Originally Posted by Rob

We [Americans] are programmed NOT to like soccer from birth. Even as a young kid, if you played one of the major three American sports; Football (the one you can use your hands and hit people without them flopping), baseball, and basketball, you were in the cool group. To us, soccer players were the weak ones that couldn't make it in the other sports. And that's because we were programmed by the media NOT to like soccer. The reason? There's not a lot of ad revenue to be made in soccer. Could you imagine any station in America showing 90 minutes of continuous sports play without one single commercial break?!?!? What they did is "pushed" the other sports on us and that dealt soccer the American deathblow. The NFL, the most popular sport in the United States takes 3 1/2 hours to play a one hour game. That's 2 1/2 hours of money making ad revenue pouring in and why the NFL is worth Billions.

They tried to have MLS in the U.S. and it pretty much failed. They're still playing, but no one is paying attention. There is no ad revenue and you don't find too many professional soccer players with million dollar endorsement deals. An unproven NFL rookie, just drafted will sign a multimillion dollar endorsement deal. A professional soccer player will sign an endorsement deal for Ed's Pawnshop on the Corner of MLK and 22nd.

It's not that we're threatened by soccer, we're just greedy about money. And from a media standpoint, soccer is not a money making sport - if there's no time for ads, don't waste our time is what the networks say. The MLS is having problems filling up stadiums with just 1,500 seats - and ticket sales and concessions aren't going to make anyone want to invest. So there's your answer, that's why Americans don't like soccer. The media programmed us from the time we were able to watch Sesame Street, and continue to program us to this day.