Soccer in America: Are Announcers to Blame for Second-Tier Status?

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: March 2, 2012

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Soccer would be more popular in America if not for TV.

Hold on. Let me rephrase.

The future popularity of soccer in America has everything to do with television, and doing more with it: More American TV viewers would become more interested in soccer if American commentators and producers did more to teach casual fans about the game.

Got it? That’s the gist of what Christopher Medley, a 30-year-old marketing professional who says he’s endured bad broadcasting in three languages, argues in “Soccer and the Mechanics of Sport on T.V.,” an Internet video that has the American soccer community buzzing.

Now, if you’re an American soccer fan, those last few sentences should have just raised your eyebrows—first of all because one of the painful realities of being a soccer fan in America is all the awful announcing.  

As far as I know, there’s no hard data on the unpopularity of America’s cadre of play-by-play and color commentators. But suffice it to say that only Congress has gotten away with such poor approval ratings for quite so long.

The second reason is that Medley is right.



“Mechanics of Sport”Here’s what Medley is saying.

In order to draw in and educate more TV viewers, American commentators and producers should focus on what Medley calls “the mechanics of sport.” If they did, viewers would have a more thorough and interactive experience, and would likely come back to watch soccer more often.



This is important. Fox showed Chelsea’s exciting 3-3 draw with Manchester United live on Super Sunday—and drew only a 0.8 rating from it. That translates to just 1.377 million viewers in a nation of more than 300 million. Clearly the sport could be marketed better.

Medley gives three suggestions in his “mechanics of sport" approach.
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Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football

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