henchman21
Mr. Meeseeks
- Feb 24, 2012
- 67,095
- 53,592
Golf is still very much a rich person's sport. There has been a lot of progress made, but the demographics show they have a long ways to go. Much more so than hockey. One advantage golf has though is that it is a lifetime sport. If you enjoy it, you have a sport that can be reasonably played into your 70s.
But to me, you can't really compare team vs individual sports all that well.
Kind of a myth that soccer isn't popular in the US. It has the 2nd most former or current participants of any sport in the US, only baseball tops it. It helps that the stat includes women where women's football is about as niche as it gets. Still, popular sport. Just on the men's side of the equation, it is an offseason sport or something that kids do growing up and never play after 10/12. The participation rate goes down dramatically as football and basketball take over as the dominant sports and baseball maintains.
Hockey and soccer have been hiding concussions too. All sports leagues with head impacts have been trying to keep their head in the sand. Hockey is arguably the shadiest of all the sports.
Throw-ball: a sport that hides concussions and where you deflate an egg-shaped ball and throw it or run with it.
Sadly it just isn't equipment. That is actually a fairly easy issue to solve and many places do it provided there is need. It is more about league fees, ice time, travel, etc. A local league I coached in would cost 700. Then there was mandatory travel for 10 road weekends. Where there wasn't a school bus to take kids, parents had to travel in groups and stay in their own hotel rooms. Add in food and gas... we're talking 5-600+ a weekend. Camps (good ones anyway) are 500-1000+. Suddenly the sport is 5-8k a year outside of equipment. That is before we get into the actual issue of facilities. Fort Collins, Greeley, and Loveland only have 3 facilities total between them. There has to be 50++ places to play basketball. 15+ places for football. Even Denver, which actually isn't bad in this area I think has 8 public rinks in the metro area. I think Boulder has 3 more. I could be slightly off, but the point is that there just isn't massive infrastructure there to bring the game to the masses. It is pretty easy to get the public in most places to support a rec center, but unless you're in Minnesota, Wisconsin or New Englands... good luck getting a hockey rink attached. If you're in those areas though, you can find plenty of rinks. I think Duluth/Superior has something like 6 or 7 indoor rinks combined and in the winter has 10++ outdoor.... as an urban population of about 115k. Then all the little towns outside them typically have one.
I really don't think the hockey issue is exposure from a media sense. It is simply a fast, complex game with rules that casuals don't have a clue on. If you come in without knowing a thing, you're bound to be lost without some effort to understand the game. That effort is typicaly a barrier. Add to that, the fighting and physicality are key factors in the casual popularity, but are being slowly taken out of the game. Adding even more to that, there is a very low participation rate. There is a lot keeping hockey from being a top sport in the US.
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