Sunday, July 18, 2010

Henry's MLS move continues football'ssoccer's US progress


There is no question that soccer in the United States has gained more credibility since the World Cup, both domestically and abroad.

Thierry Henry's move to Major League Soccer to play for the New York Red Bulls only enhances the potential growth for soccer in the United States. Tim Love of BBC Sport writes of the soccer revolution taking place in the United States.

Football is fortunate to have excellent TV exposure in the US. Almost all MLS games are available to watch and the World Cup was a major success for broadcaster ESPN.

ESPN invested more financially in its coverage of the World Cup than any other event in its 30-year history and the viewing figures throughout the tournament were very impressive.

A total of 19.4m people watched the USA's loss to Ghana in the second round of the tournament and 24.3m people watched the final between Spain and the Netherlands.

This is compared to the 22.3m who watched the decisive games in last year's baseball World Series, while ice hockey's Stanley Cup this year pulled in just 8.3m.

"We don't expect a single event and the viewing figures to change the landscape of our game overnight," explains Gulati.

"But the sport has been on a pretty upward trend for a while now. The difference between 1994 (when the US hosted the World Cup) and now is that we have a 16 team league, 10 soccer specific stadiums, soccer on TV and players who the public know about."


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