Fringe Sports

Fringe Sports
by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (12-10-12)
[Part Two]

DAN:  

Since neither one of us cares a lick about so called 'fringe sports', activities generally requiring physical activity, what do you think it is that draws people to them over otherwise superior mainstream competition?  And we are using the word sport generously here, as many of these activities are barely more than glorified skill competitions.

There are four major sports, since it would be close minded of me to categorize soccer as a fringe sport since its the largest sport in the world.  The four major sports are, in order of popularity, Football/NFL, Baseball/MLB, Basketball/NBA, and Soccer/Football. You'll notice I left off hockey as it's barely hanging on in this country, is currently in another lock out, and has one or two (maybe zero) superstars outside of Canada where its all they care about.  But we can rip apart Canada another day.  Also, its fair to argue over other activities being sports or not, but none are major.

TODD:

I think you came at this question from the wrong direction. It is not what draws people to a fringe sport that's interesting.  The question is why don't these 'sports' draw enough people, rendering them a fringe sport.  Why don't more people like them?

Obviously there exists in the world humans who are fans of hockey or volleyball or cricket, what have you.  These people exist. They enjoy the ins and outs of a sport that the majority of Americans do not care about.  They enjoy calling their preferred activity a sport because gosh darn it, women's handball is important.  What makes something like volleyball a fringe sport isn't discovered by examining the people who follow it; everyone has different tastes. The fringe aspect is unearthed by finding out what makes it unappealing to the mainstream.  Why is badminton, for example so boring for most of us to watch? 

Take soccer in America.  It's a fringe sport for three obvious reasons:

1) There is very little scoring (read: excitement) in soccer.

2) The field is large, the players small; the action seems distant and uneventful.

3) The best players don't play soccer in America and who wants to follow a minor league?

Remove off-sides from soccer, chop the field down in size and stick the Lebron James' and Adrian Peterson's of the world on the LA Galaxy and maybe we have ourselves a show.  For now, soccer is a vastly inferior television product in America.

Similar arguments apply for most other fringe sports, activities that only draw a minuscule percentage of viewers and fans.

[Click for Part Two]