<p>I don't think that the two sacred cows of American sports (NFL and MLB) can ever be overtaken from their positions because of their cultural and historical value to the American tapestry. But since the roots of the NBA and NHL do not run that deep, I think that the MLS is more than capable of eventually overtaking them. Why?</p>
<p>1) Quality over quantity Though soccer is not a high scoring game, the euphoria of witnessing your home team netting that big one can be very addictive. Once Americans stop focusing solely on the final scoreboard, they'll stop regarding soccer as "the boring game".</p>
<p>2) Lifestyle/culture What's the image of hockey? Ill-tempered and teethless Canadians, and Scandinavians with bizarre names. What's the image of basketball? Urban thugs with chips on their shoulders. What's the image of soccer? Electrifying Brazilians, dashing Italians, and stout Englishmen. Though of course these are unfair generalizations, they are the way all these respective sports are viewed by the public. And which image is the most appealing?</p>
<p>3) Me too! Soccer is an inherently inclusive game that favours neither height nor weight. World-class players like Lionel Messi, Paul Scholes, Alessandro del Piero, Fabio Cannavaro, Roberto Carlos, and Michael Owen would all be extremely undersized for sports such as football and basketball. The American public will be able to relate to these normal-sized human beings, rather than 7-ft. behemoths.</p>
<p>4) Global village American sports are limited to its borders, except maybe Canada. What I mean is that you can't go abroad and start talking about touchdowns and 3-pointers without drawing some quizzical looks. But soccer is well-known in all the livable continents of the world. If you like playing fantasy football with your office pool, how about fantasy soccer with 20 different nations?</p>
<p>5) Bragging rights Superbowl winners aren't really world champs because only Americans play football. World Series winners also aren't really world champions because the current holders of that title is the Japanese national team. But almost every country in the world plays soccer, and if the Americans can get good enough to win the World Cup, they'll have the ultimate satisfaction that they are, for legit, the best in the world.</p>
<p>I don't think it'll happen in the next 5 years. but if for some magical reason, ESPN started saying, "hey, the mls is one of the fastest growing leagues the nation has ever seen!" then it would become popular just like NASCAR did. </p>
<p>I do think it will happen, but i'm also an avid soccer fan. GO WIZARDS!!!!</p>
<p>Soccer will never become big in the US for one simple reason. It's not TV friendly, you cannot stop it every ten minutes for five minutes of commercials. So the big networks will never carry it in primetime as they cannot make money.</p>
<p>what they've started to do for MLS games, though, is shrink the size of the game, and then run a commercial next to it, so you can see the game, but the commercial has the sound and is a little bigger.
also, they could time it where they do that at every injury, and nobody would really miss anything.</p>
<p>Maybe overtaking NHL, I doubt it though.
I play, no, I live soccer. But I do not see the MLS ever getting big.
The level of play is crap compared to the English Premier league and most of the other European leagues.</p>
<p>I think the US league is easily a top 10 league. The thing with the US league is that there is definitely more parity within the league than the major European Leagues. The difference between ManU and DC United might be quite large, the 50th percentile team in the EPL is probably not going to be any different from the 50th percentile team in the MLS. In fact, I'd reckon that most MLS teams could easily come to the EPL and play above the relegation zone. To me, that means the leagues aren't that far apart.</p>
<p>dude, the NHL is bigger because it's long since been established. and last time i checked, your TV revenue was shrinking, while the MLS is getting on ESPN II (which is an improvement). </p>
<p>i'm not saying that MLS will ever be huge, by any means.
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I think the MLS will grow, but will be nothing more then a Niche sport.
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i'd say that hockey is becoming less and less mainstream (the hockey playoffs had all time low ratings)</p>
<p>I think it might become popular eventually.
Not soon, but eventually</p>
<p>Simply because its just another reason why the rest of the world hates us.
And that will eventually catch up with us.</p>
<p>On the other hand, as long as the players are still hot, the action is still good, and the guys still take off their shirts at the end of their games, my friends and I will always watch international soccer, haha.</p>
<p>What? Houston Dynamo isn't the best, but it is a lot better than a copy of European teams. I think they have a deal going, but either way Real Salt Lake doesn't exactly slide off the tongue.</p>
<p>Real Salt Lake City is a hilarious name because Utah is about as unLatino as you can get. If it was a city with some kind of Spanish influence, then it'd be okay if not a bit unoriginal. But SLC? Hahahaha.</p>
<p>I don't know if the MLS has a salary cap, but I do know that parity does not exist in the European leagues. Each national league has 3-4 storied and perennial champions, and the other teams might as well be feeder colleges for the pros. Maybe if the MLS front-loaded a couple of their better teams, then they could gain some international recognition.</p>