Football is by far (except for NASCAR i believe) the most popular sport in the US because of two reasons. One is betting, and two is because many people when they are young play some sort of football, which leads them to learning and enjoying the game. How many times have you thrown around a football when you were young? Baseball and Basketball are the same way. All you need is one football, or a basketball, or a wiffle ball bat and ball and a group of kids can play these games. Hockey on the other hand, everyone needs a stick. Granted sticks aren’t expensive(if theyre only for street hockey) but everyone needs to buy one or borrow one which inhibits kids from playing it on a recreational level.

This in turn leads to its low popularity among the US people. If they’ve never played the sport, there’s little to no possibility of ever liking the sport, let alone watch a game.

In 2007, the top was the Super Bowl (97m Average), followed by the last race of the F1 season (78m) and the Champions League final (72m). However, what makes most watched? F1 has around 20 races, though most get less viewership than the finale. Is this more than the combined total for all NFL games? What about all Champions League matches? It’s really hard to get any idea.

Partial 2007 Data:
http://www.televisionpoint.com/news2008/newsfullstory.php?id=1200461993

Apparently, according to some older data, the F1 season is watched by around 500 million unique viewers a season, as the world-wide nature of the sport makes it easier to get to viewers in all time-zones and countries. I suspect this may make it the biggest professional sporting ‘league’ (not counting international competitions), at least in the number of unique people. However, who knows how reliable this data is?

Soccer would likely be #1. After that I couldn’t even hazard a guess.

I wasn’t really trying to make any other point than Areid’s logic was silly by pointing out the disconnection. Of course lots of people play football.

I’m not sure I agree with you entirerly. While many people never get to play football on any kind of an organizied level, if my childhood experience is any kind of indication, almost all kids (at least boys) play football in some fashion. I live in Montana and we played full-contact, no pads, tackle football year round, even if we had to wade thru a foot or two of snow to do it. The cost of a football was no more than that of a basketball.

Taking your logic, football should be a lot less popular than basketball and baseball, it’s much more expensive to play, and far fewer people play it at any stage of their lives than basketball or baseball, yet it’s far more popular on televsion. Sort of flies in the face of your logic, eh?

She was flustered immediately. I watched the game through her eyes at first and realized that if you can’t anticipate where the puck is going, this is a brutal sport to watch on TV. But after awhile she got the hang of it, examining the “body language” of the players in the frame to get a sense of where the puck was. She comprehended the off-sides and icing rules shortly thereafter and by game’s end she said she couldn’t believe that three hours had passed since we sat down to watch the game.

So, in sum, those of us who lament the poor ratings the game usually gets must understand how ridiculously difficult it is to engage a novice in it. I made the effort because of the magnitude of the game. Were it a regular season game, how many of us would have had the patience to do so and more important, how many newcomers to the game would have had the desire to concentrate that hard on a sporting event that holds no intrinsic interest to them?

***on another note if you dont like the NHL ona major broadcast newtork… too bad, cuz NBC just signed the NHL to a another 2 year deal. GO NHL!

Ouch, HBO shows do better than that.

The league has to be praying for a third go-around of Pens/Wings in 2010, as am I – way to go Pens!

The best thing that the NHL could do is get the Hawks and Pens in the Stanley Cup Finals at least 3 times next decade. I bet they’d do 12 million viewers at some point.

Go Pens! It was an amazing game and series. The playoffs as a whole was really wonderful this year. I agree that if this can’t get people interested in hockey, nothing will. They couldn’t have had a better scenario unless it went into OT (and thank goodness it didn’t!)

FACT: The NHL had more 18-49 year olds watching the hockey game than were watching CBS, ABC, and FOX… COMBINED.

Again, sports bails out entertainment. Dick Ebersol should run NBC?

So the NBA, a boring, overhyped sport that is clearly number 3 in the big list gets a 10.2 rating and that is BAD. How funny is it that the NHL gets barely a 3 and you guys and Bettman are all proclaiming victory. Perhaps next year the NHL can proclaim growth when it bests a repeat of Scrubs or the Miley Cyrus movie. LOL.

However, you can find the final HH rating in the NBC weekly final results come Tuesday.

It’s fine if you want to report 18-49, but let’s see equally, the entire rating…not just the total viewers. It gives me a historical comparison vs. past ratings.

You have done the baseball equivalent of no longer showing batting averages, but instead, showing only on base percentage in its place.

So, I’ll calm down now, have a spot of tea, then see if anyone can say why American Idol and Madison Avenue often prefer music from an era 60s and 70s that doesn’t fit the “demo.”