by Jay Nolan

Created on: January 27, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Soccer is very popular in the United States. It's just not popular on the major league level. Drive around any weekend and look at the playing fields and you will see soccer games everywhere.

The advertisers and marketers in America don't promote soccer because it is not a commercially friendly sport. They depend on tv commercials during time outs to sell their products. Soccer does not break to commercial or have prolonged stoppages to sell advertisements.

Baseball, football, basketball, and now Nascar promote their sports through the backing of advertisers. Think of all the breaks you have during one four hour baseball game. How many commercials do you see then? Football is loaded with commercials and tv timeouts. Consider this, you only see twelve minutes of action in a three hour game what are the other two hours and forty eight minutes filled with? Basketball relishes the four quarter system and the endless amount of timeouts that coaches seem to call regardless of the score. Nascar is one big commercial. Every turn, every image of the whole sport bombards your senses with advertising. It's hypnotic, the hum of the engines and the visual effect the pretty colors have on you. I want to go to Home D and change the oil in my car after watching a race for five minutes. Roddy Piper where are your sunglasses?

Soccer transcends other sports. It focuses on the fan. Two hour non stop action watching in shape athletes ply their trade. The world loves soccer. The advertisers don't and since money talks then we have to justify to ourselves that soccer is not as popular in the United States because of something soccer is lacking.

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