The sports Americans are missing

If you were just to watch Sportscenter for all of your sporting news you would be led to believe that there were really only 4 major sports in the world and this niche little game called soccer. The truth is there are really several sports that have a lot more fans than any of those 4 sports that you will see featured on ESPN. I’m talking about sports that have an international appeal and not just a nationwide appeal in the USA.

I’ve had the good luck of being exposed to a few of them as well as some sports from other nations. I went to Australia when I was 15 and while I was there I was introduced to both rugby and Australian rules football. Both sports bear a resemblance to American Football but are different in more ways than they are similar. First of all there are no pads in either and secondly the pace of the game is so much faster. This makes them seem like sports that Americans should love but they have never caught on over here for whatever reason. My theory is that Americans love the strategy and idea of plays and schemes while the 2 main Australian sports lack a lot of that on the surface.

Rugby is one sport with a large international following very much on par with the sport of cricket. Now cricket was never a sport I could get into but in nations like India and the UK it has a large following along with a large number of former British colonies. Cricket bears a very big resemblance to baseball at a quick glance but is a much different game that can be played over multiple days. It most likely takes a much greater attention span than most Americans seem to have.

The popularity of Cricket and Rugby is dwarfed though by the popularity of the world’s game, football. No, I don’t mean the version of football with pads and quarterbacks. I am talking about the game us Americans call soccer but virtually the rest of the world calls football. It is a game that is played in nearly every corner of the world but gets a second billing in the US. Just for one example it was estimated that the 2006 FIFA World Cup was watched by a cumulative audience of 26.29 billion people with the final game being watched by 715.1 million individuals, that’s 1/9th of the entire world population.

Those aren’t the only international sports that Americans are missing out on though. Formula 1 is another sport that boasts worldwide appeal that makes the fan base of NASCAR seem small. Tennis and cycling are other sports that get a lot of international attention but very little press in the US. The reasons for these sports lack of American interest may have some connection to media coverage but there is also the fact that in a lot of things Americans try to keep themselves unique to the rest of the world. They are missing out on a lot of great sports by doing that though.

The Daily Run
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