Sports!
It’s November, which means that the basketball season has started in America. Basketball is my favorite sport, so I am happy to be able to watch games every night. The hockey and football seasons are also underway, and the baseball championship just finished, so it is a very busy time for American sports fans. In each of the four most popular sports leagues there are 30 teams (32 in football), so fans have a lot of chances to watch and cheer for their favorite teams. In larger cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles there are usually two teams for each sport, so people are divided in their favorite teams.
Basketball is my favorite sport, but football is by far the most popular sport in the country. The championship game, called the Super Bowl, is the most watched TV program in America every year. More than 100 million people watch each year – almost the entire population of Japan!
(Football Championship) (Basketball Championship) (Football) (Baseball Championship) (Hockey Championship) (Stock Car Racing) (Basketball) (Baseball) (Hockey) (Soccer Playoffs)
Notice that the lowest number of people watch soccer. Soccer is the most popular sport worldwide, but it really isn’t popular to watch in the US – although it is getting more and more popular, especially on the west coast in places like Seattle, where the average attendance at games is over 40,000 people. The average attendance for a pro football game is about 80,000 people.
Recently, Forbes – a financial magazine, released their list of the most valuable sports teams in the world. Two of the top five were soccer teams, two were football teams, and one was a baseball team.
- Dallas Cowboys ($4 billion) (484,528,000,000¥) (football)
- Real Madrid ($3.26 billion) (soccer)
- New England Patriots ($3.2 billion) (football)
- New York Yankees ($3.2 billion) (baseball)
- Barcelona ($3.16 billion) (soccer)
Baseball has gotten less and less popular over the years – more and more people want to watch football or basketball, and young people aren’t playing baseball as much in school.
