World Cup a big yawn in soccer-hating US

30 June 2006

As reported by: Reuters
If you look west from Germany these days you'll see America stifling a yawn at the World Cup.

Despite a doubling of TV ratings for the first-round matches this month, before the U.S. squad failed miserably, soccer still ranks below televised poker tournaments in a land where baseball, basketball and American football rule.

To put it in context, ABC-TV's average rating of 2.5 for the first eight matches it aired represents barely 8 million viewers in a nation of just under 300 million. Only 3.9 million Americans watched the 2002 World Cup final, out of 1.1 billion worldwide.

By comparison, nearly 91 million viewers watched this year's Super Bowl, the glitzy climax to the season for America's home-grown form of football. Nearly 39 million watched the Academy Awards, Hollywood's big night, in March and 36 million tuned in for last month's finale of "American Idol," a TV talent show.

And on ABC's sports cable network, ESPN, which presumably attracts more serious sports fans, the World Cup has had even fewer viewers, averaging around 1.75 million on channels that reach 91 million homes.

No surprise then, that a poll by the Global Market Insite market research service found only 11 percent of Americans surveyed were "definitely" interested in the World Cup, compared with 45 percent of respondents world-wide.
Article By: Reuters

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