Soccer- America’s Pastime
In the last couple of weeks, a soccer frenzy has swept the United States as the Men’s National Team arrives and competes at the World Cup in Qatar. Scarves were on, pubs were rocking, chants were roaring as the US played England to a draw while setting the national record for viewership of a men’s soccer game (estimated 15 million viewers (Bloomberg 2022)). All this leads us to wonder: where did all these fans come from? We can model the explosion of national fandom using the notion of network effects as described in Ch 17.
In the US, most people are not huge soccer fans. It’s a great game that many enjoy, but it is not a cultural powerhouse that drives the national identity as it does in many other countries. For this reason, only a select few are true fans who have already adopted the product: fandom. All others fall into the group of people whose costs of fandom generally outweigh the benefits. The costs of rooting for a team are not all that high, maybe a few overpriced beers and nachos but mostly just devoting some time and energy to watching the games. The trouble with US soccer fandom is that historically the benefits have been quite low as well. The team occasionally would make it to the knockout stage and would then subsequently be knocked out. They were not playing for much and every year the fans would watch and cheer and wait for the inevitable loss to send the team home none the better. The casual fan would feel no compulsion to invest time in the teams that they figured were going nowhere. Sometimes people were even worried that the team would be embarrassed by some small country and felt it better to distance themselves rather than look silly. There was just no reason for anybody but die-hard fans to put in the effort.
This year is different. People who truly don’t care about soccer are yelling like they’ve been to 100 matches. You see people around wearing USMNT jerseys and the crazy part is that you recognize the name on the back. What changed? Why has fandom become such a more attractive product? There are two factors driving the explosion: quality of the product and network expansion effects. There have always been huge soccer fans in the US, but the bug has not spread come World Cup time in the past. The difference this year is that the team is better. They have expectations, they can beat all the bad teams, and they have long term goals that go beyond just the placement at this tournament. It seems obvious to say that people prefer to root for better teams, but we can clearly model why that may be. A large part of the payoff of rooting for a team is the feeling of winning games (even as a fan, winning feels good). Good teams are more likely to win so the expected payoff of rooting for a good team is higher than that for a bad team. So the USMNT being better than usual raises the expected payoff of cheering enough for another chunk of potential fans to become active fans. This benefit is extended by the young composition of talent on the team. It’s a good team, but it’s expected to mostly stay together through the next cycle and improve to be even better next Cup. People like to be able to say “I remember watching that guy before he got popular, I knew he’d be special.” The potential value of being able to say something like that is the highest it’s been and that drives another chunk of people to commit to fandom this time around.
Now that there are more people than usual cheering for this exciting team, there is enough momentum for network effects to take hold and drive further expansion of fandom. Besides winning, the most valuable part of cheering for a team is building bonds and friendships with the other fans. There’s a sense of camaraderie and belonging when everybody wants the same thing and get excited together. The more people do it, the more fun it gets. After the team gains popularity due to its talent, more people than usual are talking about the team, wearing the gear, having fun watching the game. This leads others who were on the fence about caring to join in now that they see neighbors and friends committing already. Most people probably don’t care enough to turn on a match and watch by themselves; that’s not very fun. If a bunch of their friends are hosting a watch party, however, they’d be missing out on a great time by refusing fandom. Fandom is an extremely network driven good. In isolation it is almost worthless; but, with the existence of a large fanbase, fandom can be the key to unlocking massive benefits from social interaction and friendly excitement. Since the costs of fandom remain very low, the highly increased value of fandom (as a result of improved product and network effects) drives a huge cascade of people to adopt the product and, for the time being, become massive fans of USA soccer. We’ll see what the boys can do and how the nation responds.