American culture is so ubiquitous around the world. However, the most popular aspect of American culture, American football, isn’t? Why do you think this is?

34 comments

  2. 1) Market saturation with other sports – namely soccer and cricket.

    2) Expense required to play full contact. A helmet and pads – much less the same for a team – aren’t cheap. That means there’s a higher barrier to entry than other sports.

    3) It actually is growing in popularity in Europe. Who knows what the future may hold?

  3. Because other countries already had very popular sports. Football requires a specific infrastructure to play, it’s not as simple as soccer or basketball.

  4. Football is not the most popular aspect of American culture. If it was you wouldn’t be asking this question.

  6. Long story short it’s mostly young people that consume pop culture, and mostly women.

    Sports are mostly consumed by older men. They don’t really change pop culture 

  8. I would think music, video games or movies are far more important than American football. 

  9. As others have said, American (“gridiron”) football requires well-constructed field equipment, and a lot of personal protective gear. More than rugby does, and MUCH more than association football (“soccer”), which can be played on a dirt field with one ball. Baseball is popular around the world partly because it requires less equipment, and partly because it’s a lot more similar to cricket than football/soccer are now.

    There are European leagues out there that do play it, but it’s something you’re much more likely to find at the intermural level and no higher, if at all. And this is also true in the US, for the record. Football is widely played (and hugely important, in some communities) at the secondary and collegiate level, but if you asked me if my town had a minor football league team of some type I couldn’t tell you.

    Also, cricket and soccer are REALLY popular everywhere else. Inertia counts for a lot.

  10. There are a lot of rules. I mean, a lot. I think that makes it harder for people in other countries to understand what’s going on.

    The second thing is that it requires a lot of equipment and fairly large number of people to form a team. That makes it harder to start a league in other countries. If people don’t play it locally, they’ll be less to watch the professionals

  12. American football is a convoluted game that really makes no sense to anyone who wasn’t raised with it. The constant stops and jarring to people who are used to more engaging sports.

  13. Perhaps why watch American football when you can watch Rugby? The way I see it, Rugby is basically American football without the paddings, and they can continuously keep running with the ball for some reason. So more dangerous, thus more interest?

    Then again I feel like most people don’t even give a shit about Rugby as well.

  15. It’s a terribly boring sport that exists almost exclusively for the many, many, many, *many* commercial breaks.

    Most of the world won’t put up with that many timeouts for such an actionless sport. Throw ball. Move 5 yards. Tackle. Commercial. Rinse and repeat for 2 fucking hours. 🥱

  16. American football is actually not the most popular sport. Depending on the state, that could be basketball, hockey, or baseball.

  17. Football has actually experienced a decline among younger Americans.  

    As an older millennial (zillennial?) the more favorable form of football is college football.  I have to admit, the same is true of all sports.  College sports are more unpredictable whereas pro sports have the same faces year after year.  Betting apps are becoming more popular and have added a little more life to pro sports, but overall, the expendable income isn’t there to have such an expensive fandom. 

  18. Football is so ubiquitous in the US because it rose in popularity during the adoption of TV, and its a very TV friendly sport with time for ads. But beyond that, its because nearly every high school in America will have a football team, so a great deal of people grow up playing it or watching their friends play it when they are teenagers.

  19. Movies, music, TV shows, ideas are our most popular parts of our culture. They are the main reasons people say “Americans have no culture” its because we export it and it has been integrated globally so people don’t even realize it

  21. Don’t care one way or another.

    That’s the cool thing about being American, I don’t have to have this sort of complex.

    I don’t feel this need to measure my culture against someone else’s.

  22. Football is an incredibly complex game in terms of rules and strategy. Most people have no idea what they are seeing and thus can’t appreciate what they’re seeing. Additionally foreigners lack the cognitive capacity to understand the game 🙂

  23. I don’t care care about football at all. Or sports in general really and I know I’m not alone. It’s a bit a stretch to call it the most popular aspect of American culture.

  24. Because it’s complex and expensive. Whereas soccer needs a ball and some referees, football require 45-60 team members per side, equipment, and a host of other things.

  25. I think it’s the same reason that soccer lags in the US. People only have so much bandwidth for sports, if they have any at all. I’m a big sports fan, but between baseball, hockey, and football, I don’t really have time for much else. I struggle to get into basketball.

    One would think ice hockey would be popular in the UK or Ireland or France or Japan. They have the weather for it. Certainly they have the bodies for it. But people are so caught up in soccer and rugby and whatnot that they don’t have much attention for other sports.

    American football is a very misunderstood game by a lot of foreigners. They see a bunch of brutes pushing each other around and complain about the 40 seconds between plays. When, in reality, it’s an *extremely* strategic game. Those old dudes up in the booth with the headsets on are helping to call the plays. They arguably have more impact on the game than the players. The more you learn about football strategy, the more you grow to appreciate it.

  28. American football is boring to most people that didn’t grow up with it and don’t have friends or family to watch it with them.

  29. You have to look at history.

    American Football and Soccer both evolved in early to mid 1800s, Soccer led by a couple decades. So while Soccer (Football) was gaining a foothold in Europe, American Football was evolving in the States – to be clear in early American Football there was a lot more kicking/punting involved. Note this is also why we call it Soccer, by the time Soccer really arrived here American Football was pretty well established – so rather than have two ‘Footballs’, we used the British term for the formalized version – Association Football a.k.a. Soccer and kept it when it fell out of favor with the Brits.

    Now as to why American Football never gained a foothold anywhere else. The U.S. did not really start growing into a world power until after WWI and it didn’t solidify until WWII. Until then it was more of a raw goods exporter to the old colonial powers in Europe, we didn’t export culture, we heavily imported it. Soccer was already well established in other places by the time we really started arriving on the world wtage. To complicate adoption even more – American Football requires equipment, equipment that cost money, whereas Soccer can still be played with a ball made of rags. One last thing to remember and probably the most important one, Football wasn’t the most popular professional sport in the U.S. until the early 80’s, it was popular but baseball was more popular and as far as a participatory sport, that age is a lot lower, not a lot of 40-50 year old recreation football leagues – but you’ll see older guys out playing Soccer.

    We did export baseball and basketball, both before American Football became our most popular sport. So why those? Basketball can be played indoors with smaller teams and less equipment. Plus it is significantly different enough from Soccer to co-exist. Baseball you’ll find to be more exclusionary to Soccer – the countries where Baseball is more popular tend to be countries that don’t have a strong Soccer tradition (at least until more recently) – Puerto Rico, Cuba, Domincan Republic, Venezuela, Japan, South Korea – you’ll also note that with the exception of Venezeula and the Dominican Republic the rest had U.S. military presence at some point during Baseball’s heyday. Cuban refugees the brought baseball to the DR at the turn of the 1900s. and U.S. oil companies brought baseball to Venezuela.

  31. Eh, not all of us are into American Football. I fully acknowledge our “world series” doesn’t involve the rest of the world either. It’s not the most popular thing culturally.

    Our soccer/European football teams, however (especially women’s) DO kick butt internationally. I think it’s incredibly sad they’re not given the pay, support, or public acknowledgement they deserve.

  32. An entire village in the middle east or Africa can play soccer (football) all day long with just 1 ball.

    American Football is extremely expensive. Helmets, shoulder pads, thigh pads, knee pads, for every single player. That is cost prohibitive to most of the world.

    It isn’t as expensive as say Polo with horses, but it is up there. Baseball is below American Football, much of Latin America has embraced baseball, an entire school could play baseball with 1 single bat for instance. Then basketball would be next easiest for most to be able to play. A sport like Hockey would also be cost prohibitive for much of the developing world, and therefore less common.

  33. Football is one of the most dangerous and injury-inducing sports after gymnastics and possibly next to rugby, maybe the rest of the world is just smarter than us about that one thing. I know there’s a push here in America to stop putting kids into football because of the head injury risks.

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