Reflection: Why is football the most popular sport in the world?

Football is the most watched sport of the past, present and probably the future. It has hundreds of thousands of fans on every continent in the world, for whom the results of their favourite eleven are an integral part of life. Many of them literally live football, taking holidays on important days when their favourite team is playing, buying club merchandise and helping out with a certain amount of money in the event of a financial crisis. But why is football so popular?

Everyone has their own answer to that. From my point of view, a large part of it is the overall system. I mean the fact that most leagues are relegated. For some, relegation may be something that could be abolished, but I think it has its place in football.

If I imagine that for the second half of the season the bottom half of the table would just be playing catch-up, with the new season starting in the summer, there would be a lot of “games” about nothing and half of the games would not be worth watching from the point of view of a disinterested fan.

Not to mention the fact that these teams would love to play their games to the clubs at the top of the table and the league would lose quality. At the same time, the stories of small teams that have experienced historic success in the second or lower leagues would disappear.

And it’s not just about promotion, everyone knows the story of Watford in 2013, even though the Hornets ultimately failed to make the final at Wembley and didn’t qualify for the Premier League.

We wouldn’t know the famous phrase “There is Hogg, Deeneyyy,” if the Premier League (the world’s most watched football league) operated in the same format as the NHL (the world’s most watched hockey league), MLB (the world’s most watched baseball league) or the NBA (the world’s most watched basketball league).

And the system continues into the Champions League. Here too, in my opinion, football scores plus points. As they say, there is beauty in simplicity and this competition is a beautiful example of that.

Eight groups of four, with the champion of each European league having the chance to make it through to the millionaire competition. The top two from each group will go through to the knockout stage and a play-off will await them. This is played home/away, which is why the Champions League is so popular.

It’s not played on a three or four game winning streak like many other sports, you just have two chances and if you don’t take them you’re out of luck. And that’s how it should be! This system plays into the hands of the underdogs and writes fantastic stories.

A beautiful example is the Ajax Amsterdam ride of the 2018/19 season, or rather this entire season. The memorable matches of Liverpool vs Barcelona (4::3 overall), Tottenham vs Ajax (3::3 overall) or Manchester City vs Tottenham (4::4) are linked to it.

The successful competition was emulated by the Hockey Association five years ago, but the Champions League was disappointing and some teams did not even allow their best players to play.

I’ll probably disagree with a lot of readers on the third point, but I think the popularity of football is helped by the away goal rule, which will be a thing of the past from the new season.

Even best friends can argue over debates about this rule, yet I stand by the fact that this rule actually adds to football. It forces the home team to play football even in games when they are up, the same is true the other way around, when a team goes on the road with a lead they will always try to score at least once.

This rule first saved PSG from disaster in 2017, then a few minutes later it provided a historic moment when Barcelona, with three goals in the space of seven minutes, completed the turnaround from 0:4 to 6:5 on aggregate. Similar was the iconic duel between AS Rome and Barcelona or the aforementioned second match between Ajax and Tottenham.

Of course, one could find many other reasons why football is the most popular sport, but these three points stand out for me.