A soccer world cup championship is down to the finals, but you’d be hard-pressed to know it. I’m not surprised that here in Chicagoland it has not been at the forefront of sports headlines. With all the focus on the Cubs there would not be much coverage even if the US had made it to the finals. Alas, it didn’t. It’s down to Sweden and Germany.
It’s been interesting to watch the rise in the popularity of women’s soccer in the US. There are two things standing in its way: one is that it’s a women’s sport, which tends to be less popular overall (although we are seeing some change in that, but not too much) and it’s soccer, which is not exactly the most popular sport in the United States if you judge by media coverage. But it’s not that simple. Soccer is actually quite popular when it comes to participation and going out to see a game [pdf]. It is also a very popular high school sport in the US and many of those participants are girls. So no, it’s not because soccer is somehow inherently un-American that it has not gained popular appeal. I’m sure the fact that it is hard to break the game up into sections to accomodate commercials has to do with it. But I don’t want to get into too much popsociology here. There is a book on this, Offside, which the reviews on Amazon suggest is a good read on the topic. (The reviews will also give you an idea of the argument of the book. I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that since I haven’t read it myself.)
I was at the 1999 World Cup opening game and it was very exciting. This year, most of the games have been broadcast on ESPN2 or even less mainstream channels in the US limiting the size of audiences. I only happened upon the Canada-Sweden game today by accident. Are the games getting better coverage in other countries? The final will be broadcast on ABC so that should reach more people. How many will be watching is another question. I’m planning on throwing a Women’s World Cup Final brunch party to add to the fun.
I haven’t seen an inch of coverage in England. Probably because we didn’t qualify though.
Here’s the most surprising thing to me about the final.
It’s being played at 1pm ET. That’s not surprising in itself - lots of major games happen then. But not normally games in California. The game is on at 10am local time. When was the last time a major sporting event started at 10 in the morning local time? (All day cricket games that have to start that early don’t count.)
The US-Germany game was pretty exciting. If the final is as good it should be lots of fun.
There’s been good coverage in Canada. The victory over China in the quarter-finals made the front page of most of the papers I saw. The TV ratings are pretty good, too. This is, I’m sure, largely because the team has been winning more than they’ve been losing lately and not because the people of Canada are attracted by the team’s neo-Wimbledonian long-ball tactics.
I’m assuming the early time is so people in Europe can watch it. It’s actually quite well-timed for both Sweden and Germany since it’ll be evening there. Of course, I suspect who qualified for the finals had nothing to do with the timing of the game.
I think the time has worked out well, but it was being advertised then before the teams were determined. I hadn’t really noticed how good a time slot it is for Europe though, so that sort of makes sense. (Even a USA-China final would have some European audidence I’d bet.) I still think it will be funny seeing a world championship game finish before midday.
All the games have been televised on the Hispanic channels — Telemundo, Univision and one other. I believe they’re using the same feed as ESPN2, but they offer clips that ESPN2 probably doesn’t have. For instance, in the heart-breaking US vs Germany game, they showed a clip from the US men playing Germany. There were some poor calls in that one, too, and some of the bad luck that plagued the US women.
The 1pm ET start, as mentioned earlier, is probably set to place it in prime-time viewing for European viewers, no matter which teams are playing. The same thing is part of the impetus to bring another F1 Grand Prix to the US, since viewership in prime time is far, far higher than viewership mid-afternoon. Any later and it would be like Monday Night Football on the east coast: ending too late to keep viewership.
I just wanted to point out that broadcasts on ESPN2 aren’t exactly marginalized sports events. ESPN2 recently showed some of the Major League Baseball divisional playoff series. ESPN2 also frequently shows the runaway hit, World Series of Poker, which apparently gets better ratings than the women’s World Cup.
My question is: if beer-guzzling men can find the World Series of Poker with their remote, why aren’t more viewers tuning in to women’s soccer? I don’t think it’s necessarily a result of poor coverage; it probably has more to do with women’s soccer failing to establish itself as a brand-name sporting event among potential consumers. This just highlights the distinction between sports as recreation (little league and high school soccer) and sports as a commodity. The sociologist Eric Leifer has said a lot of interesting things about this subject.
What I want to know is how the absolutely godawful MLS manages to survive while the WUSA doesn’t. Given the choice between watching every american male not good enough to play in Europe with a levening of over the hill foreign stars playing on pitches 20 yards too thin or watching the very best female players in the world on real fields, I’m going with the women every time. The girls play the beutiful game, American men barely play the game at all.
Oh, and both leagues have stupid team names.
The obstacles to acceptance of women’s soccer are glaring here in Portland, OR, where some of the games have been played. High school women’s soccer is thriving here, and two of the American players and one of the Canadian players attended the U. of Portland, which recently won the national title. Yet the local TV station which might have shown the games preempted one of them for, of all things, a gardening show (which easily could have been postponed). And one of the local sports columnists, the infamous Dwight Jaynes, mentions women’s soccer frequently, but always sneeringly. (He also went on record that HS sports programs could easily be preserved simply by eliminating calculus and other classes he hadn’t been interested in in HS.)
I believe that the relevant TV station is absentee owned by a corporation, and managed by carpetbaggers. This strikes me as a clear case when the media are NOT “giving people what they want”.
That’s how many people watched the 2003 WC on German TV:
GER-ENG prelim. (early afternoon): 1.11 mio. - 11.3% share GER-CAN (6:00 PM): 1.31 mio. - 14.7% share GER-JPN (11:45 PM): 0.87 mio. - 14.9% share ARG-GER (9:30 PM): 0.81 mio. - ? GER-RUS (1:30 AM): 0.58 mio. - 16.9% share USA-GER (1:30 AM): 0.70 mio. - 25.7% share
This is quite good especially when the games take place late at night. The final will take place at 7:00 PM on Sunday and doubtlessly the numbers will go through the roof. The games involving Germany were all seen on the public TV channels and Eurosport does broadcast the whole thing (thumbs up!).
The 3:0 quarter final victory all of a sudden fired up the media and the girls are now everywhere. The DFB (soccer federation) and the whole Fußball establishment (=men) is also suddenly very attentive and full of praise.
I’m just left to wonder why about 3 million people regularly watch TV in the middle of the night. So much insomnia?
Regarding the inability of soccer to become a major spectator sport in the US (I’m not counting moms and dads waiting in the SUV), I wonder if one of the reasons (in addition to the lack of network-acceptable commercial time) is that there just isn’t any space left in the calendar. Also, I’m just guessing here, but aren’t the non-soccer playing nations those that cast off the heavy yoke of British tyranny before the Victorian-era rise of organised spectator sports?
“Also, I’m just guessing here, but aren’t the non-soccer playing nations those that cast off the heavy yoke of British tyranny before the Victorian-era rise of organised spectator sports?”
Neither Spain, France nor Italy were ever under the “heavy yoke of British tyranny”, and football is very popular there.
DSW
I read Offside. It’s pretty good. The one part that stuck in my mind was an experiment one of the authors did with a university class they were teaching in Germany. The author asked the students to name as many members of the West German lineup in the 1954 World Cup final as they could. Every male in the class could name at least one player, and more than one got all eleven. Meanwhile, none of the female students got a single one.
As for the “heavy yoke of British tyranny”, the countries that were affected by that tend to prefer rugby and/or cricket.
antoni,
I should have been clearer. (But as I thought France, Italy, etc’s playing of football goes without saying, I didn’t say it.) I meant of those nations that were once British. My point being that had the US still been under the British (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say under any western European nation), then perhaps we would have taken up the motherland’s game, ie soccer/football. As it wasn’t, and was geographically isolated from Europe, it came up with its own sports (similarities to rounders, cricket and rugby duly acknowledged). This is more a query than an assertion, mind you.
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review