Wow! Thanks very much for this
No prob
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I smiled at the "bikini" part and then I started thinking...They like hockey because the players are tough, play rough and fight often. They like basketball, baseball and American football partly because the players are great athletes and have big, muscular bodies. American audience at least to me is comparable to the audience in Ancient Rome(at least the way they describe this audience in books, films and documentaries).
Very well put. I've always had an impression that sports in America is all about spectacle. That's one of the reasons why football will never make it big in the U.S. People claim it's tedious because there's too little scoring. What's more, fouled players supposedly cry like little girls. And Americans like their men tough. So there you go
But there's another thing I've been thinking about. American audience doesn't give a damn about what's happening on other continents. I mean sports-wise. They don't need too, since they are lucky enough to have such powerful local leagues in various sports that they can dominate the whole discipline. And yet in volleyball, just like in football (I'm not gonna use the "s" word, no way), they wouldn't have a final saying. There already are better leagues out there, and people who make all the important decisions are outside of America as well. So why bother? And I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible to build a league stong enough to compete with others, more prestigious ones. It would just take way too long to keep the audience interested. That's why, even though their MLS is getting more and more attractive, I believe it will remain more of a local curiosity rather than become anything truly influential. Yes, I know that there's much less competition involved in volleyball and much smaller sums of money are concerned. But still, everything important to the sport happens mainly in Europe and Asia. And that's not likely to change anytime soon.