The Evolution of Soccer

Nowadays, soccer is the world wide’s most popular sport. Many people all over the world are crazy about this sport. In the last 20 years soccer has changed totally. It changed financially and popularly. Now, I am going to write about how soccer is becoming more popular in the world wide and the growth of the financial side of it.

   

First of all, soccer started in England in 1863. But, at that time Rugby (An English sport similar to American football) had  more popularity. At the beginning soccer was in the same association with rugby. Later, soccer split from rugby and became independent. In 1872, there was the first international soccer match. It was between England vs. Scotland and the match was watched by 4,000 spectators. This means that the popularity is still small. Years passed, soccer reach to different countries, so FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) decided to make an International soccer competition every 4 years. The wisdom is that they wanted to attract people from different countries, so they can increase the popularity of soccer. Soccer faced a large increasing in its popularity when soccer matches started presenting in TV.

Rungnado May Day Stadium, North Korea

In the last 20 years soccer has reached to all over the world. Millions of people watch soccer matches every week. World Cup 2006 in Germany recorded the largest number of attendance. 3,359,439 (52,491 per match) this is the number of the people who attended the matches at stadium in 2006 world cup. There is a larger number of people who watched the games from TV. Soccer popularity isn’t only increasing in males’ side; it’s increasing in females’ side. The number of people who attended Women’s world cup 1999 matches at stadiums was 1,194,215 (37,319 per match) people, which is a very large number. At this moment, there are more than ten soccer stadiums all over the world that can host more than 85,000 Spectators [Rungnado May Day Stadium, North Korea 150,000 spectators], [Salt Lake Stadium, India 120,000 spectators], [Estadio Azteca, Mexico 105,000 spectators], [Azadi Stadium, Iran 100,000 spectators], etc.

My second point is the growth of financial side of soccer. As everyone knows economy is growing in the whole world. It’s one of the most important things in people’s life if not the most important. Sports’ business is becoming one of the most important parts in economy. Soccer teams are spending hundreds of millions every year. Big companies spend a lot of money in soccer ads. Sports channels are spending so much money to get the right to present soccer competitions. This year, Sky Sports Channel (England) bought EPL’s (English Premier League) rights by almost £1.5 billion ($2.3 billion). Also, summer transfers market (Players transferring from teams to other teams) become more interesting than soccer matches. People want to see players transferring to new teams and how much do they cost. It’s really interesting for me. Every summer, I follow all soccer news accounts on twitter to be in touch with the latest news.

 Cristiano Ronaldo being presented at Santiago Bernabeu for the first time 

In summer 2009, the Portuguese player Cristiano Ronaldo moved from Manchester United (English team) to Real Madrid (Spanish team) with the cost of $130 million, which is the highest transfer fee in soccer history. A week after Real Madrid signed with Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid made the same amount of money that they spent on Ronaldo’s transfer from Real Madrid Shop Stores and stadium tickets. At the same year, Real Madrid bought the second most expensive soccer player “the Brazilian Ricardo Kaka”. Kaka cost Real Madrid $82.5 million. The total of Real Madrid’s costs in summer 2009 was $328 million, which is the most in soccer history.

In conclusion, I would like to say that soccer is becoming more popular and its financial side is becoming bigger. The number of people who watch soccer is increasing in the worldwide year by year. Soccer also becomes a very big business for businessmen. Soccer players are making a lot of money every year. In my opinion, soccer will be a major source of income for many countries in the future, and soccer popularity will be unimaginable.

By: Majid Attar
You can follow the writer on Twitter: @Majidola