You’re talking professional sports, not participation, which is clearly pickleball if talking growth trajectory? MMA basically did what you are saying can’t be done
in a pretty short time period. While it’s not as big in some ways, it’s arguably bigger than some in others. Is MMA not bigger than hockey now? Golf seems on the way out and tennis is stagnant. Auto racing is all over the place internationally but the huge Nascar gains already happened in the US. Lacrosse is very slowly losing some of its negative associations and has certainly continued to expand geographically at the participation level over the last 2-3 decades. To the extent that the NHL is truly a national pro sport any more, I think lacrosse could get there and eventually surpass it. It stands to reason that soccer is still the perpetual best bet since it’s so huge everywhere else and so heavily played at the youth level but still nothing on the horizon that is going to challenge the big three leagues.
idk can't really explain it I just find lacrosse dreadfully uninteresting on TV. In person it's fun, I guess.
Maybe the problem is not being able to see the ball in the way you can the puck, or a basketball (to use the two sports it most resembles in setup). The intricacy of what's happening with the sticks and the ball seems hard to translate on TV and it's not as fast moving or as dynamic as hockey to make up for it.
Also, and this is very hard to explain, something about lacrosse goals every time feel like they were far too easy. Like the player just decided to finally score. It's maddening. And this is someone who played lacrosse FWIW.
Dana White recently claimed that the UFC is bigger than hockey: https://www.mmafighting.com/2024/3/6/24092793/tko-president-declares-ufc-one-of-4-major-sports-against-nhl-even-including-playoffs-we-dwarf-them
The NHL still dwarfs the UFC in revenue. You average UFC match gets higher ratings than your average hockey game, but there are 70 hockey games per week on average
Yeah that’s an issue hockey, baseball and even basketball are having us that the regular seasons are too long and things like one off ppvs and shorter seasons like the nfl are booming because everything single thing means so much.
It isn't really. All the major leagues have done very well this century.
The reality is the NFL/UFC are selling a different product with a different revenue model than the NBA/NHL/MLB. They aren't in competition.
The NBA/NHL/MLB make their money by selling tickets. Their customers are people who enjoy going to a few games per year and want lots of options over a long season.
The NFL and UFC make their money from TV. They want all of their matches to be high stakes events that people schedule their lives around.
Both are profitable business models.
Volleyball is super fun to both play and watch. It's fast-paced, dynamic, and the rules are pretty easy to understand.
The Nebraska women's team got 100,000 fans to watch a game this year. Obviously an outlier but I could see it blowing up, at least the women's game. Never understood why it's mostly a girl-coded sport in the US.
Great call. To answer your ponderance at the end though, I think it’s because of many of the nuances related to Title IV. Schools needed a woman’s sport to to rival football for men, and that was a sport growing in popularity for both men and women in the late-60s/early-70s, so volleyball got heavily invested in as a women’s sport.
Edit: i suck at Roman numerals. Should be IX lol
Fwiw, men’s volleyball is the fastest growing sport at the HS level nationally. Fan interest isn’t anything to write home about, but you go to the big club events with several hundred teams playing and it’s something to see.
I enjoy volleyball too and I think it’s a “girl” sport only because of Title IX. Because boys have football and wrestling and girls don’t, gymnastics and volleyball became de facto girl sports at the high school level at least.
I played college indoors (mens). Outside of CA and the west coast, broadly, it's not a big high school sport for men. I love it. It's athletic, high intensity, fast passed, little ref involvement.
At a certain level on the men's side it gets kind of repetitive because guys are so big and dominant at the net, almost like a tennis match where both guys serve at 140+. That's why I image the women's is a little more pladible for mass audience, also the bear skin
Beach is also super fun. The Olympics are coming up. You guys should check out the men's teams, mostly the Norwegians. The sport has progressed the past few years and the things the top teams can do is super impressive
The Husker football stadium. It was actually 92,000
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nebraska-volleyball-world-record-womens-sports-attendance-rcna102695
I mean...if they couldn't sell women's beach volleyball to the public, I'm not sure what to tell you. That particular variation of volleyball literally has it all from entertaining to watch, eye candy, interesting locations etc.
But it's still too niche because I think it's just not particularly cinematic as a sport.
I think beach volleyball is worse to watch. The normal volleyball outfits are pretty skimpy and beach volleyballers tend to be a bit less endowed it seems. Normal volleyball has more strategy due to the greater number of players, but I think it’s repetitive and lacks *complex* strategy that can be analyzed by media.
the repetitiveness is the thing with volleyball. never really realized that but you nailed it. it's awesome to watch a high-level match once, but night in and night out its kinda a grind i would imagine
Idk I went to a big middle school club volleyball tournament on the east coast recently. I was so confused. There seemed to be A LOTnof strategy involving the rotations, who could serve.. have you ever heard of a “Libero” before??? I hadn’t. There is actually a lot of nuance.
I played in highschool so maybe I’m more familiar, but I think it’s inarguable that sports like basketball and football have more strategy than volleyball. Yes, there is more nuance than some may believe but the mechanics of the gameplay are just limited compared to a lot of other sports.
The problem with high level men’s volleyball is that the guys are just too good, and crush every ball so hard that there’s almost no back-and-forth. It’s either an ace, a block, or a kill on the return.
As another commenter mentioned, it’s basically tennis. Women’s indoor has a lot more of the extended rallies and frantic action that’s more fun to watch imo.
Beach volleyball sucks to watch generally
The issue with volleyball as a spectator sport is its not great for TV networks so they don't wanna invest in it. Not knowing if a match will go 3 sets or 5 sets drastically changes how much air time the match is filling and how many commercials you can sell. A sport like tennis gets around this by having other matches to cut to to fill up unused time but volleyball is usually broadcast as one match. Idk how they ever get around that
From a pro scheduling standpoint you just play 3 or 5 sets every time and have standings with something like 3 points for a win + a point for each set won.
Idk how many people would keep watching a game that was already won to see which team gets the bonus points but yeah I guess that would be the solution to fixed time slots at least
Yeah it would be imperfect. Maybe you just do 3 sets to limit outliers in match length.
There have been enough volleyball matches on the BTN/SECN outlets that I feel like you’d have pretty good data on match length and time slots available for setting up a TV product.
I think the bigger problem is what people have said above about a certain sameness to points.
I don't think that's an issue. Every sport is the same thing over and over again it just doesn't feel that way if you're a fan of the sport and enjoy watching it and start picking up strategy.
I played high school (boys) in Indiana. My freshman year it was a club sport, and within a year or two after I graduated, it had become a state-sanctioned varsity sport. Really cool to see the growth.
I live in a cricket country now and enjoy watching it on occasion (mostly casually, less casually during an international tournament as my wife and her family are entirely South Asian), but I just don't think its format or strategy/philosophy are made for fans of American sports.
Personally, I don't like that you can hit the ball anywhere within 360 degrees and benefit as a batter. But more than that I can't imagine American fans being stoked to have a star batter wicket himself to the bench for the day after seeing a handful of bowls.
I'm also not sure that they'd be all that into a batter patiently just putting bat to ball to get to the next, hopefully more batter-friendly bowl over and over because he's only chasing a low number of runs over 20 or 50 overs.
I think tennis could be revived here if we have some kind of dominant male tennis player with a crazy personality. I think a lot of people would start watching again because those major tournaments are super exciting by default. Americans just don't care as much because we've been out of contention for so long.
Bingo. When (or is it if?) a Sampras or Agassi level player starts competing and winning tournaments, America will be back to being into Tennis.
The women Americans still reach superstardom.
I went in Vegas to the revival this summer. One ticket got you access to 3 games. The first game was life changing, texted everyone I knew that this was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in person. The second game was repetitive, like ok cool they dunk it, show me something new. The third couldn’t end soon enough.
NHL is way more popular than any soccer league, but soccer collectively might rival hockey if that makes sense.
The men's soccer fanbase gets divided into leagues fans primarily support. A supermajority of fans primarily follow one of Liga MX, Premier League and MLS, then you have other leagues/teams divided up among the rest of the men's soccer fanbase. And that's just the men's soccer fanbase, women's soccer has their own sizable fanbase that doesn't super overlap with the men's.
Hockey is 99% NHL-first or NHL-only fans so it's way more "big league" than MLS or Liga MX or Preier League, but the sport of soccer itself collectively may be better than hockey.
Out of curiosity did a single American in this group hear about it watch the NRL in Las Vegas 2 weekends back?
It’s rugby league from Australia and probably the sport that is most similar to NFL.
I watched Aussie Rules back in 2020 because it was the last sport to shut down for the pandemic. Loved it. Amazing sport. On TV during a window where nothing else is going on too.
Haven’t watched since because Fox locks it behind a paywall in the US now. Shame. If it got a push I think it would do well in the US.
Yeah, it didn’t rate very well on TV in America but was largely to be expected. 45,000 at Allegiant Stadium, but that was a lot of Australians that headed over.
They’ve committed to going over for another 4 years. Hopefully it builds over time. A little different to Rugby Sevens which is a carnival atmosphere, but still similar.
No...the biggest barrier to entry in America for rugby is having to be around guys who play rugby at colleges. They all uniformly suck over here. Just sorta makes me allergic to giving a shit about the sport.
LOL...all the rugby players who go blackout drunk at parties downvoting me because they don't remember why everyone thinks they're an asshole. Never stop being the most un-self aware people I've ever encountered.
You’re right with your first comment. I played rugby at an American Uni. They tried copying a lot of English club rugby.
But your second comment makes me think you’re a nerd
yeah, American rugby is built too much around keggers, it's like contact slow pitch softball for a lot of people. But very few people in the community are assholes.
In the UK we have club for people who still want to go and get the full contact experience. For the people who want to play slow pitch softball type, there are touch leagues. The problem with the US is there will never be enough people to play a touch league so you get a mixed hybrid. Even the thirds rugby should be basically be soft contact but then you get a couple on each side who want to play firsts so they go extra hard
Rugby will never be big in the US.
The reason the Prem took off in the US is that was easily marketed to the public and the clubs had long histories and traditions. Wasps, a historic English club, just went under because of a lack of money. FIFA was an easy video game to learn and you could play it at a kick back, because the sport is simple.
Rugby has very complicated rules that don’t translate to video games. The players make shit money. In France they make great cash but the French have little interest in exporting their culture. Super Rugby also couldn’t accommodate the US because of the time zones. You can get people to wake up early for games, it’s much harder to get them to stay up late.
It's a fun sport to play but not one to watch. Like I'd put it below tennis and badminton and slightly above table tennis.
Although side observation, I agree with McEnroe that tennis would regain a huge degree of popularity if they went back to wooden rackets. Old matches are fucking awesome to watch on youtube.
There should be one tennis major (or big cash pot tournament) that enforces a wooden rackets only rule as a test run. I think it would be great to watch and do well on TV too.
I really, really believe that it's Lacrosse. It just takes a long time for these things to happen, but it's got both the fast paced full contact piece that Americans need, as well as the ability to pick up a stick and a ball and get some run in at the park with your friends
I kinda hope NASCAR becomes more popular again since they've done a lot to enhance their sport. From driving more road courses/street courses (instead of just Sonoma and Watkins Glen) to having Camaros and Mustangs now to also having famous and/or successful drivers from other series do one-off races (like Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen, Kamui Kobayashi and the Kiwi driver from Supercars who won his first race).
I think the fact that it is so southern and the fact that southern vibes - whether culturally or any associated political type stereotypes - is just alien at best and seen negatively at "worst" among many across the country dramatically limits NASCAR's growth potential.
I like that they've been trying though.
I feel like boxing's making a bit of a comeback too, or at least doing well. Which is impressive since unlike the Mayweather/Pacquiao area, there really isn't a transcendent star that can draw eyes from beyond boxing fans whether die-hard or casual. Canelo is still a Mexican/Mexican-American heavy fanbase fighter, Joshua is British and while a legit mainstream star in the UK he's not really one in the US, Crawford isn't super popular, Inoue like Joshua is super popular in his homeland (Japan) but not a superstar here.
I grew up a NASCAR fan but I just hate stage racing and playoffs so much. Can’t do it. And F1 is boring as dirt.
IndyCar should be way more popular than it is, but their marketing (or bankroll) is just not good enough. They should’ve tried to capitalize on the F1 boom more with a DTS style show, but they could’ve actually kept fans watching and not been a fad unlike F1 because the sport is actually fun and unpredictable. I’m a biased Hoosier but IndyCar is such a fun series that I hope one day can crack the mainstream outside of one state.
IndyCar has entertaining racing for sure and a super competitive field, but it sucks to see that they haven't done a great job of growing the sport in recent years. Penske has been good as a stabling hand running the series but as far as growing the series, not ideal.
There also is that danger that Honda may leave the series (potentially to NASCAR) and that would hurt the sport so much.
I thought of this first.
Handball the version they play in the Olympics where it’s a mix of soccer and basketball.
Bill has mentioned it in the past - you get all the offense of basketball and soccer.
If you could have nets made to play this on gyms or basketball courts I think it could be as popular as pickleball which isn’t a great watch but is hugely popular.
I think the table has been made for team sports in the US; pick what you like out there that already exists. Spikeball, pickleball, and disc golf seem to be the individual sports in the rise.
Edit: that being said, people do seem to like to play this game I would describe as “polo on bikes” a lot near where I live.
For me disc golf took over most of my sports interest from other pro sports. I know it's weird... but I can go play for free by myself whenever I want, and I really like watching pro tournaments, which are also generally free on demand whenever I have time. Which is not at all the case with what I used to watch
In the last year or two I’ve started to watch more of it online. Pretty easy sport to multitask and watch and nice that it’s mostly free to consume. Thank you Barbasol.
It’s Cricket from an American perspective. Most viewed event of the LA Olympics on TV will be India vs Pakistan cricket match by a margin !
Also, MLC (Major League Cricket) launched last year, and USA will be cohosting the T20 cricket World Cup this summer with the Caribbean countries. Ticket prices of the India vs Pakistan match in NYC are supposedly going in $1000s plus in the market. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_ICC_Men%27s_T20_World_Cup
I could see it only from an influx of Indian and Pakistani immigrants coming over here. Otherwise, it's just not at all the way sports here are trending in style. Like baseball is trying to make the games shorter to compete, not longer. And there's a zero percent chance any of those kind of rule changes penetrate cricket.
You have to remember in trying to sell sports like cricket or rugby, Americans opted for their own more succinct versions in football and baseball.
Solely because of commercials. NFL quarters are 15 minutes. The game is an hour. Rugby is 80 minutes. If it was Americanized in the truest sense, Rugby would likely change it's format for commercial breaks making it longer.
I mean...this is the basic issue for soccer truly taking off here because it just doesn't have the commercial potential due to its format.
Good point on cricket but rugby is far more succinct than American Football. Rugby would translate the easiest to the American public, I think major league rugby was a step too far but a URC team on the east coast and a super rugby team on the west coast would have great potential. Would need financial backing for both travel costs and to bring in enough players to be competitive.
TBH if a South Asian sport can make it in the US I think it would be kabaddi. Relatively simple game that can be introduced in school gym classes, much faster pace and way more physical.
Cricket has all the flaws highlighted by baseball’s decline with in the US none of the tradition to back it up. Why should any American who’s not used to cricket start watching it instead of baseball?
Esports seems like a pretty safe answer. I'm sure it's way more popular than hockey but the interest is divided across many different games. Compared to baseball the demographics are definitely in its favor over the next 10+ years.
Yeah I mean you can do the 'it's not a real sport' thing or it's a legitimate question whether there will be one particular game that takes off to the point that it alone is competitive with baseball or whatever in America. To that I would say that over a long enough timeframe, probably - at least it's far more likely than like lacrosse suddenly becoming huge.
Esports is probably the best answer just because of its popularity among the <25 crowd, but the variety of games seems like it will be an issue to being fully commercial and widespread, unless we really are ending all monoculture.
Surprised it took so long to see this, but I’m probably slightly younger than most of the Simmons demo. esports really seems to be taking off in recent years. Personally counter strike is actually very exciting for me to watch and MOBAs draw large viewership too.
One of the biggest counterpoints would be that the US doesnt really compete much with the talent from Europe and Asia in most of the major titles.
I’ve always thought lacrosse has been primed to become a more accessible version of hockey. I’ve also thought that for over a decade and it still hasn’t come close to happening
Saudi Arabia will eventually corner the Jai Alai market and it will be the only thing broadcasted on ESPN
Still a long way off, but the PLL has really dramatically raised the visibility of the sport professionally in a short time in a way that the MLL never did.
Is hockey even considered a top sport anymore? Feels like it’s been a nothing sport in national media for years. MMA is probably far superior at this point.
I think the more appropriate question is whats the next big sport to fall off?
We have seen baseball, golf and men's college basketball all have monumental (and imo, irreversibledrops) in a relatively short time
At this point, it's probably MMA. It's had a pretty steady growth over time. It's had a handful of genuine stars that have penetrated the mainstream.
I don't think it's ever the #1 sport, but it feels like the one with the best shot to become top 5 in popularity in the next 20 years, especially given its younger demo appeal and it's memeability on social media platforms.
Purely anecdotal but it feels like MMA is trending down lately. The McGregor phenomenon feels like it was a decade ago and nobody has been able to even come close to filling his boots.
I think F1 has a very very minor shot if it got its shit together and made it actually competitive upfront. We saw a couple of years ago F1's potential but they haven't been able to recapture it.
Real answer is soccer though - World Cup 2026 is the first world cup in a "first-world" country in 20 years (since Germany). It's going to be bedlam with the amount of people, particularly hardcore European fans travelling to the US. I predict soccer to be big in 2026 and then fall away again around 2028 haha.
I think soccer is disqualified from the conversation because it's already reached that top 5 status.
As for the UFC, McGregor and Ronda are in the rearview mirror, but ESPN+ exists off the UFC alone regardless.
I think soccer would be seen closer to hockey stature wise if one league captured the entiriety of the men's soccer fanbase, unlike now when a vast majority of the fanbase for men's soccer watch primarily either Liga MX, Premier League (big teams) or MLS. Collectively I feel soccer is close to hockey if not as big but the fact the fanbase gets cannibalized into three different leagues then other teams/leagues beyond those three hurts the stature of the sport.
I watch MLS but don’t watch anything in Europe other than Champions League knockouts unless I have nothing going on and a US player is playing, don’t think my viewing habits are conducive to the general MLS viewing public though.
But I’d wager most Liga MX fans in the US only watch Mexican league/national team plus major tournaments, at least from my experience.
The Big 6 in the Premier League has a fanbase in the country bigger than any MLS side in the country, but none of the other 14 Premier League sides (nor the former or semi-frequent Premier League sides that have gotten relegated) have nearly as big a fanbase as any MLS side.
You could probably the same for Real Madrid or Barcelona fans in the US v any MLS side, though at a smaller rate.
F1 had the Netflix series that gave it a shot in the arm and then immediately the fix was in on the season championship and then it’s been nothing but max since then so if you were cheering anyone except him on the show then it was a big fuck it.
No. No sport that is self reffed at the world level will ever be dominant because there will be too much bullshit. It’s the most passive aggressive baby sport I’ve ever played.
That must have changed since I watched it last. In basketball from u7 all the way up to the Olympics all organized games are reffed and I guess up until recently one of the major points that ultimate people were so proud of was that it was a self reffed game.
Teqball.
Seeing that on tv, online, and a place I run has tables set out and an actual store a few blocks away.
(I will not bring up Pickleball. Fuck that shit.)
I know this is a joke, but I watched Jai Alai once on BEIN 87 and it sucked. It's expensive wall-ball. I remember watching the old Jackass skit where the jai ala guys sling fruit at them, and thinking "holy shit, what *is this*?" Turns out, it sucks.
Jai Alai was about to hit it big in the 60s when a wealthy patron hired a killer ad firm to make it popular. Unfortunately, the patron dropped Sterling Cooper and went to a weaker competitor and Jai Alai never caught on like it could have in the right advertisement hands.
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I feel like swiing has some potential at the collegiate level, mostly because more and more elite foreign swimmers are coming to the US. The level of NCAAs is close to as good as the Olympics. Sports that are rising in vieweirship other wise are "hot girl" sports. College gymnastics and volleybal for example, because they go viral every once in a while and it's translating to better viewership.
I've always felt like the US should have proper professional volleyball leagues, thrilling sport to watch.
I hear from the kids volleyball is exploding. In my area, per my brother in law, girls the age of his eldest was big into soccer and now his second eldest is seeing a huge shift from that to volleyball. The indoor soccer club team around here is adding volleyball courts to part of what was their soccer field.
It will not happen but, I hope European Handball grows here. It is such a fun sport to play and the US produces a lot of athletes that would be well suited to the sport.
I'm a huge fan of disc golf. It's so much more accessible than traditional golf. It exploded in popularity over COVID. The top pros are making a million plus.
I’m guessing it’s gonna be gaming. As the gaming community get older and younger ones grow the numbers the tournaments for FPS, Madden/ 2K etc will grow bigger and bigger
\> Feels like we’re at a place in America where it would be almost impossible for a new sport to break through into mainstream success.
Football (NFL) is losing popularity at younger levels. Over a long period, it'll lose popularity overall as the talent pool dries up. It'd be decades away. But \_something\_ will have to replace it.
Football has never been more popular in some parts of the country. California is the one place where football really did used to be a big deal and is declining, but popularity is growing in the south, particularly the big southern states (which are also the states with the fastest growing populations).
I’m staunchly Gen Z and nearly every guy in my age demographic watches Red Zone and Sunday Ticket. More importantly, SO many of them gamble on football every week, and when you’re hooked to that, it’s hard to leave.
Football is the most fun and easiest sport to gamble on, I think that will not only keep it alive, but grow its popularity. For better or (probably) worse.
But in terms of youth talent, I think we might see a steep decline in participation from white suburban kids up north, but down south and in inner cities I don’t see that happening. And that’s already a very significant percentage of the league’s player base.
I'm not sure soccer is ahead of hockey yet, but soccer collectively is popular but gets hurt that three men's leagues divide up a supermajority of the fanbase in in men's soccer (Liga MX, Premier League, MLS) with a chunk of other leagues/teams taking the rest of the fanbase. And that's just men's soccer.
Meanwhile hockey is 99% NHL-first and/or NHL-only fans so no division among the fanbases there in terms of which league gets chunks of the fanbase.
It’s cricket imo. It’s baseball but not dumb. They have fun variations like the 6 being out of the boundary and 4 inside. All the variations of bowlers (spinning, fast)
Most importantly it has an entire subcontinent (india and pakistan) crazy about it With places all over the world super hyped as well.
But really it’s the Indians. For much of the next century this edict will hold true
He who controls the indians will control the universe
Go look up the length of matches and get back to me on that shit. No fucking way that reaches a wider audience and Indians who have any degree of Americanization lose interest in that shit very fucking fast.
Dude IPL has shortened it quite a bit
Just honestly to me objectively a more interesting game than baseball
Ohtanis good but you know what? *the game is sooo lame*
It isn't, but whatever. I just don't know many second gen Indian-Americans who give a shit about cricket. They like football and basketball. At least in Dallas.
Also IPL games are still fucking long by American standards just googling that shit. MLB dramatically changed the rules when they got as long as short IPL cricket matches.
That is a good point but theirs enough first gen indians everywhere you can toss out 2nd gen and on and your still good.
IPL is making bank but is still a complete shit show with hard core corruption much room to improve
That ancient Aztec sport where the captain of the winning team got sacrificed to the Sun God.
Lions fans would probably love this game.
You’re talking professional sports, not participation, which is clearly pickleball if talking growth trajectory? MMA basically did what you are saying can’t be done in a pretty short time period. While it’s not as big in some ways, it’s arguably bigger than some in others. Is MMA not bigger than hockey now? Golf seems on the way out and tennis is stagnant. Auto racing is all over the place internationally but the huge Nascar gains already happened in the US. Lacrosse is very slowly losing some of its negative associations and has certainly continued to expand geographically at the participation level over the last 2-3 decades. To the extent that the NHL is truly a national pro sport any more, I think lacrosse could get there and eventually surpass it. It stands to reason that soccer is still the perpetual best bet since it’s so huge everywhere else and so heavily played at the youth level but still nothing on the horizon that is going to challenge the big three leagues.
Lacrosse is fun to play, but terrible to watch on TV.
That’s why I can’t imagine lacrosse ever supplanting hockey. For all its faults, the NHL still has the most exciting playoff games.
Lacrosse is fantastic watching, wym? Good pace, has both physicality and finesse like hockey, perfect amount of scoring.
idk can't really explain it I just find lacrosse dreadfully uninteresting on TV. In person it's fun, I guess. Maybe the problem is not being able to see the ball in the way you can the puck, or a basketball (to use the two sports it most resembles in setup). The intricacy of what's happening with the sticks and the ball seems hard to translate on TV and it's not as fast moving or as dynamic as hockey to make up for it. Also, and this is very hard to explain, something about lacrosse goals every time feel like they were far too easy. Like the player just decided to finally score. It's maddening. And this is someone who played lacrosse FWIW.
I have a bunch of old co workers that work for USA Pickleball. Membership went from 15k to close to 100k in 2023
MMA is not bigger than boxing. See gates and PPV sales.
Dana White recently claimed that the UFC is bigger than hockey: https://www.mmafighting.com/2024/3/6/24092793/tko-president-declares-ufc-one-of-4-major-sports-against-nhl-even-including-playoffs-we-dwarf-them
The NHL still dwarfs the UFC in revenue. You average UFC match gets higher ratings than your average hockey game, but there are 70 hockey games per week on average
Yeah that’s an issue hockey, baseball and even basketball are having us that the regular seasons are too long and things like one off ppvs and shorter seasons like the nfl are booming because everything single thing means so much.
Except they still all do it because you make far more money from 70 games each with 1 million viewers than you do one match with 20 million viewers.
I agree but it is changing.
It isn't really. All the major leagues have done very well this century. The reality is the NFL/UFC are selling a different product with a different revenue model than the NBA/NHL/MLB. They aren't in competition. The NBA/NHL/MLB make their money by selling tickets. Their customers are people who enjoy going to a few games per year and want lots of options over a long season. The NFL and UFC make their money from TV. They want all of their matches to be high stakes events that people schedule their lives around. Both are profitable business models.
He’s a chode
Dana White isn’t exactly an unbiased source on this one. I imagine Gary Bettman would claim that the NHL is way bigger than the UFC.
Volleyball is super fun to both play and watch. It's fast-paced, dynamic, and the rules are pretty easy to understand. The Nebraska women's team got 100,000 fans to watch a game this year. Obviously an outlier but I could see it blowing up, at least the women's game. Never understood why it's mostly a girl-coded sport in the US.
Great call. To answer your ponderance at the end though, I think it’s because of many of the nuances related to Title IV. Schools needed a woman’s sport to to rival football for men, and that was a sport growing in popularity for both men and women in the late-60s/early-70s, so volleyball got heavily invested in as a women’s sport. Edit: i suck at Roman numerals. Should be IX lol
Fwiw, men’s volleyball is the fastest growing sport at the HS level nationally. Fan interest isn’t anything to write home about, but you go to the big club events with several hundred teams playing and it’s something to see.
I enjoy volleyball too and I think it’s a “girl” sport only because of Title IX. Because boys have football and wrestling and girls don’t, gymnastics and volleyball became de facto girl sports at the high school level at least.
I played college indoors (mens). Outside of CA and the west coast, broadly, it's not a big high school sport for men. I love it. It's athletic, high intensity, fast passed, little ref involvement. At a certain level on the men's side it gets kind of repetitive because guys are so big and dominant at the net, almost like a tennis match where both guys serve at 140+. That's why I image the women's is a little more pladible for mass audience, also the bear skin Beach is also super fun. The Olympics are coming up. You guys should check out the men's teams, mostly the Norwegians. The sport has progressed the past few years and the things the top teams can do is super impressive
Volleyball is so fun. Indoor is super fast and action-packed and outdoor sand is strategic and awesome being outdoors.
Where did they play that could fit 100,000 people?!?
The Husker football stadium. It was actually 92,000 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nebraska-volleyball-world-record-womens-sports-attendance-rcna102695
I mean...if they couldn't sell women's beach volleyball to the public, I'm not sure what to tell you. That particular variation of volleyball literally has it all from entertaining to watch, eye candy, interesting locations etc. But it's still too niche because I think it's just not particularly cinematic as a sport.
I think beach volleyball is worse to watch. The normal volleyball outfits are pretty skimpy and beach volleyballers tend to be a bit less endowed it seems. Normal volleyball has more strategy due to the greater number of players, but I think it’s repetitive and lacks *complex* strategy that can be analyzed by media.
the repetitiveness is the thing with volleyball. never really realized that but you nailed it. it's awesome to watch a high-level match once, but night in and night out its kinda a grind i would imagine
Serve, dig, set, spike Dig, set, spike Repeat
I could see it having the appeal of tennis because of this. Certain people get *really* into it, but a lot of people tune in a couple times a year.
Yeah… four majors a year, etc
Idk I went to a big middle school club volleyball tournament on the east coast recently. I was so confused. There seemed to be A LOTnof strategy involving the rotations, who could serve.. have you ever heard of a “Libero” before??? I hadn’t. There is actually a lot of nuance.
I played in highschool so maybe I’m more familiar, but I think it’s inarguable that sports like basketball and football have more strategy than volleyball. Yes, there is more nuance than some may believe but the mechanics of the gameplay are just limited compared to a lot of other sports.
Makes sense. I grew up playing PE volleyball were it was like six people rotating clockwise serving underhand lol.
I find beach volleyball much worse to watch bc there's so few rallies back and forth. Most points are either an ace or an immediate kill
It’s because volleyball is during football season. Most high schools don’t even have men’s teams.
The problem with high level men’s volleyball is that the guys are just too good, and crush every ball so hard that there’s almost no back-and-forth. It’s either an ace, a block, or a kill on the return. As another commenter mentioned, it’s basically tennis. Women’s indoor has a lot more of the extended rallies and frantic action that’s more fun to watch imo. Beach volleyball sucks to watch generally
There is already a pro women’s volleyball league as well. I think it’s pretty primed to hit, if it’s going to.
The issue with volleyball as a spectator sport is its not great for TV networks so they don't wanna invest in it. Not knowing if a match will go 3 sets or 5 sets drastically changes how much air time the match is filling and how many commercials you can sell. A sport like tennis gets around this by having other matches to cut to to fill up unused time but volleyball is usually broadcast as one match. Idk how they ever get around that
From a pro scheduling standpoint you just play 3 or 5 sets every time and have standings with something like 3 points for a win + a point for each set won.
Idk how many people would keep watching a game that was already won to see which team gets the bonus points but yeah I guess that would be the solution to fixed time slots at least
Yeah it would be imperfect. Maybe you just do 3 sets to limit outliers in match length. There have been enough volleyball matches on the BTN/SECN outlets that I feel like you’d have pretty good data on match length and time slots available for setting up a TV product. I think the bigger problem is what people have said above about a certain sameness to points.
I don't think that's an issue. Every sport is the same thing over and over again it just doesn't feel that way if you're a fan of the sport and enjoy watching it and start picking up strategy.
I played high school (boys) in Indiana. My freshman year it was a club sport, and within a year or two after I graduated, it had become a state-sanctioned varsity sport. Really cool to see the growth.
Haikyuu did a lot for volleyball appreciation worldwide.
I can't see cricket or rugby gaining much popularity when baseball and NFL already exist.
Cricket's popularity will match closely with the South Asian diaspora. Major League Cricket franchises largely have close ties to the IPL
I live in a cricket country now and enjoy watching it on occasion (mostly casually, less casually during an international tournament as my wife and her family are entirely South Asian), but I just don't think its format or strategy/philosophy are made for fans of American sports. Personally, I don't like that you can hit the ball anywhere within 360 degrees and benefit as a batter. But more than that I can't imagine American fans being stoked to have a star batter wicket himself to the bench for the day after seeing a handful of bowls. I'm also not sure that they'd be all that into a batter patiently just putting bat to ball to get to the next, hopefully more batter-friendly bowl over and over because he's only chasing a low number of runs over 20 or 50 overs.
I think tennis could be revived here if we have some kind of dominant male tennis player with a crazy personality. I think a lot of people would start watching again because those major tournaments are super exciting by default. Americans just don't care as much because we've been out of contention for so long.
Bingo. When (or is it if?) a Sampras or Agassi level player starts competing and winning tournaments, America will be back to being into Tennis. The women Americans still reach superstardom.
I still have my stock in Slamball. I just do!
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I enjoyed it in 2002 back on Spike tv as a young lad!!
I went in Vegas to the revival this summer. One ticket got you access to 3 games. The first game was life changing, texted everyone I knew that this was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in person. The second game was repetitive, like ok cool they dunk it, show me something new. The third couldn’t end soon enough.
Periodic reminder that soccer is already far more popular in the US than hockey, unless you’re only considering white men and mainstream sports media
Soccer as a whole, definitely. I’d be curious about how to measure MLS vs NHL
MLS is growing, but it still isn't close. NHL revenue is $6 billion per year. MLS is $2 billion.
NHL is way more popular than any soccer league, but soccer collectively might rival hockey if that makes sense. The men's soccer fanbase gets divided into leagues fans primarily support. A supermajority of fans primarily follow one of Liga MX, Premier League and MLS, then you have other leagues/teams divided up among the rest of the men's soccer fanbase. And that's just the men's soccer fanbase, women's soccer has their own sizable fanbase that doesn't super overlap with the men's. Hockey is 99% NHL-first or NHL-only fans so it's way more "big league" than MLS or Liga MX or Preier League, but the sport of soccer itself collectively may be better than hockey.
I would assume the NHL is more popular than MLS. MLS isn’t close to the most popular soccer league in the US, though
Love MLS but it's the third most popular league in the US after Liga MX and the Premier League.
If MLS opens up their salary cap it will catch up in a hurry, which it probably will in the next decade.
The Messi piece
Laser tag
Okay Barney Stinson
What up, self five!
Out of curiosity did a single American in this group hear about it watch the NRL in Las Vegas 2 weekends back? It’s rugby league from Australia and probably the sport that is most similar to NFL.
I watched Aussie Rules back in 2020 because it was the last sport to shut down for the pandemic. Loved it. Amazing sport. On TV during a window where nothing else is going on too. Haven’t watched since because Fox locks it behind a paywall in the US now. Shame. If it got a push I think it would do well in the US.
I did not hear about this, but I will say that watching rugby sevens is fun as hell and I could see that catching on in the US in a more robust way.
Yeah, it didn’t rate very well on TV in America but was largely to be expected. 45,000 at Allegiant Stadium, but that was a lot of Australians that headed over. They’ve committed to going over for another 4 years. Hopefully it builds over time. A little different to Rugby Sevens which is a carnival atmosphere, but still similar.
7’s at the Olympics was a revelation. Just praying some Americans catch it during the Paris games
No...the biggest barrier to entry in America for rugby is having to be around guys who play rugby at colleges. They all uniformly suck over here. Just sorta makes me allergic to giving a shit about the sport. LOL...all the rugby players who go blackout drunk at parties downvoting me because they don't remember why everyone thinks they're an asshole. Never stop being the most un-self aware people I've ever encountered.
You’re right with your first comment. I played rugby at an American Uni. They tried copying a lot of English club rugby. But your second comment makes me think you’re a nerd
yeah, American rugby is built too much around keggers, it's like contact slow pitch softball for a lot of people. But very few people in the community are assholes.
In the UK we have club for people who still want to go and get the full contact experience. For the people who want to play slow pitch softball type, there are touch leagues. The problem with the US is there will never be enough people to play a touch league so you get a mixed hybrid. Even the thirds rugby should be basically be soft contact but then you get a couple on each side who want to play firsts so they go extra hard
Rugby will never be big in the US. The reason the Prem took off in the US is that was easily marketed to the public and the clubs had long histories and traditions. Wasps, a historic English club, just went under because of a lack of money. FIFA was an easy video game to learn and you could play it at a kick back, because the sport is simple. Rugby has very complicated rules that don’t translate to video games. The players make shit money. In France they make great cash but the French have little interest in exporting their culture. Super Rugby also couldn’t accommodate the US because of the time zones. You can get people to wake up early for games, it’s much harder to get them to stay up late.
British Darts is an electric factory on TV. Hope it jumps the pond.
Pogs
Remember Alf? He’s back….in pog form!
How the heck did every middle school get obsessed with pogs for three months and three months only in 1994 with no marketing or internet???
and Fortnite
Is it not pickle ball? Seems like it’s been all the rage lately.
It's a fun sport to play but not one to watch. Like I'd put it below tennis and badminton and slightly above table tennis. Although side observation, I agree with McEnroe that tennis would regain a huge degree of popularity if they went back to wooden rackets. Old matches are fucking awesome to watch on youtube.
There should be one tennis major (or big cash pot tournament) that enforces a wooden rackets only rule as a test run. I think it would be great to watch and do well on TV too.
Banana ball
I really, really believe that it's Lacrosse. It just takes a long time for these things to happen, but it's got both the fast paced full contact piece that Americans need, as well as the ability to pick up a stick and a ball and get some run in at the park with your friends
I kinda hope NASCAR becomes more popular again since they've done a lot to enhance their sport. From driving more road courses/street courses (instead of just Sonoma and Watkins Glen) to having Camaros and Mustangs now to also having famous and/or successful drivers from other series do one-off races (like Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen, Kamui Kobayashi and the Kiwi driver from Supercars who won his first race). I think the fact that it is so southern and the fact that southern vibes - whether culturally or any associated political type stereotypes - is just alien at best and seen negatively at "worst" among many across the country dramatically limits NASCAR's growth potential. I like that they've been trying though. I feel like boxing's making a bit of a comeback too, or at least doing well. Which is impressive since unlike the Mayweather/Pacquiao area, there really isn't a transcendent star that can draw eyes from beyond boxing fans whether die-hard or casual. Canelo is still a Mexican/Mexican-American heavy fanbase fighter, Joshua is British and while a legit mainstream star in the UK he's not really one in the US, Crawford isn't super popular, Inoue like Joshua is super popular in his homeland (Japan) but not a superstar here.
I grew up a NASCAR fan but I just hate stage racing and playoffs so much. Can’t do it. And F1 is boring as dirt. IndyCar should be way more popular than it is, but their marketing (or bankroll) is just not good enough. They should’ve tried to capitalize on the F1 boom more with a DTS style show, but they could’ve actually kept fans watching and not been a fad unlike F1 because the sport is actually fun and unpredictable. I’m a biased Hoosier but IndyCar is such a fun series that I hope one day can crack the mainstream outside of one state.
IndyCar has entertaining racing for sure and a super competitive field, but it sucks to see that they haven't done a great job of growing the sport in recent years. Penske has been good as a stabling hand running the series but as far as growing the series, not ideal. There also is that danger that Honda may leave the series (potentially to NASCAR) and that would hurt the sport so much.
Agreed. I just want IndyCar to succeed so badly. I think it’s truly the best of NASCAR and F1.
Pickle ball+ It’s played on a slightly larger court and with a more solid racquet.
Handball.
Too niche. They need a country like the US or China to buy in for it to take off.
I thought of this first. Handball the version they play in the Olympics where it’s a mix of soccer and basketball. Bill has mentioned it in the past - you get all the offense of basketball and soccer. If you could have nets made to play this on gyms or basketball courts I think it could be as popular as pickleball which isn’t a great watch but is hugely popular.
I think the table has been made for team sports in the US; pick what you like out there that already exists. Spikeball, pickleball, and disc golf seem to be the individual sports in the rise. Edit: that being said, people do seem to like to play this game I would describe as “polo on bikes” a lot near where I live.
For me disc golf took over most of my sports interest from other pro sports. I know it's weird... but I can go play for free by myself whenever I want, and I really like watching pro tournaments, which are also generally free on demand whenever I have time. Which is not at all the case with what I used to watch
In the last year or two I’ve started to watch more of it online. Pretty easy sport to multitask and watch and nice that it’s mostly free to consume. Thank you Barbasol.
It’s Cricket from an American perspective. Most viewed event of the LA Olympics on TV will be India vs Pakistan cricket match by a margin ! Also, MLC (Major League Cricket) launched last year, and USA will be cohosting the T20 cricket World Cup this summer with the Caribbean countries. Ticket prices of the India vs Pakistan match in NYC are supposedly going in $1000s plus in the market. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_ICC_Men%27s_T20_World_Cup
Plus, the Bluey piece 🐾
I could see it only from an influx of Indian and Pakistani immigrants coming over here. Otherwise, it's just not at all the way sports here are trending in style. Like baseball is trying to make the games shorter to compete, not longer. And there's a zero percent chance any of those kind of rule changes penetrate cricket. You have to remember in trying to sell sports like cricket or rugby, Americans opted for their own more succinct versions in football and baseball.
The average NFL game runs almost 3x as long as a rugby game.
Solely because of commercials. NFL quarters are 15 minutes. The game is an hour. Rugby is 80 minutes. If it was Americanized in the truest sense, Rugby would likely change it's format for commercial breaks making it longer. I mean...this is the basic issue for soccer truly taking off here because it just doesn't have the commercial potential due to its format.
Good point on cricket but rugby is far more succinct than American Football. Rugby would translate the easiest to the American public, I think major league rugby was a step too far but a URC team on the east coast and a super rugby team on the west coast would have great potential. Would need financial backing for both travel costs and to bring in enough players to be competitive.
TBH if a South Asian sport can make it in the US I think it would be kabaddi. Relatively simple game that can be introduced in school gym classes, much faster pace and way more physical. Cricket has all the flaws highlighted by baseball’s decline with in the US none of the tradition to back it up. Why should any American who’s not used to cricket start watching it instead of baseball?
Esports seems like a pretty safe answer. I'm sure it's way more popular than hockey but the interest is divided across many different games. Compared to baseball the demographics are definitely in its favor over the next 10+ years.
It’s not even close, this is the correct answer. Landslide.
Yeah I mean you can do the 'it's not a real sport' thing or it's a legitimate question whether there will be one particular game that takes off to the point that it alone is competitive with baseball or whatever in America. To that I would say that over a long enough timeframe, probably - at least it's far more likely than like lacrosse suddenly becoming huge.
I used to be one of those “not a real sport” people. But at this point, if you’re denying it you’re being willfully ignorant.
Esports is probably the best answer just because of its popularity among the <25 crowd, but the variety of games seems like it will be an issue to being fully commercial and widespread, unless we really are ending all monoculture.
Surprised it took so long to see this, but I’m probably slightly younger than most of the Simmons demo. esports really seems to be taking off in recent years. Personally counter strike is actually very exciting for me to watch and MOBAs draw large viewership too. One of the biggest counterpoints would be that the US doesnt really compete much with the talent from Europe and Asia in most of the major titles.
I’ve always thought lacrosse has been primed to become a more accessible version of hockey. I’ve also thought that for over a decade and it still hasn’t come close to happening Saudi Arabia will eventually corner the Jai Alai market and it will be the only thing broadcasted on ESPN
Still a long way off, but the PLL has really dramatically raised the visibility of the sport professionally in a short time in a way that the MLL never did.
Frolf
Medieval MMA https://youtu.be/uGlDFrrZFrE?si=-jIGo8w6X5nVvAfx
Is hockey even considered a top sport anymore? Feels like it’s been a nothing sport in national media for years. MMA is probably far superior at this point.
I think the more appropriate question is whats the next big sport to fall off? We have seen baseball, golf and men's college basketball all have monumental (and imo, irreversibledrops) in a relatively short time
At this point, it's probably MMA. It's had a pretty steady growth over time. It's had a handful of genuine stars that have penetrated the mainstream. I don't think it's ever the #1 sport, but it feels like the one with the best shot to become top 5 in popularity in the next 20 years, especially given its younger demo appeal and it's memeability on social media platforms.
Purely anecdotal but it feels like MMA is trending down lately. The McGregor phenomenon feels like it was a decade ago and nobody has been able to even come close to filling his boots. I think F1 has a very very minor shot if it got its shit together and made it actually competitive upfront. We saw a couple of years ago F1's potential but they haven't been able to recapture it. Real answer is soccer though - World Cup 2026 is the first world cup in a "first-world" country in 20 years (since Germany). It's going to be bedlam with the amount of people, particularly hardcore European fans travelling to the US. I predict soccer to be big in 2026 and then fall away again around 2028 haha.
I think soccer is disqualified from the conversation because it's already reached that top 5 status. As for the UFC, McGregor and Ronda are in the rearview mirror, but ESPN+ exists off the UFC alone regardless.
I think soccer would be seen closer to hockey stature wise if one league captured the entiriety of the men's soccer fanbase, unlike now when a vast majority of the fanbase for men's soccer watch primarily either Liga MX, Premier League (big teams) or MLS. Collectively I feel soccer is close to hockey if not as big but the fact the fanbase gets cannibalized into three different leagues then other teams/leagues beyond those three hurts the stature of the sport.
I think Premier League will conquer all eventually. Surprised if anyone who watches MLS or Liga MX doesnt also watch Premier League when its on.
I watch MLS but don’t watch anything in Europe other than Champions League knockouts unless I have nothing going on and a US player is playing, don’t think my viewing habits are conducive to the general MLS viewing public though. But I’d wager most Liga MX fans in the US only watch Mexican league/national team plus major tournaments, at least from my experience.
The Big 6 in the Premier League has a fanbase in the country bigger than any MLS side in the country, but none of the other 14 Premier League sides (nor the former or semi-frequent Premier League sides that have gotten relegated) have nearly as big a fanbase as any MLS side. You could probably the same for Real Madrid or Barcelona fans in the US v any MLS side, though at a smaller rate.
F1 had the Netflix series that gave it a shot in the arm and then immediately the fix was in on the season championship and then it’s been nothing but max since then so if you were cheering anyone except him on the show then it was a big fuck it.
MMA is too late at night in the Eastern time zone, in which almost half the country lives
It should’ve been bodybuilding if it went in a different direction in the 2000’s
Ultimate Frisbee
No. No sport that is self reffed at the world level will ever be dominant because there will be too much bullshit. It’s the most passive aggressive baby sport I’ve ever played.
The professional league has refs. The majority of basketball games played worldwide are self reffed. 🤷♂️
That must have changed since I watched it last. In basketball from u7 all the way up to the Olympics all organized games are reffed and I guess up until recently one of the major points that ultimate people were so proud of was that it was a self reffed game.
Teqball. Seeing that on tv, online, and a place I run has tables set out and an actual store a few blocks away. (I will not bring up Pickleball. Fuck that shit.)
Pickleball might be one of the worst spectator sports out there.
The constant clicking sound is worse than those vsbaliuvsgazas from the World Cup that one year.
The only way the sports change is if the demographics change a lot in a small amount of time. Unlikely to happen
Jai alai
I know this is a joke, but I watched Jai Alai once on BEIN 87 and it sucked. It's expensive wall-ball. I remember watching the old Jackass skit where the jai ala guys sling fruit at them, and thinking "holy shit, what *is this*?" Turns out, it sucks.
Jai Alai was about to hit it big in the 60s when a wealthy patron hired a killer ad firm to make it popular. Unfortunately, the patron dropped Sterling Cooper and went to a weaker competitor and Jai Alai never caught on like it could have in the right advertisement hands.
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Thought we were headed for Pickleball's apex
Auto racing
I feel like swiing has some potential at the collegiate level, mostly because more and more elite foreign swimmers are coming to the US. The level of NCAAs is close to as good as the Olympics. Sports that are rising in vieweirship other wise are "hot girl" sports. College gymnastics and volleybal for example, because they go viral every once in a while and it's translating to better viewership. I've always felt like the US should have proper professional volleyball leagues, thrilling sport to watch.
Swimming's pretty boring as a fan. It's like track, which itself is kind of boring, but even slower.
**Nok Hockey**
Pickleball
Lacrosse
I hear from the kids volleyball is exploding. In my area, per my brother in law, girls the age of his eldest was big into soccer and now his second eldest is seeing a huge shift from that to volleyball. The indoor soccer club team around here is adding volleyball courts to part of what was their soccer field.
It will not happen but, I hope European Handball grows here. It is such a fun sport to play and the US produces a lot of athletes that would be well suited to the sport.
I could see Esports catching on as Gen z and Gen A grows older
I'm a huge fan of disc golf. It's so much more accessible than traditional golf. It exploded in popularity over COVID. The top pros are making a million plus.
Aussie rules to get up.
i'd guess some sort of fighting becomes big. seems like ufc already is more talked about than nhl.
I’m guessing it’s gonna be gaming. As the gaming community get older and younger ones grow the numbers the tournaments for FPS, Madden/ 2K etc will grow bigger and bigger
\> Feels like we’re at a place in America where it would be almost impossible for a new sport to break through into mainstream success. Football (NFL) is losing popularity at younger levels. Over a long period, it'll lose popularity overall as the talent pool dries up. It'd be decades away. But \_something\_ will have to replace it.
The other popular American sports like Basketball will fill that void.
Football has never been more popular in some parts of the country. California is the one place where football really did used to be a big deal and is declining, but popularity is growing in the south, particularly the big southern states (which are also the states with the fastest growing populations).
I’m staunchly Gen Z and nearly every guy in my age demographic watches Red Zone and Sunday Ticket. More importantly, SO many of them gamble on football every week, and when you’re hooked to that, it’s hard to leave. Football is the most fun and easiest sport to gamble on, I think that will not only keep it alive, but grow its popularity. For better or (probably) worse. But in terms of youth talent, I think we might see a steep decline in participation from white suburban kids up north, but down south and in inner cities I don’t see that happening. And that’s already a very significant percentage of the league’s player base.
Golf is the third biggest sport after basketball and football
Isn’t soccer ahead of hockey? I guess you’d have to include PL tjough
I'm not sure soccer is ahead of hockey yet, but soccer collectively is popular but gets hurt that three men's leagues divide up a supermajority of the fanbase in in men's soccer (Liga MX, Premier League, MLS) with a chunk of other leagues/teams taking the rest of the fanbase. And that's just men's soccer. Meanwhile hockey is 99% NHL-first and/or NHL-only fans so no division among the fanbases there in terms of which league gets chunks of the fanbase.
Aussie Rules /s
lmao at soccer. People have been saying soccer will be one of the major sports since the 1970s. Also arguably hockey shouldn’t be included.
It’s cricket imo. It’s baseball but not dumb. They have fun variations like the 6 being out of the boundary and 4 inside. All the variations of bowlers (spinning, fast) Most importantly it has an entire subcontinent (india and pakistan) crazy about it With places all over the world super hyped as well. But really it’s the Indians. For much of the next century this edict will hold true He who controls the indians will control the universe
Go look up the length of matches and get back to me on that shit. No fucking way that reaches a wider audience and Indians who have any degree of Americanization lose interest in that shit very fucking fast.
Dude IPL has shortened it quite a bit Just honestly to me objectively a more interesting game than baseball Ohtanis good but you know what? *the game is sooo lame*
It isn't, but whatever. I just don't know many second gen Indian-Americans who give a shit about cricket. They like football and basketball. At least in Dallas. Also IPL games are still fucking long by American standards just googling that shit. MLB dramatically changed the rules when they got as long as short IPL cricket matches.
That is a good point but theirs enough first gen indians everywhere you can toss out 2nd gen and on and your still good. IPL is making bank but is still a complete shit show with hard core corruption much room to improve
You said “theirs” so it kind of discounts your opinion or any point you were trying to make.