5 reasons why football has become the biggest sport in the world

“If football had emerged as a brand-new game today and had to compete against existing sports, it wouldn't stand a chance,” says Arve Hjelseth.

He is a professor of sports sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

“It wasn't inevitable from the ouset that football would become so popular,” says Matti Goksøyr.

He is a retired professor of sports history at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences.

So what was it that made five billion people get involved in the last men's World Cup, according to FIFA? And what made 1.5 billion people watched the final – the most-watched final in history so far?

1. The agonising pursuit of that one goal

Football is an imprecise game that is slow and often uneventful, according to Hjelseth, who himself "grew up as an extremely devoted football fan."

“Most of what you try to do in football fails,” Hjelseth points out.

In handball, players score on around 40 per cent of their attacks. In football, the figure is around 1 per cent, according to the professor.

And perhaps that is exactly where part of the fascination lies.

After all, it's undeniably much harder to get the ball into the goal when you are not allowed to use your hands and arms.

“That gives football a different kind of logic that continues to captivate people,” says Hjelseth.

A goal in a handball match hardly matters – there will be 40 more. A goal in a football match may be the decisive moment. Every goal becomes a powerful experience, a major highlight.

“The pursuit of those moments creates the tension in the match and produces a completely different kind of compelling drama. Football isn't popular despite the fact that so few goals are scored – it's popular because so few goals are scored,” he says.

2. Sailors and professional clubs

There was a ball game that was similar to football in China thousands of years ago, says Matti Goksøyr. In England, attempts were made to ban football as early as the 14th century.

“They wanted to ban it because it caused so much destruction, violence, and damage to property. That's proof that football was already quite big at that time,” says the sports historian.

Modern football is considered to have been born towards the end of the 19th century, when standardised rules were introduced and the organisation of clubs and matches rapidly expanded.

What began as a game developed at English boarding schools to teach children willpower, discipline, and teamwork became the favourite sport of the working class.

English sailors exported the game to Scandinavia, port cities in Europe and, not least, South America, says Arve Hjelseth.

“Football became a sport that could symbolise the strength and unity of the local community. That’s easier to achieve with a team sport than with an individual sport,” says Hjelseth, adding:

“It's impossible to say exactly why, but football proved to be more sustainable in several parts of the world than, for example, rugby, which was one of its competitors."

Back in England, people realised it was possible to make money from football.

“In the growing industrial cities and port towns, they discovered that football was popular to watch. They realised they could pay players to play for the team and charge admission,” Hjelseth explains.

“There was a great deal of opposition to professionalising football, but it was a wave that couldn't be stopped,” he adds.

By the end of the 19th century, professional clubs had taken over and helped spread the game to the rest of the world.

3. Everyone can dream of success

Hjelseth believes it was probably partly historical coincidence that football gained such a dominant position.

At the same time, football has some advantages compared to other sports in terms of reaching a wider audience.

“Football can be suitable for everyone, or historically speaking, all men,” says Hjelseth.

It has fit well with ideals of masculinity – the idea that men are tough and can take a beating, he points out.

But according to the professor, football has room for many different body types.

“In many sports, you need to have a certain physique to become good. Many top footballers are small. But you can also be 1.90 metres tall and become a great footballer. Everyone can dream of succeeding in football, more than in most other sports,” he says.

4. Simple and cheap

Goksøyr also points out that football is a flexible game that is suitable for everyone, or at least many.

It can be played both indoors and outdoors, and on all kinds of surfaces. It can be played with just a few players or with many, as long as there are the same number on each team.

Football is also easy to understand. It’s a simple game with simple rules, according to Goksøyr.

“It's so simple that children can play it. At the same time, it;s complex enough for people to write dissertations about it,” he adds.

And it's cheap, or at least it can be. And easily accessible.

“Durings its beginnings in Norway, it was called a sport for the 'common man.' Many other sports were expensive to participate in. With football, all you needed was a ball and an open space,” Goksøyr says.

That also means that many, almost everyone, have a relationship with the game.

“Most people have kicked a ball at some point. So football doesn't have the same barriers separating it from the general public that many other sports do,” he says.

5. Media and the self-reinforcing effect

According to Hjelseth, football's rise to greatness happened gradually.

Its popularity soared as the media became a bigger part of people's everyday lives, he says. Football is far more visible than many other sports.

This creates a self-reinforcing effect. 'Everyone' watches football because 'everyone else' does. Children start playing football because they see 'everyone else' doing it.

Watching football has been the most important leisure activity of all for Hjelseth. But things have changed. Becoming the world's most popular sport may not have been entirely positive.

“It crossed the line a long time ago. In many ways it's become a tasteless industry, and FIFA has become a tasteless organisation,” says Hjelseth.

FIFA has been plagued by corruption scandals for years, and criticism rained down when the 2022 World Cup was awarded to Qatar. The country is known for systematic violations of migrant workers' rights.

Last year, the organisation awarded Donald Trump a peace prize. As the World Cup festivities began, Trump dropped new bombs on Iran, while a football referee handpicked by FIFA was denied entry to the United States because he is from Somalia.

“You have to overlook a lot to follow a tournament like this. Still, I’ll probably watch a few matches” he says.

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Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk

Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

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