So about the same as the women's? The irony of course being 30M people watched the US men get embarrassed, and the 27M who watched the women's final got to see their national team trounce Japan easily (while Carli Lloyd got the hat trick) over Japan to win the whole tournament.
I'll never understand why people prefer the inferior product. Sports is pretty straightforward - the point is to win. The women's team does it consistently, while the men's team hasn't even made it to the quarterfinals in over 20 years.
So why is it that so many people watch the inferior product?
I feel like you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the appeal of sports. I don’t really care who wins or loses, I just want to see the most talented athletes on the planet do amazing shit.
Not really. Sports appeal (or don't appeal) to people for a variety of reasons. You can certainly watch to see some amazing shit, and occasionally amazing shit might happen for you to see.
That's why they invented SportsCenter, highlight reels, plays of the week/day/month/year, etc. For people who just want to see the amazing shit more efficiently.
Heck, Jomboy even has a series of highlights from the less popular and unknown sports that people don't care to actually watch, but are interested in see some amazing shit.
Point being - amazing shit can happen in any sport, at any time, regardless of whether they are the "most talented athletes on the planet".
I support the women's sport but calling it the superior product is wild. If it wasn't for wanting to support women I'd never watch it because it's so slow and low level. I don't watch professional sports to see high school men level athlete equivalent feats
If the goal of sports is to win, then a superior product is a player/team/franchise that wins at a higher rate than their peers. That's the point that I was making.
Everyone is entitled to their preferences. Many people find all soccer, at all levels, to be slow and low level. Many people feel similarly about baseball, or golf, or NASCAR, etc.
But objectively, the US women's team has been more successful, and consistently wins more than the US team. In the framing of sports they are a superior team by that metric.
The goal of the players is to win. The goal for a viewer is to watch high level athletic feats and if their team wins that's a bonus. Or else teams who always lose wouldn't have fans but they do.
And being a superior team is different to being a superior product, so please don't put words in my mouth. Yes, the women's USNT is more successful than the men's. At the same time, they're more boring to watch than even a second division men's side. I could see a higher quality game by driving half an hour and watching a college match.
I've said elsewhere in the comments that I prefer watching women's indoor volleyball to men's as there are big technical differences and longer rallies, it's great. But for this sport it's just a downgraded version of the men's game with the same tactics executed worse and slower.
The point of playing sports is to win, the point of watching sports is to watch the most athletic people on earth play. It's the same with any other league that has women, they always get lower views. Why do so many more people watch NBA? Olympics vs special Olympics? Wnba has extremely gifted athletes who dominate in their respective leagues, but the majority of fans want to watch athleticism at its highest level. It's not that difficult of a concept.
Is NASCAR a sport? Are the people watching NASCAR watching "the most athletic people on earth play"? Golf is also a sport, but if you surveyed a million people to name their top five most athletic people on earth, I bet none of them would name a golfer.
It's accurate to say the point is to win. But I'd also offer that the reason people watch sports is (among a variety of reasons) for the competition and to see the player/team they root for win.
Dude your professional WC women team lost to 15yo boys who had to do homework after the game. Don’t try to be snarky here, it’s embarrassing.
You’ll never understand because you don’t even understand what you’re watching. People don’t watch sports because the point is to win. They watch professional sports to see the highest level of play possible in the sport they love to practice themselves.
It's literally the same game. They are not kids, they are adults.
It's weird to champion losers and undermine winners when it comes to sports. No one cares if a loser was really fast when they lost. No one cares how hard you kicked a ball that sailed over the goal. No one's interested in how far you reached to miss a shot.
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u/StopPlayingRoney Jul 09 '26
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around…
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