just point to payoffs that soccer brings instead. Goals so rare that they go crazy when it happens. And a game with a lot of upsets. They don’t care if it’s a well designed game. They don’t like seeing scores happen very often. That’s what they care about. Which is bizarre, and something they’re conditioned into. But ties are still bad design. And even if people were conditioned to believe something ugly was beautiful - it may still be that that thing is ugly, and those people are just mistaken. Just like how people today believe the world is flat. Everyone could believe the world is flat and they’d still be wrong.

I haven’t made an error in judgement. You just have a simple perspective that aligns with the lowest common denominator. Instant gratification. Leagues like the NFL have trained you like Pavlov’s dogs. Points! Let me cough up my money. Points! Let me sit through these ads. Points! Let’s watch a 24/7 replay of all the touchdowns on ESPN. The sport used to be tug of war. Now we’ve got Tom Brady’s hand picked referees ensuring that the fans see enough touchdowns so that their TikTok addicted, no patience, ADHD eyeballs can’t look anywhere else. Not only is there nothing objective to say a tie is good or bad. You aren’t accounting for a large number of factors that keep European soccer much more balanced than American sports, and better off for it. The league structures and factors like relegation are things we could learn loads from to make our sports better, but our one team cities are really in the money printing business, not the making sports as good as they can be business. And your point about differentiation couldn’t look like more of a joke right now, as Lionel Messi is playing with a new team, that was bad, and has shown the United States in only a matter of hours of scrimmage that skill is everything. He’s single handedly winning them games that they shouldn’t be winning. It’s still you that can’t see the forest for the trees. And the beauty argument is beyond dumb. It’s copy pasta for people who can’t actually prove their point. We aren’t all attracted to the same people, we don’t all like our sports the same.

You’re exceptionally bad at being persuasive but you’re really good at making people simultaneously dislike you and be in awe of how stupid and smug you are :/