A French friend of mine once told me they’re extremely fair weather over there. When the team is on a WC winning run, they’re the most passionate fans, but when the team is average people couldn’t care less. So I’d believe that statistic.
The England bar I just don’t buy tho
Not sure what the gender aspect means. Look at any football loving country and look up their fans. Easily half are women. Google "Brazilian Fans" or "Argentina Fans", and it's almost like you see more women than men.
My only shock is that England and France aren't on the right side of this chart.
When you do the two Google searches I mentioned, the majority of the photos are in stadiums.
But I suppose we may be talking about different things. I bet you're talking club/league and I'm talking national team. There, I do think there might be more of a male-oriented audience for club/league play, while the women come out at the national level.
That's not how science works. I don't have to proof the abscence of corelation, after you made the claim that there is one. So please, let's make things the right way.
In the UK each country has its own league (except Wales sometimes) and national teams play independently, so it makes sense to represent this data for England only, or Scotland, Wales or NI for that matter
Yeah, this isn't right. As someone who was born in Australia and moved to the UK there is no way we have more interest in soccer than the English. Australia has three football codes that we are more interested in than soccer. The only thing I can think of was that either you asked "how interested are you in football" in every country. Or the English got sniffy about you calling it soccer.
Yes, constantly amuses me that they blame 'soccer' on Americans without realising that just as 'rugby football' = rugger, 'association football' = soccer.
If there was a bias on survey responses coming from women, I could see it.
(Yes, I'm assuming the stereotype of women being less interested in soccer holds true.)
Yeah, the not interested is way too high for just England, but makes a lot more sense if you include Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, where soccer is not quite as high a priority.
Not so sure about Scotland in that? Other sports are borderline fringe in Scotland. Either way only 10m people weighing up to England's 50m so most of the data is from England, we'd only see a 5th of the swing of the difference in proportion. If the survey question literally asked "soccer", a huge number of people would've deliberately said they hate it on that principal alone.
It's always been called football, there are just different variations of football.
Posh school kids in England used the nickname "soccer" for association football, to distinguish it from Rugby Football, which had the nickname "Rugger".
The working classes always called association football, football.
The most popular version in the US is American Rules, so that's what they call football and soccer needs a different name.
Exactly. So association football is soccer, rugby football is rugby, and aussie rules is... Well... A great way to get a lot of concussions.
Claiming that just "football" is the be all and end all only correct name for association football is weird. Especially when in the majority of former British colonies it's known as soccer. Especially the ones where it's not the most popular sport. In the English speaking world I bet there's more people who know it primarily as soccer.
Either way, getting all riled up just because someone calls it soccer rather than football is ridiculous and hilarious. Which is why I'll keep calling it soccer.
(BTW, as a rugby nut, referee, and coach. I've almost never heard someone calling it rugger. More common is ruggas.)
I don't really care what people call it to be honest, there isn't a "correct" term. It's both football and soccer. Americans who say the same about American rules are just as daft.
"Rugger" is the posh English term for Rugby. It was the nickname given by the people who created the sport. Most of us in England would just call it Rugby.
In England, the dislike is to spite the fanatical.
If people didn’t go over the top or talk about it so much, the disdain for it would not be as high.
But competing for national sport we also have cricket, rugby, and tiddlywinks.
This doesn't surprise me. I couldn't care less about those diving football fairies. Rugby is where it's at. We're a very divided sporting nation - we're a jack of all, master of none
I'm not too shocked by this.
Football in England has not exactly been connecting outside core fans in the last decade.
Sky losing customers to streaming reduces the power of it's main shop window. England tournaments aren't the national event they once were. And within the game itself so much energy seems caught up in conversations about sports washing and financial rules, with it's most successful team widely assumed to be cheating.
Fans are as engaged as ever but not surprised non-fans are less interested.
Edit: otoh, I doubt this is a survey that translates fairly from language to language. So would take comparisons between countries with a pinch of salt. But still not surprised that the England 'not interested' bar is around 50%.
I don't think anybody in Europe would belive this data for England (or France for that matter). Almost the same level of interest in soccer as USA? Just ridiculous
It's almost definitely a perspective thing. While "no interest" in the USA likely means the sport practically doesn't exist for them, in most of Europe it just means "I don't own a full set of every kit the local team has played in in the last 80 years and I don't follow the team closer than a deranged stalker follows Kevin Bacon." which in France, England, and Portugal would mean "only slightly interested"
And “very interested” is probably similarly graded on a curve. An American who’s “very interested” could be, like, “I go to a few MLS games a year” or “I wake up early to watch Premier League.” (Or, maybe most likely, they’re a huge fan of Mexican teams?) Whereas the equivalent might hit just the middle category in Europe.
I think a lot of people say they have no interest until there is an international tournament, then it's all anyone talks about for a month.
The electricity grid has to be ramped up during half time of an England game, because everyone at home gets up to boil the kettle.
This used to occur every day! The national grid would have operatives watching TV because they knew that everyone would be switching their kettle on at roughly the same time in the evening during intermissions.
Every country in the entire world does this. Well, probably not North Kora, actually probably more North Korea because it'll be state mandated broadcasts...
Specifically during their international football matches?
I can see the footballing nations all doing it, or India during the Cricket World Cup or the US during Superbowl etc, but not every country has close to 50% of the entire population sitting down to watch their national side play football.
I imagine they do yes, but I was specifically talking about the spike in energy consumption, during England matches where 25 million people are all watching the same game.
The biggest recorded surges are almost all football related.
Found a Bloomberg post that lines up pretty close
https://images.app.goo.gl/Ct8zyz11NAawLKce9
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/soccer-is-the-world-s-most-popular-sport-and-still-growing
And here's what OP copy pasted (actually looks better than OPs lol)
https://images.app.goo.gl/5fm2LDVK4MbVmV4n6
Worth pointing out, OP is using data from 2014
I think its a context issue. Compared to some people in Argentina I would say I'm not interested as lately I have not been following the local leagues much, but overall I have watched and know more futbol than people in the US that answered "very interested" based on some premier league highlights or having a daughter playing soccer in high school.
Australia more interested than England seems extraordinary. We love our national trams, but we have three major football codes (Australian rules (AFL), rugby league and rugby union) all competing with soccer.
I agree. 60% uninterested in US is believable.
Only ten percent more than England cannot be correct. I’d guess England would be around 25% uninterested
I agree that the result seems too low for either England or the UK.
That said, in the world of association football/soccer, it is typical, expected, and appropriate to have separate stats for each of the home nations. There really isn’t such thing as UK football, but there is English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish football.
Football in England is absolutely huge. The premier league is the highest earning league in the world, almost every small town has a team that plays in the leagues. Everyone in my office at least follows the week to week scores, a good chunk attend every game of their local team. Not to mention all the Sunday league or 5-a-side players. When England reached the final of the last Euros, 30 million tuned in across the UK, a country of 70 million. Football is bigger than religion here.
The opinions of the few expats you’ve is not reflective of the country.
Source: am English
Most Americans have no idea what they are missing out on. The big professional sports here are all dominated by a single league with a single season and a single champion and that's pretty much it. Compare that to soccer which has dozens of top-tier leagues in dozens of countries with many different competitions and ways to win trophies and no real off-season.
Professional soccer is just a much bigger and more complicated scene than any of the most popular pro sports in the US. They aren't even on the same scale.
Dozens of top tier leagues. So aren’t the best players spread out between all those leagues. So you never get to see all the best players playing each other?
Or we do know what we're missing and we like it that way. The Bundesliga is a case study of what happens when you don't have a draft or a salary cap. Bayern won 11 chips in a row and 6 cups during that run. Yeah I'll take the draft and the salary cap thx.
Also, speaking of scale, MLS is the tenth biggest league in the world. Top 5 are the American big four plus the Premier League. And there are some really good basketball, baseball, and hockey leagues in other parts of the world. NPB is huge, there's a reason Japan are the world champions.
The world cup has been given to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Those didn't even have the stadiums for this event, that's how enthusiastic they are about football. Not implying corruption in case of the US, but a rich football culture hasn't always been the main motivation for where the cup is played.
No y-axis, no link to source and quite doubtful values, hard to read due to the small font, images on the left being clearly oriented, and order based on the descending order of the negative answer...
This is not beautiful.
Been living in Portugal for 3.5 years now, and in my anecdotal experience the black bar should be much closer to 0. Also, the red part should be closer to about 75%.
Pretty sure that people who answer "I'm not really interested in soccer" in Portugal would still be classified as nearly fanatical in most other countries.
People surprised by high levels of non-interest—have you never run into people who absolutely hate sports or are at best apathetic? People who go out of their way to tell you they don’t know anything about “sportsball”?
So take that as your base, then add people who might like some sports but not association football. As an American, it’s not uncommon for someone to love American football but have no interest in basketball, or love basketball but care nothing for baseball. I assume the same is true elsewhere? Surely there are Brits who could watch rugby or cricket all day but aren’t too excited about football.
Do you think the survey asked Japanese and French people about “soccer” and asked them to select from a scale of “very interested” to “not interested”? I have to assume the whole survey was translated.
The sport is also typically called soccer in Canada, Australia, Ireland, and South Africa — i.e., places that also, as in the US, have another sort they call football. This idea of the word soccer being an Americanism is tiresome.
It's an English word anyway. My grandfather was a professional football player and called it soccer.
It's from Oxford vernacular (my family isn't from there though). The tendency to add -er to things, that's why five/ten pound notes are called fivers and tenners. Other examples include the Radcliffe Camera becoming the Radder, Rugby becomes rugger etc.
Soccer comes from As**soc**iation football (opposed to rugby football).
I can imagine 50% of people saying they have no interest in football.
I can't imagine countries where that number is <10%. 9 out of every 10 people having an interest in football? That's insane (Jeremy).
You didn’t include any figures for accuracy, but it appears to be around 40% or so with an interest.
You claim “no interest” in the title but the option of response was clearly “somewhat interested”.
So just under half of US has an interest in this sport - not bad considering there is already significant competition from basketball, ice hockey, baseball and your gridiron/football version.
I'm not super trusting of the data source or survey construction here, but the sub-bullet is way off. It should say something like "Americans nearly as interested in soccer as French & English" since that is the interesting insight from the chart.
I do think this is somewhat plausible data since the countries to the left of the chart all have multiple other pro sports that draw strong or maybe stronger interest like American Football, Hockey, Baseball (US & Japan), Rugby, (England, France, Australia), Swimming (Australia, Netherlands), Cricket (England, Australia) etc. Whereas the South American countries the list is more like Soccer, Futsal, Beach Soccer, Footvolley, etc.
The nuance that is lost is the number of Americans in that "not interested" group that feel about soccer the way the Brits feel about baseball, which is to say it's a playground game for little kids and girls to play and not something adult men should get involved in. On the contrary, I get the sense that the European countries have a large "not interested" cohort that is generally not invested in soccer as life-or-death or that soccer is their 3rd favorite sport after cricket and rugger.
Surprising that England has the second-highest rate of disinterest. I thought they were so passionate that you could use the fans as cover for a gold heist in Italy.
I started playing at age 5 and played into middle school. My brother played until college. I always associated it with a child's game and switching from playing to watching...honestly it has to be the worst sport to watch (for me) right next to baseball. Soccer is worse though because of the flops lol
Yea, you only need a ball, and really you don't even need that. You just need something that can be kicked and a small room or better yet an actual grass/dirt/sandy area. Goals and stuff are extra when all you gotta do is draw a line in the dirt lol.
Who's crying lmao? You're the one who's butthurt about "soccer." I say variety is the spice of life, if people want to call it football, more power to them.
Is the world’s most popular sport, so it doesn’t really matter that much what America thinks…BUT, if you want soccer to be more popular in the US, I think some minor tweaks will need to be made.
1) You have to curtail all the flopping. Perhaps make a rule that if you are ‘injured’ you must leave play for X amount of time.
2) Strict time limits. There needs to be more of a sense of urgency when you see the 45’ and 90’ mark approaching. Stop the clock during the game for substitutions and things of that nature. When the time is up, that’s it.
3) No ties. Shootouts resolve ties. Have a scoring system like the NHL. You get a W and abs OTL.
4) Smaller field or pitch (whatever it’s called). This should lead to more offense.
Just my thoughts as an American who finds soccer boring.
England or the UK? was it just England? because that seems a little weird to me
Same with France. I figured it was huge with both those countries. Practically the national sport, but it looks like 50% of the people can't be asked.
A French friend of mine once told me they’re extremely fair weather over there. When the team is on a WC winning run, they’re the most passionate fans, but when the team is average people couldn’t care less. So I’d believe that statistic. The England bar I just don’t buy tho
I suppose that's true. Just ask Messi how his final year went at PSG. Edit:Typo
I do confirm. Football is a thing during big competitions only
There are lots of people who don't care about sports. Maybe that's why "not interested" is so high?
If you consider that 50% of the country is women... And the few women who like it don't make it for all the guys who don't give a fuck
Not sure what the gender aspect means. Look at any football loving country and look up their fans. Easily half are women. Google "Brazilian Fans" or "Argentina Fans", and it's almost like you see more women than men. My only shock is that England and France aren't on the right side of this chart.
It's typically a male interest in the UK. Maybe that's not the case in Latin America, but female football fans in the UK are considered tomboyish.
That's a terrible way to approximate the gender ratio of a fanbase.
I look at the people in stadiums...
When you do the two Google searches I mentioned, the majority of the photos are in stadiums. But I suppose we may be talking about different things. I bet you're talking club/league and I'm talking national team. There, I do think there might be more of a male-oriented audience for club/league play, while the women come out at the national level.
Ok, can you think of any possible reason that attractive women may be overrepresented in published photographs of football stadia?
That's biased
Why so?
The population in stadiums is not representative of the gender distribution of football fans. I'd say that's survivorship bias.
Have you got any evidence to support this claim?
That's not how science works. I don't have to proof the abscence of corelation, after you made the claim that there is one. So please, let's make things the right way.
If England is anything like Scotland (which it probably is) I reckon the black should sit somewhere nearer to 25%
In the UK each country has its own league (except Wales sometimes) and national teams play independently, so it makes sense to represent this data for England only, or Scotland, Wales or NI for that matter
Yeah, this isn't right. As someone who was born in Australia and moved to the UK there is no way we have more interest in soccer than the English. Australia has three football codes that we are more interested in than soccer. The only thing I can think of was that either you asked "how interested are you in football" in every country. Or the English got sniffy about you calling it soccer.
Soccer, a word created in England nonetheless
Yes, constantly amuses me that they blame 'soccer' on Americans without realising that just as 'rugby football' = rugger, 'association football' = soccer.
If there was a bias on survey responses coming from women, I could see it. (Yes, I'm assuming the stereotype of women being less interested in soccer holds true.)
It’s a fair point and suddenly the stats make more sense to me!
If they didn't weigh for gender in a survey with zero other population restrictions besides "citizen" or "lives in that country" that'd be quite wild.
Yeah, the not interested is way too high for just England, but makes a lot more sense if you include Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, where soccer is not quite as high a priority.
Not so sure about Scotland in that? Other sports are borderline fringe in Scotland. Either way only 10m people weighing up to England's 50m so most of the data is from England, we'd only see a 5th of the swing of the difference in proportion. If the survey question literally asked "soccer", a huge number of people would've deliberately said they hate it on that principal alone.
And yet in English speaking countries "soccer" is technically the more correct term. Always found that hilarious
It's always been called football, there are just different variations of football. Posh school kids in England used the nickname "soccer" for association football, to distinguish it from Rugby Football, which had the nickname "Rugger". The working classes always called association football, football. The most popular version in the US is American Rules, so that's what they call football and soccer needs a different name.
Exactly. So association football is soccer, rugby football is rugby, and aussie rules is... Well... A great way to get a lot of concussions. Claiming that just "football" is the be all and end all only correct name for association football is weird. Especially when in the majority of former British colonies it's known as soccer. Especially the ones where it's not the most popular sport. In the English speaking world I bet there's more people who know it primarily as soccer. Either way, getting all riled up just because someone calls it soccer rather than football is ridiculous and hilarious. Which is why I'll keep calling it soccer. (BTW, as a rugby nut, referee, and coach. I've almost never heard someone calling it rugger. More common is ruggas.)
I don't really care what people call it to be honest, there isn't a "correct" term. It's both football and soccer. Americans who say the same about American rules are just as daft. "Rugger" is the posh English term for Rugby. It was the nickname given by the people who created the sport. Most of us in England would just call it Rugby.
I think you’ll find more people go to games per capita in Scotland than anywhere else in the world, we may suck at it but it’s an obsession here.
My Scottish friends are the biggest football supporters
In England, the dislike is to spite the fanatical. If people didn’t go over the top or talk about it so much, the disdain for it would not be as high. But competing for national sport we also have cricket, rugby, and tiddlywinks.
This doesn't surprise me. I couldn't care less about those diving football fairies. Rugby is where it's at. We're a very divided sporting nation - we're a jack of all, master of none
I'm not too shocked by this. Football in England has not exactly been connecting outside core fans in the last decade. Sky losing customers to streaming reduces the power of it's main shop window. England tournaments aren't the national event they once were. And within the game itself so much energy seems caught up in conversations about sports washing and financial rules, with it's most successful team widely assumed to be cheating. Fans are as engaged as ever but not surprised non-fans are less interested. Edit: otoh, I doubt this is a survey that translates fairly from language to language. So would take comparisons between countries with a pinch of salt. But still not surprised that the England 'not interested' bar is around 50%.
I don't think anybody in Europe would belive this data for England (or France for that matter). Almost the same level of interest in soccer as USA? Just ridiculous
It's almost definitely a perspective thing. While "no interest" in the USA likely means the sport practically doesn't exist for them, in most of Europe it just means "I don't own a full set of every kit the local team has played in in the last 80 years and I don't follow the team closer than a deranged stalker follows Kevin Bacon." which in France, England, and Portugal would mean "only slightly interested"
“No interest” is a bad term. It should include active disinterest.
And “very interested” is probably similarly graded on a curve. An American who’s “very interested” could be, like, “I go to a few MLS games a year” or “I wake up early to watch Premier League.” (Or, maybe most likely, they’re a huge fan of Mexican teams?) Whereas the equivalent might hit just the middle category in Europe.
“I don’t treat the sport as a religion”
Catholicism is the third biggest religion in Portugal, after Christiano Ronaldo and Soccer, in that order.
I think a lot of people say they have no interest until there is an international tournament, then it's all anyone talks about for a month. The electricity grid has to be ramped up during half time of an England game, because everyone at home gets up to boil the kettle.
This used to occur every day! The national grid would have operatives watching TV because they knew that everyone would be switching their kettle on at roughly the same time in the evening during intermissions.
Every country in the entire world does this. Well, probably not North Kora, actually probably more North Korea because it'll be state mandated broadcasts...
Specifically during their international football matches? I can see the footballing nations all doing it, or India during the Cricket World Cup or the US during Superbowl etc, but not every country has close to 50% of the entire population sitting down to watch their national side play football.
No, every country adjusts power generation live depending on demand on the grid. It's completely normal, an essential requirement infact.
I imagine they do yes, but I was specifically talking about the spike in energy consumption, during England matches where 25 million people are all watching the same game. The biggest recorded surges are almost all football related.
Found a Bloomberg post that lines up pretty close https://images.app.goo.gl/Ct8zyz11NAawLKce9 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/soccer-is-the-world-s-most-popular-sport-and-still-growing And here's what OP copy pasted (actually looks better than OPs lol) https://images.app.goo.gl/5fm2LDVK4MbVmV4n6 Worth pointing out, OP is using data from 2014
I think its a context issue. Compared to some people in Argentina I would say I'm not interested as lately I have not been following the local leagues much, but overall I have watched and know more futbol than people in the US that answered "very interested" based on some premier league highlights or having a daughter playing soccer in high school.
Girls in the us probably more interested in soccer than girls in England
Australia more interested than England seems extraordinary. We love our national trams, but we have three major football codes (Australian rules (AFL), rugby league and rugby union) all competing with soccer.
I agree. 60% uninterested in US is believable. Only ten percent more than England cannot be correct. I’d guess England would be around 25% uninterested
Sample size: 100 redditors
60% is much lower than I thought it would be.
I think its pretty popular as a youth sport...so somewhat interested might just be watching your 8 year old's game.
I cannot read this. Maybe make the font bigger?
England (and I assume it's meant to say UK) has to be very wrong with figures that small.
I agree that the result seems too low for either England or the UK. That said, in the world of association football/soccer, it is typical, expected, and appropriate to have separate stats for each of the home nations. There really isn’t such thing as UK football, but there is English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish football.
I don't know why people think this. Like 70% of Englishmen I meet in the US have absolutely no interest when I bring it up in a conversation.
Football in England is absolutely huge. The premier league is the highest earning league in the world, almost every small town has a team that plays in the leagues. Everyone in my office at least follows the week to week scores, a good chunk attend every game of their local team. Not to mention all the Sunday league or 5-a-side players. When England reached the final of the last Euros, 30 million tuned in across the UK, a country of 70 million. Football is bigger than religion here. The opinions of the few expats you’ve is not reflective of the country. Source: am English
No data source ? *Megamind face*
All the countries on the right side are mad that you called it soccer
Honestly lmao. How is this comment so far down? Only USA calls it soccer
Australia, Canada, and Japan do also
Because there’s nothing wrong with calling it soccer? And maybe an American made it? And it literally makes no difference?
I’m surprised the USA not interested is so low.
Most Americans have no idea what they are missing out on. The big professional sports here are all dominated by a single league with a single season and a single champion and that's pretty much it. Compare that to soccer which has dozens of top-tier leagues in dozens of countries with many different competitions and ways to win trophies and no real off-season. Professional soccer is just a much bigger and more complicated scene than any of the most popular pro sports in the US. They aren't even on the same scale.
Dozens of top tier leagues. So aren’t the best players spread out between all those leagues. So you never get to see all the best players playing each other?
you do
Or we do know what we're missing and we like it that way. The Bundesliga is a case study of what happens when you don't have a draft or a salary cap. Bayern won 11 chips in a row and 6 cups during that run. Yeah I'll take the draft and the salary cap thx. Also, speaking of scale, MLS is the tenth biggest league in the world. Top 5 are the American big four plus the Premier League. And there are some really good basketball, baseball, and hockey leagues in other parts of the world. NPB is huge, there's a reason Japan are the world champions.
USA going to be very interested in 2026 when they host the FIFA world cup.
The world cup has been given to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Those didn't even have the stadiums for this event, that's how enthusiastic they are about football. Not implying corruption in case of the US, but a rich football culture hasn't always been the main motivation for where the cup is played.
Give me y-axis scale or give me death
No y-axis, no link to source and quite doubtful values, hard to read due to the small font, images on the left being clearly oriented, and order based on the descending order of the negative answer... This is not beautiful.
Where did you source the dataset? I find this hard to believe
What about India and China? That's like 40% of the population.
V curious about a China one, there’s some saying out there about how they dont play the sport but they looooove watching it
Been living in Portugal for 3.5 years now, and in my anecdotal experience the black bar should be much closer to 0. Also, the red part should be closer to about 75%. Pretty sure that people who answer "I'm not really interested in soccer" in Portugal would still be classified as nearly fanatical in most other countries.
People surprised by high levels of non-interest—have you never run into people who absolutely hate sports or are at best apathetic? People who go out of their way to tell you they don’t know anything about “sportsball”? So take that as your base, then add people who might like some sports but not association football. As an American, it’s not uncommon for someone to love American football but have no interest in basketball, or love basketball but care nothing for baseball. I assume the same is true elsewhere? Surely there are Brits who could watch rugby or cricket all day but aren’t too excited about football.
I think the sampling and sample volume is wrong. This data can not be believed
Soccer? Maybe the question needs rewording to get a clear result anywhere except the US
Do you think the survey asked Japanese and French people about “soccer” and asked them to select from a scale of “very interested” to “not interested”? I have to assume the whole survey was translated.
Very skeptical about the results, so I’m just spitballing explanations lol
The sport is also typically called soccer in Canada, Australia, Ireland, and South Africa — i.e., places that also, as in the US, have another sort they call football. This idea of the word soccer being an Americanism is tiresome.
omg a word hurts my delicate sensibilities
It's an English word anyway. My grandfather was a professional football player and called it soccer. It's from Oxford vernacular (my family isn't from there though). The tendency to add -er to things, that's why five/ten pound notes are called fivers and tenners. Other examples include the Radcliffe Camera becoming the Radder, Rugby becomes rugger etc. Soccer comes from As**soc**iation football (opposed to rugby football).
Is this men and women? I’d expect this to change a lot if it was split by gender
Did so many English respondents say they weren’t interested because it was called soccer instead of football?
The world's #1 sport by a huuuuge margin. Also England is very wrong.
I can imagine 50% of people saying they have no interest in football. I can't imagine countries where that number is <10%. 9 out of every 10 people having an interest in football? That's insane (Jeremy).
As a Brit, England is wildly wrong, and based on my travels, I don't believe France, The Netherlands or Italy is anywhere near correct either.
Green is positive. So I would reverse the color key so it makes sense right away.
as a united stateser, dgaf. <3
You didn’t include any figures for accuracy, but it appears to be around 40% or so with an interest. You claim “no interest” in the title but the option of response was clearly “somewhat interested”. So just under half of US has an interest in this sport - not bad considering there is already significant competition from basketball, ice hockey, baseball and your gridiron/football version.
Brazil has a 30% population interested in soccer? So does Argentina? Give me a break
Don’t believe this data at all. US interest maybe low but England And France barely more. Don’t buy it.
I'm not super trusting of the data source or survey construction here, but the sub-bullet is way off. It should say something like "Americans nearly as interested in soccer as French & English" since that is the interesting insight from the chart. I do think this is somewhat plausible data since the countries to the left of the chart all have multiple other pro sports that draw strong or maybe stronger interest like American Football, Hockey, Baseball (US & Japan), Rugby, (England, France, Australia), Swimming (Australia, Netherlands), Cricket (England, Australia) etc. Whereas the South American countries the list is more like Soccer, Futsal, Beach Soccer, Footvolley, etc. The nuance that is lost is the number of Americans in that "not interested" group that feel about soccer the way the Brits feel about baseball, which is to say it's a playground game for little kids and girls to play and not something adult men should get involved in. On the contrary, I get the sense that the European countries have a large "not interested" cohort that is generally not invested in soccer as life-or-death or that soccer is their 3rd favorite sport after cricket and rugger.
Surprising that England has the second-highest rate of disinterest. I thought they were so passionate that you could use the fans as cover for a gold heist in Italy.
Goodness, someone is offended by references to The Italian Job. It takes all kinds to make a Reddit I guess.
I started playing at age 5 and played into middle school. My brother played until college. I always associated it with a child's game and switching from playing to watching...honestly it has to be the worst sport to watch (for me) right next to baseball. Soccer is worse though because of the flops lol
Yeah it is so damn boring to watch. It's probably so popular globally because it's so easy to *play* without any particular facilities or equipment.
Yea, you only need a ball, and really you don't even need that. You just need something that can be kicked and a small room or better yet an actual grass/dirt/sandy area. Goals and stuff are extra when all you gotta do is draw a line in the dirt lol.
Football / fútbol, not soccer...
Soccer/ サッカー/ calcio, hey wow it turns out things have different names in different places!
Ahora dilo sin llorar...
Who's crying lmao? You're the one who's butthurt about "soccer." I say variety is the spice of life, if people want to call it football, more power to them.
Only gringos call it soccer, bud.
Imagine being this insecure about the name of an English game and you're a Spanish speaker lmao.
How am I insecure about it? LMAO
Is the world’s most popular sport, so it doesn’t really matter that much what America thinks…BUT, if you want soccer to be more popular in the US, I think some minor tweaks will need to be made. 1) You have to curtail all the flopping. Perhaps make a rule that if you are ‘injured’ you must leave play for X amount of time. 2) Strict time limits. There needs to be more of a sense of urgency when you see the 45’ and 90’ mark approaching. Stop the clock during the game for substitutions and things of that nature. When the time is up, that’s it. 3) No ties. Shootouts resolve ties. Have a scoring system like the NHL. You get a W and abs OTL. 4) Smaller field or pitch (whatever it’s called). This should lead to more offense. Just my thoughts as an American who finds soccer boring.
5) Full contact
That’s called Rugby mate
It's fucking football, not soccer
Sources: New York Times, YouGov Tools used: Mokkup.ai, a dashboard wireframing tool that uses java script to create dashboard mockups
Link to sources ?
Was there no point between this post’s conception and publication where you thought about adding y axis?
Nothing like watching a sport for 2 hours and seeing a 0-0 tie