Last weekend, the FIFA Women’s World Cup championship game that pitted Team USA against Japan brought in over 25 million viewers, a United States record for any soccer game, men’s or women’s. Given the vast popularity advantage men’s sporting events typically enjoy over women’s events, this statistic fascinates me. To put it bluntly and honestly, there really aren’t many Americans who would call themselves a women’s soccer fan.
In their shock value, the World Cup ratings put an important but oft-ignored fact about sports into plain view: the popularity of a sporting event is inseparably entangled with group membership.
This fact is why I can spend hours on end watching the US National Team compete in Olympic handball, or the Virginia volleyball team take on Virginia Tech in the nearly-century-old and un-airconditioned Memorial Gymnasium — two sports I’ve admittedly never watched in any other context. It’s why the New York Knicks can sell season tickets, why Patriots’ fans think Bill Belichick is a respectable character and why Virginia Tech fans have this illusion that they’re in the same league as Virginia athletics. We love what we are a part of, which is why we’ll root for any team that represents our school, our metropolitan area or our country.
If we were modeling athletic team support with a mathematical equation, it would be something like A = f(G, B, E, S), with A being an individual's affinity for a particular team in a particular game, which is a function of group membership (G), bandwagon effects (B), the entertainment value in watching that team (E), and the significance of the game (S).
Of the four, I tend to believe that the most obvious variable — entertainment value — is the least important in that equation. While I enjoyed the hell out of watching Team USA kick Japan’s asses over the weekend, I wouldn’t have tuned in if a) America wasn’t playing, b) everyone on Twitter and Facebook was silent about the event, and c) it wasn’t the World Cup final.
But of the three more important factors, my allegiance to both my country and my university played the biggest role — I probably wouldn’t have even cared about the outcome if it wasn’t the United States playing, and still might not have watched had it not been for former Virginia women’s soccer greats Morgan Brian and Becky Sauerbrunn playing for the USA. To put it another way, if some deity were to swap the English National Team players with the US National Team players, 99 percent of us would have never heard the name Carli Lloyd.
Of course, entertainment can be extremely important. I love the NBA and the NFL despite not closely following any one team in either league. I’ll happily watch March Madness, the College Football playoff and even some marquee SEC football regular-season matchups regardless of whether a team I support is involved. Watching the top athletes in the world compete in my two favorite sports transcends any lack of team allegiance.
Beyond the athletic cream of the crop, however, it’s my attachment to certain groups that drives my interest. I hate baseball but love the Nationals — my hometown team. I’ll watch any ACC football or basketball matchup largely out of sheer curiosity as to what’s to come for the Cavaliers. I even fell in love with field hockey, a sport I used to make fun of before I started going to Virginia games (everyone should go to field hockey games, they’re amazing!).
The implications of all this is a little concerning to me. When it comes down to it, if a group of athletes are American citizens facing another country or Virginia students facing another school, I’ll root for them. I don’t care too much about what the sport is or how good the players are. As long as they’re somewhat competitive, I’m hooked.
This is a major reason why athletics, especially college athletics, are so profitable. It has relatively little to do with the fact that there are some freakishly good athletes playing and everything thing to do with the fact that those freakishly good athletes are playing for MY school, MY city or MY country. We’ll get disenchanted if all a team does is lose, but as long as our team is winning a decent amount of games a season, we’ll keep coming back with our wallets in hand. Because when Virginia, Washington D.C. or America wins, I convince myself that I’m winning — a feeling of ecstasy that always trumps entertainment value.
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