FC Barcelona defeated overwhelming favorite Manchester United on Wednesday in the UEFA Champions League Final. At the same time ESPN2 scored a major victory for soccer in the US. According to TV By The Numbers, the game drew an average of 1.43 million users making it the most watched UEFA game in US cable history - beating out the 2008 game by ~400K viewers. Oh, and did I mention that the game started at 3:30pm EST? That’s a crazy amount of viewers for the middle of the day. From a FanSection perpsective, the upset is no less obvious with Manchester United coming in as the largest soccer community with almost 450,000 fans while FC Barcelona has almost 70,000.
From a personal standpoint, I watched the first half of the game at a local English pub in Mountain View, CA and by 11:45pm it was standing room only. Many of the patrons were European supporters of Barca or ManU, but there were a ton of everyday Americans out to watch what is more or less the equivalent of the Super Bowl for European soccer. The interest in this event combined with the amount of support displayed during the Euro 2008 last year gives me hope that soccer will continue to grow in the US. If the US National Team can continue to do well in World Cup qualifying, and if they have a good showing in the FIFA Confederation Cup in June, that support will only be bolstered.
This is no surprise, americans love an “event”.
However, I dispute your categorization of Man U as an overwhelming favorite. Very anglo centric view. Barca’s history rivals man u’s and no team with Messi will ever be a big underdog. Soon he will make people forget that punk - ronaldo
Confed cup will have no impact whatsoever.
you have a good site ive bookmarked it will look forward to updates to come