Football Frenzy! The media’s push for Americans to love soccer may uncover a larger issue

While watching the Champions League Semi-Final on CBS, an ad came on for a daytime soccer talk show with American hosts. After a conversation and a Google search, I learned that CBS is working on a 24 hour soccer news channel in America. That’s when something clicked. My ears perked when I witnessed the way Atlanta United just exploded all over the city a few years back; I started seeing a scheme form with the emergence of Ted Lasso, which was literally created to teach Americans about soccer; the pattern began forming when the United States qualified for the World Cup. The media is subtly not-so-subtly trying to integrate soccer into American culture the way it is everywhere in the world. With this realization came a lot of questions and not enough answers. Why don’t Americans like soccer? Why are we the only ones to call it soccer? Why is soccer being pushed on us so hard? (The answer to this one is a bit more obvious: money).

Soccer players during a match. Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

As an avid baseball fan, it didn’t take long for me to make a connection between the two sports. I’ve already established in a previous article that Americans have an insane affinity for high scoring sports. If Americans put baseball lower on their totem pole of favorite sports because it isn’t a high scoring sport. What makes you think Americans are going to accept a game that can, and often does, end in a tie? I know it’s a joke on Sports Twitter that Americans hate ties but it’s true! Whenever a major soccer game ends in a tie, there’s a wave of people from the United States not understanding why people are so worked up over a game that ended 0-0. But in a culture upheld by the idea of winners and losers, a sport where your team can get an average of 115 points a game will always beat out soccer. Americans would anguish in seeing their team play for ninety minutes and win nothing. What we could also take into account is the US-Centric view many Americans have.

I mean, think about it. All of the top sports in the United States are games that are predominantly played here. Sports that have more of an international audience and player based are undermined for the most part. Soccer is a global sport, that means there are a lot of teams and leagues and countries to keep track of. It’s making me dizzy just thinking about how much I would have to keep up with. 

Regardless of all the aforementioned reasons, there’s one that is a glaring problem in America’s relationship with soccer. It’s also a glaring problem in America overall (we can talk about that another time). It’s classism. Akin to basketball in The States, soccer is a sport that has become a pipeline for underprivileged children to become superstars. Especially in places like South America. Soccer gives the poor kid from the Favelas a chance to be a global soccer star, the system in America isn’t set up for that. The reason basketball affords underprivileged Americans this slim opportunity is because of appropriation of property taxes.

Sports like American Football require enough money for a school to have a full football field. A basketball court could be placed in a gym, a parking lot, a playground, and so on and so forth. So of course, in areas that don’t generate as much income per capita, Basketball, and possibly Track, are the only options for poor kids to make it out with sheer talent only. And even more so than American Football, soccer is a sport for the upper class. Yeah, you can put your kid on some rec team and call it a day. But for them to be any good and have a shot of going pro could cost you thousands of dollars a year. Most club memberships cost anywhere from $150-$1500. And that’s without the other fees, extra coaching and paying for the best equipment. On top of that, you’d need to live in an area nice enough to have soccer fields accessible.

You definitely don’t need to squint to see that major financial hurdle this would create for the families who may be more underprivileged but also care the most about soccer. As children of immigrants, second generation American kids are the ones who dream of becoming soccer stars from young. In high school, my group of friends that loved soccer was diverse with Mexicans, Peruvians, Haitians, all children of immigrants. However, they weren’t afforded the opportunity to actually play soccer and train the same way the rich kids were able to. All of this raw talent is being overlooked because of the capitalistic view towards team sports. 

Kids playing soccer. Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

Despite all of this, I think Americans do have some kind of affinity for soccer. It could be because we’re beginning to feel left out, or maybe the media’s subliminal messages are actually working. We can see it with how positively Ted Lasso has been received. What started off as a joke, Ted Lasso was quickly picked up by CBS as a way to endear Americans to soccer. And there’s no coincidence that it is now an Apple TV+ show where they also air all of the MLS games (MLS is the American soccer league).

As a Ted Lasso fan and Advertising major, I can recognize an effective piece of branded content. And I think that’s why it’s working so well here in the United States. Ted Lasso is us, the American that’s completely new to soccer learning along with him. But the United States’ potential for liking soccer is apparent in other places. MLS is becoming really popular in major cities. We’re seeing this first hand with Atlanta United. Everyone loves the team and repping the jerseys. And with brands like T-Mobile offering the MLS season pass for free, more and more Americans are being introduced to soccer this year. And with America qualifying for the World Cup, we had something to root for in the global tournament that we’ve never really participated in before. And of course with all the discourse about Balogun, the newest American soccer player in Europe, we have a stake in European Football now more than ever. 

I’m eager to see where Americans’ relationship with soccer will be within the next five to ten years. I wonder how CBS’ 24 hour news cycle will impact how we will view soccer also. My prediction is that soccer will garner a very strong “cult” following of sorts but I’m not sure how prominent it will be in the mainstream here. Realistically, there needs to be more than just a channel all about soccer for Americans to fall in love with it. There needs to be a change in the system which I doubt will happen. And that is what throws a huge question mark in the equation.