Why are American Football and Baseball not popular outside the US*? (champions, fan)
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Not sure.
I've been to rugby matches, and you can hear their bodies slamming against each other. They don't hold back.
You know that is a good point, though you didn't specifically mention it. The examples I provided were trauma which American football actually does have a much higher rate of than other sports, by far.
But in terms of chronic, or long term, injuries, I'm uncertain. Interesting counterpoint!
On the whole, I'd feel more safe letting my kids play rugby than football.
Double breaks in the leg are a fairly common occurrence in Football (soccer) with a litany of high name players suffering some truly horrific injuries. Football certainly has a large amount of dangerous contact. The common list of injuries in football include: Medial Ligament rupture, Anterior Cruciate Ligament rupture, Meniscus injuries, Metatarsal fractures, muscle strains and tearing, hernias, and broken bones. This is quite a lengthy list for a sport which ostensibly refrains from player-on-player contact.
You know that is a good point, though you didn't specifically mention it. The examples I provided were trauma which American football actually does have a much higher rate of than other sports, by far.
But in terms of chronic, or long term, injuries, I'm uncertain. Interesting counterpoint!
On the whole, I'd feel more safe letting my kids play rugby than football.
Ah See your point.
Interestingly from what the NFL is finding re head trauma, Australian Football Rules (Aussie Rules, NOT Rugby) have changed rules and requirements with head injuries. If a player is deemed concussed, they can't return to the field & must miss a week.
Many people say that baseball is pretty popular in Latin America but Baseball is only huge in the Spanish Caribbean, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Here's my take on sports in Latin America.
Baseball:
Huge in (number 1 sport)
DR
Puerto Rico
Cuba
Venezuela
Nicaragua (followed by football, not a great sporting culture in general)
Important sport in:
Panama, some may argue is the #1 sport in the country ( followed closely by Boxing and football which has seen a great increase of popularity due to the recent succes of the national team)
Minor sport in:
Mexico ( popular in northern states and the Yucatan, non-existant as a spectator sport)
Colombia ( a minor sport in the caribbean coast, the national league only has 4 pro teams)
Non-existant in: El salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala, Uruguay, Ecuador.
American football:
Minor sport in Mexico and Puerto Rico. The Mexican Onefa (National Student Organization of American Football- college level) has some great university rivalries but very few outside the uiversity alumni watches the games on TV. The top teams average 5,000-7,000 fans a game. Derbies can top 10,000 fans. Very few people play the game but it has a lot of viewers in Mexico. The SupeBowl usually gets close to a million viewers. And games are shown on over-the-air channels and basic cable.
In Puerto Rico the game has some amateur leagues, but it is still by far behind baseball, basketball, boxing, volleyball and football soccer.
non-existant in the rest of Latin America.
Basketball
Played throughout Latin America, seen as a recreational sport more than anything, like freebie for example.
It enjoys a great following (local leagues, NBA, Olympics, rec. sport, spectator sport) in Puerto Rico, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela.
with globalization all sports have gotten some kind of increase in popularity worldwide. The sport that has benefited the most from globalization is obviously soccer. It's the worlds most popular sport and its not even close. And it's the fastest growing sport in the U.S.
NFL football has been a failure globally. It just doesn't have much appeal outside of North America and it doesn't matter what Roger Goodell does to try to make the NFL global, it will just never work. There are a lot of reasons for this. Like some have mentioned, the type of fan that may be interested in NFL football already has rugby as a contact sport. But i think more importantly is that the NFL is seen as more as entertainment than as sport. The stoppage of play and the amount of advertisements make it feel like the game is just there so the viewer can be sold products. When I lived in Britain thats how a lot of Britons felt about it.
Baseball is declining in this country and it doesn't seem to have much appeal globally either. An American sports league that I think has a chance to become global is the NBA. Basketball is taken seriously throughout Europe and parts of South America. One thing I think holding the NBA back is the barrier to entry for foreign players. If a foreign player wants to enter the NBA he has to go through the draft system even though he is not an amateur. This isn't done in baseball. In baseball a player from Japan can be bought through a transfer fee and the player can choose which club he wants to sign with. You might not have ever seen Ichiro in MLB if he had to enter himself into a draft.
The NBA in many ways isn't structured to benefit from globalization. The long 82 game season(plus playoffs) requires players to shut down and rest during the off-season. That makes it difficult to have serious international competition.
Because they are slow pace and too much politics in American sport.
I do believe there is big money and politics (transfer system) in international soccer as well.
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