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> But basketball has a surprising advantage in potential players in that China is mad about basketball. You ignore all the players in China that are mad about
by imron 9y ago
> But basketball has a surprising advantage in potential players in that China is mad about basketball.
You ignore all the players in China that are mad about Soccer.
- kasey_junk 9y agoI think the conversation about most popular sports in the world almost always ignores the size of India & China. If any sport takes over in those places it basically rockets to the top of the list (thus cricket which is a marginal sport most places is very popular globally based on Indian participation). So you can say my bet on basketball is not ignoring Chinese soccer participants it’s just a bet that basketball will outstrip soccer in China.
- civilitty 9y agoI don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. An estimated 700 million people watched the 2006 finals of the FIFA World Cup. In 2014 the entire tournament was watched by an estimated four billion people and that's just one event. Unless the Chinese population explodes to 5 billion people overnight and they ALL start watching basketball, the two sports aren't even in the same league.
- avar 9y agoFootball's wildly popular, but spectator numbers are a non-argument for that. How many people have seen Michael Schumacher drive or Conor McGregor fight? Neither is indicative of how many are participating in race car driving or MMA themselves.
- civilitty 9y agoThe last FIFA census estimated that there are 265 million people playing in organized games with 5 million referees. The number of people who play pickup soccer games is much, much higher.
- kasey_junk 9y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_China https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_China The Chinese Basketball Association puts the player count in China at 300 million today. Almost 200 million people watched a single non-championship basketball game in 2007. That’s the thing, people just completely misunderstand the scale of China (and India). When talking about population based stats the rest of the world doesn’t matter.
- avar 9y agoIndeed, football is popular and that's an actual number supporting that. I was pointing out that your initial citation of viewership was a non-argument, as you can trivially name (as I did) various sports with amazing viewership & almost zero actual public participation. There's no clear relationship between the two.
- vinceguidry 9y agoSame league? They're not even the same sport.