Football/ Soccer

Why is football/ soccer the world's most popular sport? Why is it that an event featuring just 1 sport (the World Cup) is as popular as 1 featuring dozens (the Olympics)?

I remember reading a very interesting article on this which explained not only why the Beautiful Game is the most popular sport on every continent bar 1, but also why it consistently fails in that elusive exception (North America).

In a nutshell, here are the reasons:

1. It's simple. There are lots of rules in football just like any other sport, but to explain the basics to a child it's really simple: 'get the ball between the posts without using your hands'. Try doing that with American Football, rugby, baseball etc.

2. It's versatile. You can play it on basically any surface from sand, to hard court, to grass. You can play the full 11 aside or any variation from 5 to 15 a-side. Or you can pratice your soccer skills by yourself against a wall.

3. It's safe. You can get some serious injuries in football but compared to more physical sports it's relatively speaking much safer. Which is important for parents.

4. It's inclusive. Some sports involve standing around a lot waiting for something to happen (e.g. cricket, baseball) or involve only a small number of players (tennis, golf). Everyone gets to run around after the ball in football.

5. It's cheap. An important factor particularly in the Developing World. You don't need fancy equipment or specialised playing surface. Hell, 2 piles of jumpers and a ball (not even a football, I've seen people play it with tennis balls) and you're away.

So with all these advantages, why hasn't it made it in the USA? It's certainly cleaning up at underage level where it's the most popular sport for youngsters and even spawned the phrase 'Soccer Moms' to describe a key demographic there.

The truth is that countries often only have room for 1 type of sport: 1 stick sport (baseball over say cricket), 1 aggressive sport (American football over rugby) and we'll see what happens when it comes to fighting sports (boxing v UFC).

America has a sport very similar to football in terms of its versality, its inclusiveness, its safety.

And that sport, by no coincidence, would be considered by many to be the world's second most popular sport.

Basketball.