MLS overtaking NHL in spot among Big Four pro sports leagues in USA, another signal that soccer’s rise is no participation\u002Dsport fluke.
Or will it? Short term, for sure. But long term?
In fact, in the grander scheme, it’s another worrying signal for hockey lovers — even here, in Canada — that soccer’s rise in popularity is no slow-soaking, cross-Atlantic/cross-Pacific saturation. Nor a continuing youth participation-sport fluke, based largely on soccer’s sheer inexpensiveness compared to hockey. Indeed, $25 for a cheap ball, $20 for shin guards, $70 or less for cheap cleats and your kid’s good to go for house league.
In fact, more Canadian youths alone were enrolled in soccer in 2021-22 than all who played organized hockey coast to coast to coast — of any age, gender or level. What’s more, more Canadian male youths played organized soccer than all youths of all genders up to and including U15 played organized hockey .
Pulling back to a sporting-wide popularity scale, we’re told now in breathless reports that it has taken the MLS only 29 years to expand to 30 clubs, compared to 75 years for the NHL, 83 for the NBA and 122 for MLB. This, after the MLS’s 30Ho-leeee! Woohoo!That comparison is being ballyhooed south of the border, and even in Europe, but it’s largely meaningless, given that until the 1960s pro sports teams routinely travelled mainly by bus or train, seldom plane.
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