Can Soccer dethrone Hockey as Canada's national game?

[An Observer]

An interesting article in the business section of the Globe

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/can-soccer-dethrone-hockey-as-canadas-national-game/article1918123/

[Bertuzzi44]

A more realistic title would have been "Can soccer dethrone the CFL as Canada's second most popular game?"

Quote from the article:

And the hope is that MLS can, over time, replace the Canadian Football League as Canada’s second-most valuable TV franchise, after hockey. It’s ambitious: A good TFC audience last year was in the 130,000 range; CFL games can draw a million viewers for a key matchup.

The ""dethrone hockey"" bit is more an attention grabber than a realistic goal IMHO.

[Keegan]

Great article, really makes you optimistic for the future

[Macksam]

I'm afraid to look at the comments section of that article.

[redhat]

^ Macksam, some of the comments were obvious: "Soccer is a great game played by kids ..."

I actually read the article in this morning's ROB magazine with Mallett & a soccer ball on the cover!

Hockey will be difficult to displace as the amount of funding on hockey alone dwarfs its soccer equivalent. Look at the amount of money spent on our Olympic team of professional NHLers. Now compare that to how much our MNT gets.

Hockey has deep roots in Canadian culture and psyche, but soccer is rapidly growing. With guys like Nash, Mallett, and Kerfoot on board, our sport's future is definitely brighter.

[Redcoatsforever]

I don't see why we need to dethrone hockey at all. Canada needs a winter sport and a summer sport. People love hockey, what we should really be thinking about it whether or not soccer would/could outpace football.

[yomurphy1]

I don't see why we need to dethrone hockey at all. Canada needs a winter sport and a summer sport. People love hockey, what we should really be thinking about it whether or not soccer would/could outpace football.

+1

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

...and baseball.

[kj52]

...and baseball.

Somehow I think baseball with it's average salary of $3.3m will continue to have an attraction to athletes in Canada. You really have to like the article though, imagine if we had a dozen more Mallets in Canada with that kind of money and enthusiasm.

[paul-collins]

This is my opinion based solely on my coaching experiences in hockey/ringette versus soccer:

Soccer is widely perceived as a summer sport, which limits it to June to September. Soccer will not outpace hockey until this "summer sport" perception changes for the participants.

Parents are willing to schlep kids to arenas throughout the school year from September up to about the beginning of April (6-7 months). School structure dictates that the kids are around for the full season (with sanctioned breaks) so the hockey season isn't a patchwork of attendance. This is a structural advantage to being a fall/winter sport; team development occurs when the teammates reliably attend practices and games.

Summer vacations are all over the map for July and August so keeping the team together is much more tricky. More importantly, it shifts the perception of importance for the sport to "something you do during summer break when you're not on vacation." The September (start-of-school) activity becomes an afterthought or inconvenience rather than an important part of the season.

There's no reason soccer couldn't be played up until the end of October and start in May other than the kids would need to play in warmer clothes. And it would give more development time and could contribute to changing the perception of the sport from a "vacation activity" to a full "extracurricular activity."

[kj52]

This is my opinion based solely on my coaching experiences in hockey/ringette versus soccer:

Soccer is widely perceived as a summer sport, which limits it to June to September. Soccer will not outpace hockey until this "summer sport" perception changes for the participants.

Parents are willing to schlep kids to arenas throughout the school year from September up to about the beginning of April (6-7 months). School structure dictates that the kids are around for the full season (with sanctioned breaks) so the hockey season isn't a patchwork of attendance. This is a structural advantage to being a fall/winter sport; team development occurs when the teammates reliably attend practices and games.

Summer vacations are all over the map for July and August so keeping the team together is much more tricky. More importantly, it shifts the perception of importance for the sport to "something you do during summer break when you're not on vacation." The September (start-of-school) activity becomes an afterthought or inconvenience rather than an important part of the season.

There's no reason soccer couldn't be played up until the end of October and start in May other than the kids would need to play in warmer clothes. And it would give more development time and could contribute to changing the perception of the sport from a "vacation activity" to a full "extracurricular activity."

Completely agree with your comments on the season of play. On the Prairies with our ridiculously short non-winter, we give up a couple of months of playing weather which seriously inhibits the game's development. And how do we make up for it? In Alberta we play (for the most part) a game -indoor boarded - which has little relationship to the real game. Not only that but we play it for 6 months of the year primarily so the municipal and soccer organizations can maximize the amount of money they bring in to keep these buildings financially viable. Kudos to Saskatchewan for building full field boardless facilities and moving away from the arena version.

[squizz1402635577]

You guys realize the actual article has very little, if anything, to do with hockey, right?

[TFCRegina]

You guys realize the actual article has very little, if anything, to do with hockey, right?

It's a headline. That's all. There's like 2 sentences in the whole thing that mention hockey.

If anything the headline should have been Can Soccer Replace Canadian Football?

And the subheadline shoulda been HELL YES!

[TheKottonmouthed1555362307]

Sorry it ain't possible.

I'm a hockey fan first soccer fan second. I think it will always be like that, I hope so at least, Hockey isn't just a sport here it's history, it's culture, it's family.

Whaat I do hope for Soccer is that it can become 2nd on the throne to Hockey, but it will never topple Hockey, it's too intertwined into the lives of everyone here.

[killgod]

What the article doesn't touch on is that the CFL is on the rise again in Canada. 100th Grey Cup, new stadiums and expansions are all in the imminent future for the league. I think soccer can be very relevant in this nation, maybe overtake everything, but the CFL is on the up right now which makes that goal even harder. I mean heck, 7.6M Canadians tuned into the last Grey Cup at some point in the game. Last Labour day they had 1.3M watching WPG/SSK with the other games being close to 1M in viewers.

Anyways the MLS can hit these numbers, I hope....but don't make it sound like the CFL will be easy to overtake in Canada. It bothers me how some Canadians think so little of the CFL, especially when it's very strongly supported these days.

Maybe even look to overtake the NHL first, the Maple Leafs (in 2009) averaged 600K on TSN and 320K on RSN. The western clubs are only a fraction of that.

[Keegan]

Sorry it ain't possible.

I'm a hockey fan first soccer fan second. I think it will always be like that, I hope so at least, Hockey isn't just a sport here it's history, it's culture, it's family.

Whaat I do hope for Soccer is that it can become 2nd on the throne to Hockey, but it will never topple Hockey, it's too intertwined into the lives of everyone here.

The demographics of this country certainly suggest that soccer could be on par with hockey within the next decade(s) and almost certainly will overtake the CFL at some point.

[kj52]

The demographics of this country certainly suggest that soccer could be on par with hockey within the next decade(s) and almost certainly will overtake the CFL at some point.

I guess if by "this country" you mean southern Ontario, then that could be correct, I don't live there so have no idea. Guarantee it won't happen on the prairies in this decade.

[Keegan]

I guess if by "this country" you mean southern Ontario, then that could be correct, I don't live there so have no idea. Guarantee it won't happen on the prairies in this decade.

I was referring more to this

"With a negative birthrate, declining death rates, and an aging population, immigration is the sole contributor to Canada’s population increase"

And besides rare circumstances most of those immigrants are coming from football countries, just look at the registration numbers between the two sports

[jpg75]

Not all immigrants will watch Soccer and some of them will take to Hockey, their kids and grandkids will probably gravitate to Hockey even more. Look at Italian-Canadians, they're probably 3rd or 4th generation by now and loads of them are playing Hockey.

Besides history and culture there's a very good reason we love Hockey, we're really good at it and when you're good at something you tend to like it. Until we get "good" at Soccer, perhaps making it to the WC consistently and becoming a Round of 16 contender like the US and Mexico, I don't think overtaking Hockey is realistic at all.

[red card]

It bothers me how some Canadians think so little of the CFL, especially when it's very strongly supported these days.

Ditto, bro. Too many compare it to the NFL. But if the CFL was a soccer league, it would be considered a top 5 league in the world based on attendance and tv ratings. The average CFL match tv rating is equivalent to about 4 TFC matches. Only HNIC, playoff hockey, NFL playoffs, some Blue Jays games and Brier final come close to approaching CFL tv ratings.

I can't see footy taking pointy ball in anyone's lifetime living today. It is solidly entrenched as the #2 sport in Canada and benefits from being the clear #1 sport in the US. Possibly the concussion issue might derail it but it's going take a cultural change. A more realistic goal is takeover basketball and baseball in terms of tv ratings, media coverage and dominating water cooler talk.

[Macksam]

Ditto, bro. Too many compare it to the NFL. But if the CFL was a soccer league, it would be considered a top 5 league in the world based on attendance and tv ratings. The average CFL match tv rating is equivalent to about 4 TFC matches. Only HNIC, playoff hockey, NFL playoffs, some Blue Jays games and Brier final come close to approaching CFL tv ratings.

I can't see footy taking pointy ball in anyone's lifetime living today. It is solidly entrenched as the #2 sport in Canada and benefits from being the clear #1 sport in the US. Possibly the concussion issue might derail it but it's going take a cultural change. A more realistic goal is takeover basketball and baseball in terms of tv ratings, media coverage and dominating water cooler talk.

You have to break it down by region. In the GTA, it already has.

[kcisoul]

Completely agree with your comments on the season of play. On the Prairies with our ridiculously short non-winter, we give up a couple of months of playing weather which seriously inhibits the game's development. And how do we make up for it? In Alberta we play (for the most part) a game -indoor boarded - which has little relationship to the real game. Not only that but we play it for 6 months of the year primarily so the municipal and soccer organizations can maximize the amount of money they bring in to keep these buildings financially viable. Kudos to Saskatchewan for building full field boardless facilities and moving away from the arena version.

I am born and raised in Regina (lived in Saskatoon for 3yrs) it's odd to hear Kudos from some one from Alberta.

The Regina facility is super basic but it gets the job done, the turf is horrible though. You slip a lot because it is not maintained, then the paint for the lines are hard and you slip even worse. Either way it's better then what we used to play in.

Saskatoon has Sasktel Sport Centre, i worked there for 2 and a half years it is a great facility the turf was great but I found that it too was not properly maintained so the turf does not work if it is not standing up.

[paul-collins]

The demographics of this country certainly suggest that soccer could be on par with hockey within the next decade(s) and almost certainly will overtake the CFL at some point.

Commitment level is lower in soccer than it is in hockey, though; the entry bar is higher in hockey (both in outright cost and in commitment required due to time constraints of being coordinated with school calendar, needing dressing/undressing time, etc.). People who start hockey are already more committed than those who start soccer as a "fun in the sun when we're not on vacation" activity.

Raw numbers do not tell the tale when you look at base participation. How does it look at age 14 as a percentage of those enrolled overall?

[paul-collins]

You have to break it down by region. In the GTA, it already has.

To be fair, the Argos have been the slowest on the upswing of the CFL in general... And GTA is its own multiverse as compared to the ROC. Only Vancouver has similar levels of multiculturalism and I'm not sure if they have the same footy-culture-based immigrant population.

[finchster]

I think what is likely is that we end up like Russia but reversed. Soccer is by far the biggest sport in Russia and hockey is second with a larger following in Siberia and ethnic republics (Tartarstan, Bashkortostan etc). In Canada I can see a situation where Hockey is the biggest sport in our country and soccer becomes the second most popular sport.