Sports: Soccer and Football: Two kinds of games f+t it out for market share

MediaBistro has a SportsNewser webpage that's "calling the shots in sports media news," or so it believes. Whatever.  I'm interested becawz of the sports info below, comparing the USA's National Football League's attempted entry into English sports market by playing a major exhibition game there on Nov3,2k10.  Noah Davis reports on the Brit soccer vs USA football competition that's perhaps in the offing.

FOOTBALL

Why the NFL Struggles to Gain a Foothold in Europe

By Noah Davis on November 3, 2010 11:29 AM

On Sunday, the San Francisco Giants and the Denver Broncos played a brutally game  football game at Wembley Stadium in London, England. The game was the fourth installment of “NFL goes to Europe,” a plan to increase the sport’s popularity across the pond.

Success? Hardly.

We turn to Sean O’Conor from No Short Corners. And go:

In that sense I resemble someone handed tickets to a game at USA ’94 who enjoyed the day out but drove home scratching his head at the offside rule and relative lack of scoring. I spent many a Friday night a decade ago driving to watch high-school football in invisible towns in rural Kansas, and before that accompanying football-mad friends to watch nascent gridiron teams clash in the incongruous setting of Sunday summer afternoons in England, but it never stuck beyond the spectacle and sense of occasion. It can be hard to fall in love with a sport you have not played.

If soccer and football were racing to conquer America and Europe, respectively, you’d have to give the edge to the former sport. Major League Soccer saw attendance jump four percent in the recently completed 2010 seasons and college soccer is seeing unprecedented interest, while the NFL can’t get more than a game abroad. Both sports will eventually crossover, but don’t expect either to happen anytime soon.

I wasn't prepared for this development, the trend reporter Davis sees and regarding which he cautions us not to make fantastical presumptions -- yet even he seems to regard the mutual crossover of the games of soccer (British football) and American football, well, inevitable.  But gradual, l+k evolution; nothing revolutionary.

Okay, I'm persuaded.  In the meantime, the h+ly dangerous and often brutal sport of American football (as Sean O'Conor mentions in passing ... it is indeed too brutal, yet it)  catches m+ eye on the telly oftentimes when I coud choose a soccer meet in Canada, USA, England, or a bunch of other countries (mostly European).  The media infrastructure is available  for both sports (but the pro and college football games are carried simultaneously on several channels and all day long, one after the otherm on most sports channels), wh+l the soccer coverage ranges beyond the North American franchises, with much focus  on English teams and more generally European.  But not much on games in Latin America, Africa, or Asia (we do get Asian cricket on the telly here).  Watching TV football is almost a mandatory ritual on Sunday afternoons.  Many Christians tends to have the schedule:  Church, Lunch, Football, on Sundays.

-- Sportikos