Home of football statistics and historyFootball is by far the most popular sport in the world. It would be hard to find a single country, which doesn’t have a national football team. Some of you might wonder why this sport has become so popular worldwide. In this article, we will explore this subject in detail and try to find out different reasons and factors that are responsible in making football the most popular sport in the world!
A brief history of football
The history of football is quite old. Although, there is no unanimous decision about the origin of the sport but it is believed that football was first started being playing in China in around second or third B C. There are others sports experts and historians, who do not agree with this view but they do agree that it is quite an old sport that has a history of over a couple of thousand years. Without indulging ourselves in debate that would take us away from the main topic, we will quickly come back to the main topic – the reasons and factors that are responsible making football the most popular sport in the world.
The simplicity of the game
As the simple rule of life – simplicity attracts everyone! It might take you sometime to understand how to play Blackjack but it won’t take time to kick a football! Even if you cannot do it right in first few attempts, you would still know that all that you need to do is to kick the ball and the game of football is as simple to begin with!
Sports experts too, attribute the popularity of football to its simplicity. You can just have football and couple of guys or more and that is all you would require to begin this exciting sport! A Football doesn’t come expensive and as lots of people play with a single football, it is quite easy to manage to buy a football. Apart from it, the earlier days, people did not require spikes shoes or shin guards and other kind of accessories to play the game. They just had a football that was made from leather and they simply started playing it.
The rules of the game too are not difficult to understand. There are two teams and two goal posts and the aim is to score more and more goals. So all in all, the simplicity of the game is the primary factor why football became popular quickly.
The ‘Team’ format of the game
Another important reason for the popularity of football is that it is a team game. Any sport that requires a team automatically involves lots of people in it. A standard game of football involves 11 players in each side. Now, just to some simple mathematics calculations – 11 people each side would make up for 22 peoples in all. If you include other players that are substitutes, referrers and other people that are involved directly in the game, then that would easily make around a hundred people, more or less. Each of them would have a family so that makes hundreds into thousands in no time!
So, as we can imagine that a simple game of football, even if it is organized at a local level would be easily able to involve at least a thousand people, directly or indirectly. Now that each of these thousand people have got their own friend circles and relatives and they would like them to be involved in the game as well. All these mathematics can make us understand how quickly a team sport like football can get popular and generate a lot of interest within masses!
The commercial angle…
The popularity of modern football highly attributed to its commercial factor. Football has been able to survive the test of time primarily because it found it takers in form of loyal football fans and secondly, people who would support the sport financially. Now, there are hundreds of sponsors who are always eager to invest in local, national as well as International Football tournaments.
If we compare these two factors then we will understand that anything that has a mass appeal automatically finds sponsors as well. When there are people were interested to watch a football match, there will also be people, who are interested in making money out of it. These are people who put money into the game because they see profit in it. Apart from it, there are people who are genuinely interested in the game and hence, they either support the game by either making a direct donation or they voluntarily try to raise the funds to support the game because of their natural instincts and love for the game.
All these factors collectively combine to make a sport popular. Football has been blessed with a royal fan base and superbly maintained international marketing and sponsorship. We can find different football clubs at local, national and international level. Any sport that needs to be popular worldwide needs to have a strong base of fan support and football fortunately has been able to get that right from the beginning.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, each and every sport is about its spirit and that is the spirit of togetherness. We may start off with two teams trying to outplay each other during the game but as soon as the game ends, we do realize the real spirit of the game of togetherness and all those people who really love the game would be able to appreciate the good game played by each team. You might be a diehard supporter of Team A B or C, but if you are a genuine football lover you would be able to appreciate the individual players of the opponent team, its coach and his game plan and the way the match was played. This is the real spirit of the game and in fact, this is the real essence of life…. of celebration, of togetherness and celebrating and enjoying the game of football, and the game of life together!
0 Comments