MLS equals MLB in popularity with kids

[WhawhaWhat]

Are MLS players now America’s true “Boys of Summer?” For the first time in the nation’s history, Major League Soccer (inaugural season: 1996) has caught up with Major League Baseball (founded in 1869) in a significant marker of popularity. Both leagues can claim 18 percent of 12-17-year-olds as avid fans of their sport.

The startling statistic comes from the 2013 Luker on Trends - ESPN Sports Poll Annual Report -- the complex database that tracks the minutiae of fan habits surrounding 32 major sports, studying how Americans watch, play, buy and express their fandom. This is the very same poll that, in 2012, determined soccer was America's second-most popular sport for those aged 12-24, outstripping the NBA, MLB and college football.

[ToxSocks]

Originally Posted by Jimmya

Soccer sucks.

Baseball sucks more.

[MahiMike]

Originally Posted by CoMoChief

It's due to the economy.

It costs an arm and a leg to play baseball. It's not an elitist sport, but the cost for the equipment (I'm not talking about going to Walmart and picking out some shitty bat and glove), yeah you can save money doing that but you're not going to be able to do shit with it.

Soccer is a poor man's sport...that's why it's the most popular sport in the world.

I stopped playing soccer when I was 7...simply because I grew out of it. It's mostly for 4-5 yr olds who are filled w/ shit loads of energy and parents put them out on the field so they can run around look cute and get a little dirty and wear themselves out.

Tell that to the parents of traveling soccer teenagers. About $8K/year.

[TLO]

WHAT WHAT! IN THE BUTT!

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by MahiMike

Tell that to the parents of traveling soccer teenagers. About $8K/year.

Sure ...when you talk about traveling teams shit obviously gets expensive due to traveling costs, entry fees. That's pretty much the same across the board in any sport.

I'm talking about starting out. Sure if you're good enough in baseball you're going to be on teams that travel around the country playing year round in tournaments. you're going to have a shit load of equipment and a shit load of traveling costs, tournament fees (which can be ****ing ridiculous).

I played every position though I mostly pitched, played on the corners, and played behind the plate., so I had a smaller light glove for pitching, had a 1st basemen's mit for 1st, had a catchers mit for when I caught behind the plate, I had a bigger pocket glove for playing outfield, and a mid sized pocket for infield play. I had a TPX and a Omaha aluminum bat, one was little league and one was HS regulated weight. Also had a wood bat for wood bat tournaments, actually had 2 because one cracked, had a couple equipment bags including one of those locker bags which are expensive as shit. Batting helmet, 10gal bucket worth of baseballs, batting gloves, bat sleeves and donuts, grip tape/pine tar, cup/jockstrap, cleats w/ interchangeable metal spikes..

There's just a shit load of equipment that you accumulate over the years playing baseball...a lot more than playing soccer.

Kids growing up in countries like Guam, Somalia, some African countries, all they have is a field, and ball and they use any confined area (largely made up) as goal(s), and many of them run around barefoot. Shit in some countries they ****ing kick rocks growing up. It's a poor mans sport....always has been.

[Cephalic Trauma]

Poll is bullshit.

http://deadspin.com/that-espn-poll-c...1539533010/all

The other day, ESPN published a story, citing data from the ESPN Sports Poll Annual Report, claiming that Major League Soccer now "equals MLB in popularity with kids." The story was quickly picked up by MLS, CBS, The Big Lead, the Orlando Sentinel, the Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, brandished as proof of baseball's terminal decline and soccer's rise to glory.

There's only one problem: It's completely unclear what this study is actually measuring.

The substance of the ESPN report was in a chart from Luker on Trends, the firm that runs the ESPN Sports Poll under a licensing arrangement. It shows that 17.98 percent of children from the ages of 12 to 17 are "avid" fans of MLS, as opposed to 18.04 percent who are avid fans of MLB.

According to Childstats.gov, there are around 25 million children aged 12 to 17 in the United States. This would mean that, per the poll's findings, there are about 4.5 million American teenagers who are avid MLS fans.

In 2013, just more than 6 million spectators in total attended MLS games. Average viewership for games on ESPN—presumably the most-watched—was around 220,000, and total viewership for the MLS Cup Final on English- and Spanish-language broadcasts was around 1 million.

In other words, finger math would suggest that a majority of these alleged avid teenage MLS fans aren't actually watching or attending MLS games. And in fact that's true. According to Rich Luker of Luker on Trends, "Avid MLS fans between the ages of 12 and 17 are not watching much MLS on TV."

Luker struggles when attempting to explain the plain inconsistency between his findings and other data relating to the league's popularity. He can't even explain his terminology coherently. In an email, for instance, he explained that the ESPN Sports Poll follows on research carried out between 1988 and 1993, in which "we tested over 35 types of 'fan' measures against audited behaviors to find the single measures most predictive of the underlying behaviors," with "two core proprietary questions" emerging.

The first is a general measure of interest in sports, the second is a measure most effective at predicting behavior against specific sports. In both cases fans at the "AVID" level are statistically higher than the mean value for all fans of that sport on most, if not all, fan behaviors. So, for example, "AVID" PGA fans consistently watch statistically more events on TV than do PGA fans in total...
This seems merely tautological: Yes, avid fans of a sport watch it more than casual fans do, but that doesn't really have anything to do with how popular the sport is. Asked to clarify his meaning, Luker responded as follows:

18% means 18% of all 12-17 year-olds. "Avid" means they really are avid, not just some arbitrary distinction. A lot of careful research went into being sure that statement is linked to the underlying behaviors.
The best guess here is that Luker is testing for characteristics or behaviors that should in theory correlate with being a fan of a league, throwing them in a blender, and serving up the result as his "avid interest" metric. Luker might, for example, classify a 13-year-old who's played FIFA in the last year as an avid fan, disposed to watch MLS according to his research into "underlying behaviors." That's just a guess, though, because Luker has declined to provide the following:

a description of his careful research
a description of the behaviors that lead to an interview subject being classified as avid
a copy of his survey
a plain-English definition of what he means by avid
Whatever "avid interest" is, it clearly doesn't necessarily involve actually following a sport, and no one should conflate it with popularity. (Maybe avid MLB fans between the ages of 12 and 17 aren't watching much MLB; maybe they are. Who knows?)

Don't take this as a knock on MLS, or as a defense of MLB. It's entirely possible that a non-bullshit study would find that MLS is much closer to MLB in popularity among teenagers than most people would think, and almost certain that a non-bullshit study would find that soccer in general is. This, though, is a bullshit study, released as part of what passes for MLS opening day hype, tracking nothing more than how well various leagues are doing by a metric that Luker is either unable or unwilling to clearly define. No one should cite its bullshit findings.

[Titty Meat]

Soccer sucks

[Mojo Jojo]

This past weekend out with my two teenagers...while they were doing teen stuff, and we had this discussion. Teens wearing sports stuff...
The most noticed NCAA...then MLS/International Soccer & NBA...then NFL...even saw a few NHL don't recall seeing any MLB stuff on teens. This includes hats, shirts, jackets. By no means a scientific study just a random weekend that included malls/other shopping districts, theatres, and a high school event.

[blaise]

The only sport my kids will watch on tv for more than 5 minutes is basketball. Everything else they consider boring, even football.

[Mojo Jojo]

Originally Posted by blaise

The only sport my kids will watch on tv for more than 5 minutes is basketball. Everything else they consider boring, even football.

I think that is true of a lot of kids...watching sports is boring to them.

[Paniero]

Originally Posted by theelusiveeightrop

Is this another gay thread?

Now that you've posted.