Last night, for the first time, I did something that most Canadians do before their 10th birthday. Team Canada’s 7-3 demolition of the Russians at the Vancouver Olympics was the first hockey game I’ve ever watched from the opening face-off to the closing buzzer. It’s not that I’m not a sports fan. In fact, over the course of my life I’ve followed several sports almost religiously. It just so happens that hockey has never been one of them. This being the case, I’m totally illiterate with respect to the strategy (and in some cases, the rules) of the game. In spite of this, I found the game exhilarating and I enjoyed it every bit as much as I would have enjoyed a match in one of my preferred sports.
The experience got me thinking... Are there certain sports that are just inherently fun to watch, even for newcomers to the game? If so, what makes the really popular sports so exciting to mainstream audiences and what makes others appealing to only the most die-hard and dedicated fans? Based on my experience as an avid sports fan and a follower of multiple sports, I’ve devised a framework for rating each sport’s inherent entertainment value. I came up with 4 main criteria that I believe capture the essence of sporting’s allure.
Most people don’t recognize it but televised sports are the original reality TV. The formula is as follows: You take a cast of carefully selected characters thrust them into a manufactured environment, then sit back and watch the drama ensue. And every good drama, whether scripted (as in the case of a screenplay) or merely staged (as in the case of reality TV and sports), contains a few essential elements that keep the audience at the edge of their seats.
What follows is an outline of each of these elements along with a ranking of the top 5 North American professional sports based on how each sport stacks up in the 4 categories. Here are the categories in order of significance.
Wow Factor
Every good spectator sport, like every good drama, requires a healthy dose of action. In the context of sports, this is achieved through fast-paced match-play and feats of exceptional athleticism, in the form of a high-flying dunk, a 95-yard touchdown pass, or a perfectly-placed knock out punch. Some sports, such as golf and curling, stand out due to the complete absence the wow factor. As a result, these sports generally only enjoy a niche audience and are often the subject of ridicule among mainstream sport fandom.
Match Flow
This category is related to the wow factor but it differs in that it can be found even in sports where the athletes aren’t particularly fast or strong. Match flow refers to frequency with which a match is punctuated by moments of high suspense or excitement. These moments can take the form of a goal, a three-pointer or a blind side quarterback sack. Sports in which the goals come too few and far between can lead to audiences becoming bored and disengaged. In America this is perhaps the number one criticism of soccer. Although, in soccer’s defense, catering to the average American’s attention span is no small task.
On the other hand, sports in which points are scored too frequently tend to have the effect of watering down the dramatic impact of each goal. Basketball, although very popular in North America, suffers from this problem. In the NBA, baskets are scored at an average of once every 30 seconds. This means that each individual basket, save for the occasional highlight-reel play, has diminished relative significance.
Randomness and Unpredictability
Just like in the movies, everyone likes a surprise ending. Sports in which anybody can win on any given night can enjoy huge commercial success even among casual fans. Some recent sporting fads have managed to capitalize on this fact. Four years ago professional, high-stakes poker was being played in prime-time on ESPN and was pulling in ratings rivaling those of established sports like baseball and hockey. The inherent randomness of the cards dealt to each player meant that, although strategy was definitely involved, even the most junior player could win a hand against the most seasoned professional.
Mixed Martial Arts is another sport that I’d place in this category. In addition to a strong wow factor, the outcome of any given match is slightly less predictable than in a sport like boxing, simply because there are so many ways a fighter can finish the fight, thereby increasing the likelihood that the better fighter will get caught with a strike or a submission.
High Stakes
Any director or screenwriter knows that a good drama must involve high stakes. To understand this, just try to recall the last time you watched a drama (in TV or in film) in which somebody didn’t die. There are no higher stakes than life and death, and writers have been using death as a plot device from time immemorial. Sports are no different in this respect. While most modern-day sports have all but eliminated the risk of death, many ancient sports deliberately advertised the fact that the losers would be losing more than just the match. The Romans were particularly fond of mixing sports and death as illustrated by their gladiator spectacles.
In keeping with contemporary social norms, many sports have substituted the risk of death, with the risk of severe injury. Not surprisingly, fans of these sports, probably not unlike the roman peasantry before them, goad the athletes into landing injury-causing hits and they cheer when the aggressor succeeds in seriously hurting his opponent. This phenomenon can be observed in boxing, mixed martial arts, football, hockey and, to a slightly lesser extent, nascar racing.
A big part of the success of poker is also due to the high-stakes, although in this case the physical danger is replaced with the risk of losing incredibly large sums of money in a matter of seconds.
The producers of sports broadcasts often preface the contest with an in depth look at the athletes and their personal stories. By doing this, they foster a sense of familiarity and create the illusion that the audience has a personal connection with the athletes. This serves to heighten the stakes by bringing things closer to home. Viewers who tune in late and therefore miss the pre-show, can compensate by placing bets on the winner if they feel that the stakes need a bit of a boost.
The Top 5 North American Spectator Sports
Based on the above factors, I’ve ranked the top 5 sports in the continent. The eligibility criteria for inclusion on the list are subjective yet straightforward. All five of the sports included have a large following that encompasses a representative cross-section of North American society (not including Mexico). Each sport is ranked based on cumulative scores from the categories described above.
5) Baseball
Wow Factor: 5/10
Match Flow: 3/10
Randomness: 5/10
High Stakes: 2/10
Total Score: 15/40
That average baseball match features one or two spectacular plays but 90% of the time is spent waiting for the next pitch, and with some matches lasting up to 4 hours, 90% is a long time. Furthermore, the season consists of almost 150 games per team followed by back-to-back-to-back 7-game playoff series. This makes it incredibly difficult for the underdog to pull off an upset thereby destroying the game’s unpredictability. Also, with so many regular season games, the individual importance of a single game is virtually nil. For this reason, I see baseball as the sports version of the bulk basket at a discount clothing store; you get a lot of product for a low cost, but quality is lacking.
The low cost and accessibility are the sport’s only redeeming qualities. In Toronto, Blue Jays tickets are so cheap and so easy to come by that you can often get them for free through promotional offers. The times that I have watched a game live, it was clear that for most in attendance, the occasion was little more than an excuse to get drunk in the middle of the day.
4) Basketball
Wow Factor: 7/10
Match Flow: 4/10
Randomness: 6/10
High Stakes: 3/10
Total Score: 20/40
As someone who spent a good chunk of his childhood aspiring to play in the NBA, and a former die-hard basketball fan, this may be my second act of treason in this article (the first being my admission that I’ve never watched a full hockey game). It hurts to admit it, but basketball is just not a great spectator sport for the uninitiated. The sport boasts some of the most physically gifted athletes in the world, and there is certainly no shortage of spectacular plays. But with 80 games per season and one hundred baskets per game, every mistake and every adversity can almost certainly be rectified later in the season if not later in the game itself. For this reason, the sport are almost void of any drama until the final minutes of the game when most matches are decided. Until this time, it can feel like they’re just going through the motions.
3) Hockey
Wow Factor: 8/10
Match Flow: 9/10
Randomness: 7/10
High Stakes: 4/10
Total Score: 28/40
With the players literally whizzing by one another on skates, and the puck in play almost constantly (they don’t even pause for shift changes!?), hockey is easily the fastest and most action-packed of the major North American sports. To top it all off, viewers are routinely treated spectacular collisions plus the occasional fist fight. Also, with an average of about 10 goals in each 60 minute match, every goal counts. The goals come often enough that you rarely get impatient but they’re rare enough that every scoring opportunity is cause for a collective gasp. These features combine to make for superlative scores in wow factor and match flow, which more than makes up for the lack of randomness and high stakes caused by a really long regularly season and long, drawn-out playoff format.
2) Football
Wow Factor: 9/10
Match Flow: 9/10
Randomness: 9/10
High Stakes: 9/10
Total Score: 36/40
Most sports writers would agree that football players are the best pure athletes on the planet. The feats of athleticism are awe-inspiring. But football is also unique in the sense that it has a hierarchical scoring system. Every first down is celebrated as a miniature score, as is every sack. One level up on the scoring scale are touchdowns and interceptions, all of which make for frequent exclamation points in the flow of the game. However, because actual points are scored relatively infrequently, in a low scoring game the underdog always has the chance for an upset. Furthermore, unlike the sports listed so far, the outcome is almost never certain until the well into the 4th quarter because it is always possible to rack up 14 points in the span of several minutes, even if the game hasn’t been going your way up to that point.
But football’s biggest draw for a lot of people is the gravity of the matches. With only 16 regular season games and a one-and-done playoff format, even regular season games feel like the playoffs.
1) Boxing
Wow factor: 10/10
Match Flow: 10/10
Randomness: 9/10
High Stakes: 11/10
Total Score: 40/40
At the dawn of the 20th century, boxing, along with baseball and horseracing, stood atop the podium as America’s premier spectator sport. Since then, corruption and lack of leadership has caused the sport to lose some of its standing among mainstream audiences, but all it ever takes is one charismatic fighter and one marquee match-up for the sport to be thrust back into the limelight. And if you’ve ever watched a boxing match you know why.
The inherent intrigue of watching a fighter getting pounded to the face and body is intensified by the knowledge that any punch could end the match or even end a fighter’s career. Further upping the ante, a top fighter will fight only two or three times per year, and the majority get only one shot at a championship belt (if at all), thus making every match a do-or-die proposition.
Because boxing (and fighting in general) is so intimately tied to masculinity, a loss can cause a fighter to question his very manhood. Also, the individual nature of the sport means that the entire weight of the loss must be carried by one person rather than being distributed among the members of a team. Lastly, the one-on-one format makes the fan’s connection with the athlete much more personal, and often national and ethnic allegiances come into play further raising the stakes.
National pride is the fuel that powered the hysteria surrounding the Canada-Russia hockey match and it’s what ultimately convinced me to watch. But high stakes alone aren’t enough to make a sport exciting, which is why it will probably be at least another twenty-odd years before I watch my first curling match.
there's a big difference between watching a sport live and on TV.
football is amazing to watch on an HDTV, but for someone who has sat through many a Buffalo Bills game in -35 degree snow, the experience is somewhat less satisfying.
conversely, i can't remember the last time i sat through a baseball game from beginning to end on TV, but i've never had a bad time watching a ball game live with buddies, cracking jokes and having fun.
"Because boxing (and fighting in general) is so intimately tied to masculinity, a loss can cause a fighter to question his very manhood"... LOL, overstate much?
Hockey at #3, that's an impulsive decision and based on a sole game ...
MMA should be before hockey...or did I miss something
Runner up: Roller Derby (I here it's coming back!) :)
What also makes boxing the best sport is that the ref knows to call it when one guy is getting completely destroyed. The thing I hate about most sports is they have to play until the very end, even when one team is clearly getting owned.
The thing that drove me nuts about that hockey game last night is after the second period, with Canada up by 4, it was pretty much a done deal. I suppose there's always the chance of a comeback, but it's rare and boring to wait for.