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Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

>> If the organization that governs your sport doesn't lobby the right people, your sport will stop getting coverage. Without coverage you generate no money.

Likewise if both of these things happen (getting money and coverage) there is still a huge chance nobody watches and you still lose

Read:

- US Soccer (NASL and the MLS)

- The NHL

- The X-Games

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MLS has been doing rather well. Attendance has been increasing steadily for the past decade[1].

The NHL, while certainly not as popular as the NFL or MLB, is pretty consistent as far as attendance numbers go, comparable to the NBA [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_attendance...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Soccer_attendance...

Soccer and hockey have strong, motivated fan bases. They lack a great business model for TV.

Football is fucked long term. Liability is going to shut down the recruitment funnel, and the implosion of TV revenues will wipe out the big money.

Soccer lacks a great business model for TV? Someone'd better tell Sky Sports!

Spooky was presumably referring to American Football, which is wildly popular but faces some significant questions about the long-term safety of the sport to players.

I should have clarified for American TV. They haven't figured about a way to pause a soccer game long enough to run 25 minutes of commercials per hour.

Baseball is particularly good example of how they do this. Go to a major league game and things randomly stop... A lot. Go to a minor league game, and they are in continuous motion. The games are usually much shorter.

American football is a tv show that involves a ball. As TV goes, so does football.

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