Association football is the world's most popular sport and is worth US$600 billion worldwide.[1] By the end of the 20th century it was played by over 250 million players in over 200 countries.[2][3][4][5][6] Around the world, the sport is played at a professional level by professional footballers, and millions of people regularly go to football stadiums to follow their favourite football teams,[1] while billions more watch the sport on television or on the internet.[7] Football has the highest global television audience in sport.[8] The sport had amateur origins and evolved into the modern professional competition.
- ^ a b Ingle, Sean; Glendenning, Barry (9 October 2003). "Baseball or Football: which sport gets the higher attendance?". The Guardian. UK.
- ^ "FIFA Survey: approximately 250 million footballers worldwide" (PDF). FIFA. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 September 2006.
- ^ "Overview of Soccer". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 12 June 2008.
- ^ Guttman, Allen (1993). "The Diffusion of Sports and the Problem of Cultural Imperialism". In Eric Dunning; Joseph A. Maguire; Robert E. Pearton (eds.). The Sports Process: A Comparative and Developmental Approach. Champaign: Human Kinetics. p. 129. ISBN 0-88011-624-2.
the game is complex enough not to be invented independently by many preliterate cultures and yet simple enough to become the world's most popular team sport
- ^ Dunning, Eric (1999). "The development of soccer as a world game". Sport Matters: Sociological Studies of Sport, Violence and Civilisation. London: Routledge. p. 103. ISBN 0-415-06413-9.
During the twentieth century, soccer emerged as the world's most popular team sport
- ^ Mueller, Frederick; Cantu, Robert; Van Camp, Steven (1996). "Team Sports". Catastrophic Injuries in High School and College Sports. Champaign: Human Kinetics. p. 57. ISBN 0-87322-674-7.
Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and is an industry worth over US$400 billion world wide. 80% of this is generated in Europe, though its popularity is growing in the United States. It has been estimated that there were 22 million soccer players in the world in the early 1980s, and that number is increasing. In the United States soccer is now a major sport at both the high school and college levels
- ^ "TV Data". FIFA. Archived from the original on 22 September 2007.
- ^ "2006 FIFA World Cup broadcast wider, longer and farther than ever before". FIFA. 6 February 2007. Archived from the original on 11 January 2012.