[Thermodyne]

Originally posted by DavidG:

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Originally posted by Thermodyne:

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Originally posted by minipol:

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Originally posted by Thermodyne:
Well, money talks and bull doody walks. Show me a soccer team with an 80 million dollar payroll. Show me a soccer team that Forbes values at .98 Billion dollars. That $980,000,000.00 for you Brits. Show me any team other than Football that has sold out 85,000 seats through 2038.

First of all, what has money got to do with it? Nothing at all. And if you say "$980,000,000.00 for you Brits", make the effort and convert it to pounds instead of dollars

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Now you are just being naive. Money has everything to do with it.

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I do hope your basing this claim on more than the payroll of a single time. Since I gather there are many many more pro socer teams in Europe than pro football in America the comparison is meaningless.
And no money has nothing to do with making a good sport. If 10,000 fans pay $50 to see a pro foot ball game in the US and 100,000 pay $1 to see soccer game does this mean football is better?

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Your numbers tell the story. The NFL reports gate plus concessions to be about $180,000,000.00 a week during the regular season. Add to that the National TV money and the off site concessions, and your guys are going to need to be watching $1 soccer games for about 12 days a week. We have soccer on TV here, but it is a looser for the networks with the exception of world cup and Olympics. And the local pro soccer team can barely fill the lower deck of the old (small) football stadium. UMD just had a championship soccer game. They didn’t even need to use the stadium, and the tickets were given away.

I think the argument here is misplaced. Soccer is a sport for the masses to play. Football is a spectator sport for the masses. And while they are both sports, they really are like apples and oranges. Or lobster and shrimp. While of the same family, they have very little in common. And like it or not, in all but about 10 countries in this world, profit is the universal measuring stick.