The early stages
of this year’s rugby World Cup provided one of the greatest upsets in the
event’s 32-year history. On September 28th, the hosts, Japan, beat Ireland for
the first time ever. The result sparked loud celebrations around the country.
Japanese TV presenters bowed in front of images of the victors before
reading the news. The commissioner of the Japan Sports Agency boasted that his
country had rewritten sporting history.
The sport’s
bosses are hoping that such standout events will attract more than its usual
followers. Rugby and other games are increasingly concerned about their
commercial future. Technology allows fans to watch any game at any time from
anywhere. That, combined with a growing world population, means sports
audiences are bigger than ever. But growth in revenues has slowed, according
to PWC, a consultancy. An annual decline of 3% in the number
of minutes watched per game per sport per year is common.
This
pressure is leading to increasingly intense competition between sports for
fans’ money and attention. The stakes are high. Sport is a serious business,
generating around $90bn a year.
Football
remains indisputably the world’s favourite sport. It generates revenues of
around $40bn a year, almost twice as much as the next most lucrative sport,
American football, five times as much as basketball and 20 times as much as
cricket. The women’s game has galvanised the sport still further - this year’s
women’s World Cup was watched by more than a billion viewers. And football’s
popularity has soared in China and America, especially among young people.
No sport
will dislodge football. But others can learn from its success. Sports need to
adapt to modern viewing habits. They need to break into new markets. Doing so
involves more than simply staging matches in new countries—it means finding
home-grown stars from these markets.
Sports can
open international tournaments to new players. Since 2002 basketball has
doubled the number of teams in the men’s World Cup to 32. Rugby is considering
boosting its cup from 20 countries to 24. The rationale is simple: viewership
in countries is inevitably higher when they compete in a world cup. “The more
inclusive you make sports, the wider the market is going to be,” says Dave Berri,
a sports economist from Southern Utah University. Football is, once again, the
world leader in this regard. It recently expanded its World Cup to allow 48
teams to compete. The next women’s cup will include 32 countries, compared with
24 in the most recent one.
Holding
such competitions in new markets also helps. Rugby has been cautious, but after
taking the 2019 World Cup to Japan—the first time the event has been staged
outside the sport’s traditional strongholds—it now intends to hold either the
2027 or 2031 tournament in America. Basketball’s
next World Cup will be held in Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Foreign
star players are a powerful tool to keep fans watching. The success of
basketball in China—which hosted this year’s World Cup—is an example.
Basketball’s
achievements in China are partly down to one man. In 2002 Yao Ming became the
first Chinese player to be the top pick in the NBA draft. That marked the
start of a brilliant career in America. Finding a star always involves luck.
But the NBA improved its chances through its grassroots work in China. It
established offices there as far back as 1992. It has played exhibition games
in China since 2004, long before any other professional American sports league.
The NBA
has capitalised on Mr Yao’s popularity and used it to expand basketball’s reach
still further. It now has three academies in China, as well as others in
Australia, Mexico, India and Senegal.
Such
investment helps explain why basketball players in America have become a
markedly more international bunch. In 1980 the league had only four foreign players,
from just four countries beyond America. By 2000 the league had 36 non-American
players, from 24 different countries. It now boasts 108, representing 42
nationalities. The figure remains well short of Premier League football in
Britain, whose players hailed from 64 countries last year. But it comfortably
outstrips similar leagues in other sports.
Yet perhaps
the biggest lesson of all from the NBA’s success is the extent to which
playing a sport makes people watch it. In new territories, people who participate in
a particular sport are 68 times more likely to be committed fans. There are now
600,000 basketball courts in China, giving players plenty of places to dream of
becoming the next Mr Yao.
Basketball
has done better than its competitors at learning the lessons of football’s
success. PWC reckons that among the big sports other than football,
basketball will see the greatest increase in revenues in the coming years. The
world seems to have settled on its second-favourite sport.
From The Economist (edited)
