Do you think football would thrive if it followed a soccer mould and each country had their own professional league alongside various different international tournaments?

20 comments

1. It would probably help in other countries. Then again, we would win every international trophy for at least the next 30 years.

2. Maybe? But I don’t really see a market for such a thing and that seems like a giant waste.

   I think both soccer and football have really successful natural trajectories that happened much more organically.

3. Games are way to violent to have the amount of games necessary for a euros style tournament.

   It could only be the world cup and even then every league would have to cancel their season.

4. Are you asking if I think (American) football would thrive (internationally) if… XYZ?

   Maybe.

   The only analogous situation I can think of is basketball. Is the whole EuroBasket thing popular at all? And/or was there a rise in overseas popularity after say the ’92 Olympics and the first real global competition of professionals?

5. Maybe, but american football is CRAZY expensive to operate at the professional level and I don’t think there’s much market for it. I’m cool with it being our thing and don’t see a grand need for it to go global.

6. I don’t know how this could be achieved, it is a very minor sport outside the US. Countries may even have some form of league, just at a very amateur level. Soccer developed globally and it all happened rather naturally with tournaments developing and expanding, nothing was installed from above. The first world cups were small and invite-only. Don’t a lot of European countries have basketball leagues and can have pro players and tournaments? That does OK but it isn’t necessarily *thriving* as a result.

7. No

8. Sure. But, how would that work? The sporting clubs of Italy or Spain are more than welcome to begin their own football clubs today, they haven’t, AFAIK. The NFL sure is trying to make an imprint in Europe and has for decades but it doesn’t seem to have much of an effect outside of the vanity of the few games played there every year. It’s not like the NBA and how basketball is booming worldwide.

9. I think the NFL is trying but I think rugby and other similar sports have a stronger following.

   It’s an expensive and dangerous sport and it also gets played at the same time as association football. NFL Europe crashed and burn.

   I am actually surprised how low basketball and baseball is in the UK.

10. Ehhh probably not. Football has a lot more barriers to entry. There’s so much equipment and location requirements that it makes it kind of hard.

    Some places it might have picked up just probably not everywhere

11. No.

12. That already exists! The [International Federation of American Football](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Federation_of_American_Football) is the governing body for international American football and they organize the [IFAF World Championship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFAF_World_Championship). The United States team has won it every time they’ve competed. The [European Championship of American Football](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Championship_of_American_football) has been held since 1983. Italy are the current champions, having defeated Sweden in 2021.

13. I think this is putting the cart before the horse, you would need to build up substantial interest and a large domestic player base before a league would be viable in the first place. American Football would be thriving if it had leagues in a bunch of countries and international competitions, similar to what exists under FIFA’s umbrella, but I don’t think you could just parachute a bunch of leagues and regional competitions into various parts of the world and expect success.

14. No people used to watching nonstop play are going to be bored AF with football and the constant need to feline up anytime something happens.

15. There are various international leagues of football.

    But there’s no point in holding international tournaments.

    The gap between the US and the next country is so big as to be laughable.

    I’d wager there are highschool teams in the US that would be dominant in international play as it currently stands.

16. Soccer is so popular because all you need is a ball and a field. (Well, goals as well, but that can be approximated or use alternative markers)

    Football needs all sorts of specialty equipment that is expensive. As long as the barrier to entry is more than “have a ball available” it won’t catch on.

    Baseball somewhat suffers from this issue (bats, balls, gloves, and protective gear for catcher/batter) and to a lesser extent basketball (need the court and goals) suffers as well, although basketball would be another great candidate for “cheap sport to export world wide”.

17. I think expanding football is probably a bad idea. They’d get pretty much the same audience, but spread over more games/teams, which would make each team less profitable. It’s not a sport where you can play more games per week, so the season would have to be expanded to allow more tournament games, and American teams would dominate for decades, which would probably destroy any European enthusiasm for the game.

    If Europe has enough fans, they should start their own league and see how it goes. If it succeeds, then consider merging or adding a World Cup or whatever.

18. Can we agreed that the rest of the world should call American football soccer?

19. There’s not enough global talent to make that sustainable.

20. I sort of think the best version of football for world wide adoption, other than soccer, would be Australian Football.. American football is pretty violent, expensive to play the real version, and super ingrained in our culture.. I just don’t see it being loved/adopted by 8 billion people