Getting A Kick Out Of The Atmosphere
Jun 27, 2006, 4:51:03 AM by Jonathan Rand
Right now we’re seeing a solar eclipse in American sports.
Pro football, America’s most popular sport, won’t be visible again until training camps begin. International football, the world’s most popular sport, is as visible as it ever becomes in the United States.
Because of the World Cup, there are scads of stories and commentaries about why soccer can’t catch on the U.S. Some find this American attitude arrogant and parochial. Others find it a perfectly natural reaction to a game that provides little scoring.
Through a happy coincidence of vacationing in soccer-mad countries during major tournaments, I understand why soccer hasn’t captured America’s imagination. It’s all about the atmosphere.
I was in England and Scotland during Euro 2004, and the fact it was held in Portugal did little to diminish the all-consuming soccer atmosphere in the British pubs and press. Watching England’s matches amid soccer-crazy fans was a treat. The hysterical overreaction by the tabloids to England’s elimination was almost comical.
I was in Costa Rica a few weeks ago when the home team, the Ticos, played Germany in the World Cup opener. Costa Ricans painted their faces red, white and blue and wore team jerseys as they viewed the game at an open-air restaurant overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
Whenever the home team scored, fans went wild and bathers hearing the commotion ran across the street from the beach to watch the instant replay. Fans chanted: “Tee-cos, Tee-cos. Oh-lay! Oh-lay! Oh-lay!”
Having spent much of my life as a hard-core sports fan and sports writer, I never paid too much attention to game-day atmosphere. I could enjoy a game just as much sitting among a crowd of 500 as among a crowd of 80,000.
I didn’t ponder why the Chiefs take such pains to enhance the Arrowhead Stadium experience from the time the first vehicle enters the gates to the time the last beer can gets crushed. A lot of ticket buyers want more than just a football game.
When it comes to soccer, I realize, I’m like the football fan who enjoys the tailgating, crowd antics and Monday morning quarterbacking as much, if not more, than the game.
As every sports marketer knows, a sport can’t thrive with just hard-core fans. It also needs fans who get caught up in the atmosphere, socializing and sense of participation. Without them, you wouldn’t have packed stadiums, huge television audiences and an electric atmosphere that suggests there’s nothing more important going on in the world.
Soccer promoters, notably Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, understandably projected that once America’s youngsters began playing soccer, they would drag their parents to the matches and soon be buying tickets for their own kids. But decades of explosive growth in U.S. youth soccer and continued lukewarm interest in the professional game have shown that isn’t so.
Unlike kids in many other countries, Americans playing soccer are usually playing other sports, too. They don’t have a single-minded commitment to soccer. Besides, kids who play a sport don’t necessarily wind up paying to watch it.
NFL stadiums are packed every Sunday with a plenty of fans whose football experience runs no deeper than a two-hand touch game in the backyard. If the Chiefs had to rely only on fans who’ve played organized football, there’d never be a waiting list for season tickets.
I enjoyed the atmosphere of the Costa Rica-Germany game so much that I made a mental note to watch the Costa Rica-Ecuador game when I got home. But I never tuned in. The atmosphere was gone, and so was the thrill. I was then more interested in seeing whether Kyle Turley appeared big enough to play tackle.
The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.
