Yes well, I'm sure something like Call of Duty was probably a best seller in the games market too, but that doesn't mean everybody is going to go out and join the Army. Also, I'm not saying that it will 'never happen' I'm saying that it will never be as popular as the other sports in the US, which by comparison, totally dominate over soccer - and whilst there is a small groundswell of interest, I don't think it's going to reach the same heights as Baseball, Football, Basketball etc. Not even plastering Gareth Bale's ugly mug over billboards in NYC will change that I'm afraid
There are 300 odd million people living in the states, so you can argue that there's room for many sports, but I'll give you an example - I lived in Brooklyn for four years in the late 90's, this was after the New York Comos and the old North American soccer league had folded. Soccer wasn't even mentioned during that time and the only place you'd see any of it was in a few sports bars in SoHo and Greenwich Village and a few shirts being sold in Tribeca. I was in New York again in 2010 when the World Cup was on and again, outside of those areas very few New Yorkers took an interest (other than when they thought a 1-1 draw with England was a victory) - and those people from immigrant families supporting Italy, Mexico, etc. Again, you'd see shops in Tribeca selling Real Madrid and Barcelona shirts, but even the New York Red Bulls have a small presence in the city and that's if you can even see their merchandise in amongst the Yankess, Mets, Giants, Knicks, Jets jerseys, zippers, caps etc ... I'm not saying that the MLS won't gather some more interest, I believe that there's a plan to introduce another NYC team into the MLS (owned by Man City and the Yankees) but the fact remains that soccer is always going to come down the list of sports, because the US is dominated by Baseball, Football, Basketball and Ice Hockey.
Endlessly repeating the same points isn't going to make them stick suddenly, Piskie. We get that you don't believe the sport will flourish over there. It's also largely irrelevant to the point of the thread, which was that a major American network picked Bale to front it's advertising for the Prem. They've launched a campaign for their extensive coverage using a Spurs player, which is a point of interest to Spurs fans, rather unsurprisingly.
I lived in the U.S. for four years also, during a previous attempt to make soccer popular in that country - it failed. To my mind, the Americans are firstly, extremely parochial. And secondly, they are only interested if they can win. So, if by some miracle the USA national side looked like they were liable to win a trophy, then you might see a large upshot of interest. Otherwise, the game has little chance of rivalling football or baseball as a major sport. Actually, soccer is a major sport in the U.S. women's soccer - again, largely owing to the success of their national side. That doesn't mean that there isn't money to be made there, it's a huge country and, inevitably there will be a certain percentage interested
The advert is not to make football popular,it is to advertise NBC's covarage of P/L football for people interested in it,America is just another country to show P/L games live
One of the things my friends in NYC used to tell me was that there just weren't enough goals scored to make it interesting. I used to try and tell them about the appreciation of the finer points of the game, skill, guile, deft touches, the atmosphere at the grounds in England, but it was lost on them. I think that most of their sports are high scoring affairs, sets the bar for the expectation amongst US sports fans. The idea that you can have an entertaining 0-0, a game where neither team scores a single point, is quite alarming for the Yanks
The news and why Spurs like it: Both the poster and the last NBC commercial indicate Bale will be at the center of NBC's deal to promote the PL in the US. How big an impact will this have? Impossible to say. But it can't hoit. What are the prospects? IMO, pretty good. While there's a long history of football promotion failing in the US, I think it has to succeed eventually. What I notice as a native is how popular the sport has become to play. For thirty years it's been one of the three most popular organized sports for children, and now may be perilously near #1. Note the political demographic is called "soccer moms." Of course, it's still not particularly popular to watch, and NBC is not the first, just the latest, to try to change that. But: football watching has been getting steadily if incrementally more popular, and NBC is the first to bet big on the Prem's potential to catch on. It seems a good choice, since the casual fan in the US, who follows six or ten sports with some interest, has just started tracking the Prem a little in the last ten years. (A generalization based on a lot of observation in that period.) Considerably more will watch next year, the question is how many. There's no certainty that Spurs will benefit enormously from being the centerpiece of NBC's effort. But the chances of it being a substantial boon are more or less certain (on the grounds that it's already helped out with the sponsorship deals), I would say. It has the potential for becoming a real bonanza, but time will tell. In any case, keeping Bale has given our luck a chance to work for us.
I remember Bestie when he was in the States. He wasn't averse to physical excercise, he just preferred to do it horizontally, rather than on a football pitch!..
And even more recognition for Bale: please log in to view this image Our sponsors will be happy to see their kit and logo splashed all over the place for free.
