cricket vs rugby vs baseball vs others...

[Sir Redman]

Heathens.

Anyway, rugby is easily the biggest sport over here, not just at a national level but at the grass roots level as well.Basically everyone plays rugby, it's by far the biggest sport in NZ. I guess if you are English or Australian then it depends on what kind of environment you were brought up in, with cricket being the only summer sport there is a lot of competition for popularity between the winter codes.

No. Not even close. Basically everyone follows rugby, but in terms of playing numbers, rugby lags far behind other sports. For young people (up to about 17 I think), soccer has the highest playing numbers quite comfortably, and off memory rugby's about 3rd or 4th on the list. For adults, I think golf is the most popular. Quite a lot of people play soccer up to about 15 or 16 and then switch to rugby, with the idea being that they develop a brain playing soccer and then cgange once their body starts getting big enough for rugby.

Here's a link on participation if you're interested.

 

[Sir Redman]

Anyway, there's no way on Earth that the Rugby World Cup would attract 3 billion viewers. I seriously doubt it would attract even half that many over the course of the entire tournament. It's something I've noticed quite a bit of from rugby's head honchos - they like to make it out to be a far more popular game than it is.

 

[vic_orthdox]

How they come up with viewing figures is always a ridiculous estimate, and they probably just totalled the viewing figures, thus double counting people. Lets say I watch two games of the Rugby WC, I'd probably counts as 2 viewers.

 

[simmy]

Purely as a matter of opinion - Rugby is a disgraceful game and one which should be erased from the world stage. Dire.

Someone afraid to get muddy at school?!

You have mistaken rugby with football (soccer).

 

[BoyBrumby]

I would say cricket has more world clout in terms of population (obviously mainly due to the subcontinent) but Rugby (Union) has at least spread beyond the Commonwealth. France will be going into the World Cup as second favourites, Argentina are a real threat & Italy are rapidly improving. Japan aren't really much cop as a team, but the sport has a fair following over there too.

The real problem cricket has is that its World Cup is a showcase for one-day cricket, rather than the sport's gold standard. Test cricket is clearly the glory of the sport, but due to the time it takes to complete a test WC is a pratical impossibility. With Rugby the World Cup is undoubtedly the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.

 

[Jamee999]

Isn't 3 billion people like half the world?

 

[simmy]

Isn't 3 billion people like half the world?

Yeah it's utter rubbish.

They just say the 3 billion figure because that is how many TV sets it reaches. It doesnt matter if they watch it or not.

 

[simmy]

That is how I interpret it anyway.

 

[AussieDominance]

Cricket an easy second to soccer in terms of popularity/spectator sport. Doubt any American sport would come close. Obviously this WC wont rate too well with India and Pakistan out and with it generally being a borefest.

Your joking right? 10 Countries play Cricket and the Rugby World Cup is played by like 100 odd teams overall can not remember how many in the WC but the RWC is clearly the bigger spectacle.

 

[AussieDominance]

Rugby is clearly a superior Winter sport than Soccer.

 

[Tom Halsey]

Your joking right? 10 Countries play Cricket and the Rugby World Cup is played by like 100 odd teams overall can not remember how many in the WC but the RWC is clearly the bigger spectacle.

Consider the populations of the countries involved, and you have your answer.

 

[simmy]

Yeah Indian population alone probably surpasses the population of all the major rugby playing nations.

 

[Barney Rubble]

Rugby is clearly a superior Winter sport than Soccer.

Ever heard of the Northern Hemisphere? Football's quite popular up here.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Ever heard of the Northern Hemisphere? Football's quite popular up here.

Not unpopular in South America either or so I'm lead to believe.

I don't think anyone would seriously claim Rugby has a hope of ever matching Association Football as the global game, but I bet you that the Rugby World Cup makes several times more of an impact here than the cricket one has.

It being available on free-to-air telly not the least of the reasons.

 

[Barney Rubble]

Not unpopular in South America either or so I'm lead to believe.

I don't think anyone would seriously claim Rugby has a hope of ever matching Association Football as the global game, but I bet you that the Rugby World Cup makes several times more of an impact here than the cricket one has.

It being available on free-to-air telly not the least of the reasons.

Yeah, fair play. Might help if we do better than terribly in the rugby, too.

 

[pasag]

Your joking right? 10 Countries play Cricket and the Rugby World Cup is played by like 100 odd teams overall can not remember how many in the WC but the RWC is clearly the bigger spectacle.

.....

 

[Stefano]

Football (Soccer) is by far #1 sport in the world. No doubt about it. It is played everywhere.: America (north and south), Europe, Africa, Asia, even Oceania.

Motorsports,Rugby,Baseball,Golf and American Football are sports with limited appeal (as its attracts only a certain section of viewers) and its only popular in one particular country.

That is not 100% true.

Rugby: it is followed in all Commonwealth countries (except in Asia). Then, it is rather popular in France, Italy and Argentina. Not much outside these countries.

American Football: just US.

Baseball: you can find good baseball in all the american continent. USA (of course), but also Canada and Latin America. Baseball is loved in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba (it is a religion over there), Dominican Republic. Also in Colombia and Venezuela you can find good teams. And don't forget the Far East countries, like Japan and South Korea, where baseball is extremely popular. Also in China baseball is having some popularity. What about Europe? Netherlands, Italy, but no more than that.

10 Countries play Cricket

That's the "problem" of cricket. If you count the raw numbers, you have billions of fans. But where are they located? In one specific area: the subcontinent. But if we go outside the subcontinent, where can we find good cricket? Very hard...

In the american continent (with the exception of the Windies) cricket is almost unknown. An example: http://www.tsn.ca/

This is the most important Canadian internet site about sport. Canada was involved in the cricket world cup. If you want to find info about cricket on this site, you have to go through the OTHER SPORTS page and maybe you will find a short article. In Europe (with the exception of the British Isle), cricket is unknown.

Africa? Ok, there is some very good cricket (South Africa) and decent cricket (Kenya, Namibia)... But apart from those countries?

Asia? If we exclude the subcontinent, where can we find good cricket? Almost nowhere.

Oceania? Excellent with Australia and New Zealand.

If I had to choose the 2nd most popular sport in the world after soccer (which is by far #1), I would pick basketball. It is played at very high level in all the american continent (Canada, USA, Brazil, Argentina), in all Europe (except the British Isles: Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, the former Yugoslavian countries and RUSSIA).

Asia? Well, there is China. Basketball always had a good tradition in China and with Yao Ming playing in the NBA, basketball has reached high levels of popularity.

Oceania? Definitely basketball is not as popular as cricket or rugby, but Australia and New Zealand are good basketball teams.

Just a comparison. How many countries are members of ICC? 97. How many countries are members of FIBA (Federation international de Basketball - International Basketball Association)? 213.

So: if we count the raw numbers, Cricket is undoubtedly a very popular sport around the world. But, actually, it is played at a good level only in very few countries. Just think of this: only 10 nations are allowed to play the highest form of the game (test cricket). I find very hard to consider cricket the 2nd most popular game in the world, when outside those 10 nations, the game is almost unknown.

 

[Magrat Garlick]

The real problem cricket has is that its World Cup is a showcase for one-day cricket, rather than the sport's gold standard. Test cricket is clearly the glory of the sport, but due to the time it takes to complete a test WC is a pratical impossibility. With Rugby the World Cup is undoubtedly the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I'm not sure that having the World Cup as a gold standard is such a massive competitive advantage. Most sports which are very fervently followed in a particular country have very traditional competitions that weren't initially started as a World Cup of nations: take the Tour de France or Paris-Roubaix of cycling, Holmenkollen Ski Games, the Ashes, the National and American Leagues of baseball, the Rose Bowl game, Monaco Grand Prix. All were organised reasonably locally and without any international overarching body setting them up. (If it hadn't rained so much in 1912, we'd still be watching Triangular Test series, I reckon.)

Admittedly all those sports are struggling to spread to new countries, but sports with football-style World Cups are merely seen as copycats of football, and do not really captivate a country the way cricket does in India, winter sports in Norway, cycling in Belgium and France. I'd hazard a guess, too, that the amount of people in England who can quote a reasonable world ranking of cricket is larger than those who can quote a reasonable ranking of rugby, simply because rugby appears to vanish between World Cups (like cricket "vanishes" between Ashes series) - feel free to correct me, but it's how it appears from a) this forum, b) BBC website, c) the occasional English paper. Of course those who are interested buy Wisden and Sky anyway.

Lose tradition, and all you get a few people tuning in at World Cups and nothing else.

 

[Stefano]

In rugby there is a competion which can be somehow compared to the Ashes. the Six Nations tournament, which is played every year. And it is shown by BBC, so it is free; you can even watch the games live on BBC site (as long as you live in the UK) without paying a single penny.

Why aren't there many discussions about Six Nations here? My 2 pennies... England is the only country which is both a good rugby and cricket team. If you want to have some good discussions, you also need Irish, Welsh, Scottish, French and Italian fans! How many fans from these countries can we find on this forum?

 

[Dan]

As a cure for insomnia, however, it has no peers.

That isn't right.GOLF