In the U.S. sports market, not counting non-pro leagues (i.e. excluding college programs like American football and basketball) and not counting non-ball or non-team programs like racing and golf, the market size and popularity rankings are roughly like this:
NFL (American football) > MLB (baseball) > NBA (basketball) ≈ NHL (hockey) > MLS (soccer).
1. Rugby
Americans mostly like wild, rushing, confrontational sports, Americans advocate individual heroism, WWE’s popularity in the United States also reflects this situation, but when it comes to the United States of America’s most frenzied and influential tournament NFL football is absolutely unbeatable.
2, baseball
Basketball God Jordan retired for the first time that year is the choice of baseball, visible baseball influence in the United States before the Jordan era is almost as bad as basketball.
3, Basketball
Since Jordan brought the NBA to the world, the NBA is not limited to a sport in North America, to this day, and even become the world’s second only to the soccer World Cup popularity of the sport!
The history of professional sports in the United States is dominated by MLB and NFL fighting for first place. Before World War II, there was no doubt about the dominance of the longer-established MLB, and even many of the NFL’s early teams shared venues and team names with the MLB. But after World War II there was a new change, and that was television.
Before the emergence of television, professional sports mainly rely on the local market in large cities, and public wireless television on the one hand, the team can make the influence of the radiation to the whole country, especially there is no professional team of small and medium-sized cities and rural areas, so as to increase revenue; on the other hand, the television advertising revenue can be fed back to the team, to promote the development of the team.
The advantage of American football at this time is that it is not so successful in the previous era, and will not be like MLB to worry about live television broadcasts will affect the sales of live tickets, and American football as a rounds of sports, naturally well suited to insert advertising, in line with the profit model of the television station.
Therefore, the NFL was able to establish a solid partnership with television stations and gradually adjusted the rules of the game, jersey design, mode of operation and other aspects to become more and more suitable for live broadcast. In the 1960s, the NFL successfully merged with its emerging competitor, the AFL, to form the New NFL, and the original NFL and AFL became the NFC and AFC of the New NFL, which, on the one hand, created a de facto monopoly, laying the foundation for a relatively healthy labor-management relationship thereafter. On the other hand, the cooperation between the two leagues also created the Super Bowl, a brand that would shine in the future.
Since then, the NFL has gradually surpassed the MLB to become the number one sports league in the United States.
Let’s talk about baseball. Baseball started early and was the first national professional sports league in the United States. However, as mentioned earlier, it missed a windfall after World War II, coupled with problems in management structure and labor relations, an imbalance between strong and weak teams, and several strikes, it has slowly gone down. Baseball’s ratings are not particularly good at the moment, sometimes even lower than basketball’s, all supported by historical inertia and overall volume. Baseball’s fanbase is getting older, and in another generation or two, maybe MLB won’t be able to keep the second spot.
Third is basketball. Basketball started relatively late and suffered from being a small indoor arena sport that was often associated with the black ghetto, which is completely different from the American football played by graduates of prestigious schools.When the NBA finished integrating professional basketball, it had a very small overall volume and had to deal with the NFL on prime time weekends and MLB on weekday nights, which made it very difficult to deal with. The NBA’s response strategy, one is the curve to save the country, in the 80′s decisively began to open up the emerging market represented by China (contemporaneous NFL will only go to Europe and Japan to play exhibition games); the second is to rely on superstars such as Michael Jordan to gradually enhance their own image. So the NBA’s market is still up stateside, but it’s still a long way from MLB, let alone the NFL.
Further down, hockey is a typical white sports, long history and tension exciting, but will be subject to ethnic and regional restrictions, the market size is similar to basketball.
And soccer well …… has had a very bumpy ride in the United States. Historically, several U.S. soccer leagues have died under the weight of powerful rivals. Until after the 1994 World Cup, the current MLS is gradually on track. Soccer is one of the more promising sports in the U.S. because European, Latino, and Asian immigrants are potential viewers of soccer, and NBC, FOX, and other major stations have begun to televise soccer matches.
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Post time: Apr-02-2025
