How does one measure the success of a sport in the modern era?
The answer invariably is it depends upon who you talk to.
Is it based on the attendance figures at live games? Is it based on the viewing figures of live games? Is it measured by the number of people playing the sport? Or does it simply come down to how much revenue is generated by the sport in terms of fees, government funding and sponsorships, which includes the fee for television rights?
Unfortunately everyone has a different view. The Government of Australia, irrespective of which party is in power has a flawed barometer on which it bases much of its funding, and this is participation numbers. What has been happening for the past two decades is the various sports have been inflating those numbers to ensure they receive a greater slice of the funding pie. To the Government everything looks rosey, but the truth is very different.
After all in some sports with the growth of Masters events sometimes the growth in participation numbers is amongst the older players rather than the juniors.
It is a known fact in many sports that whenever a World Cup is held the participation numbers rise for that year and the following year. Then they start to fall away before the cycle repeats when the quadrennial event comes around again. Could this be why some sports are looking to move away from the four year cycle and have World Cups more frequently? That is unlikely, as the reason will most probably be greed, and looking at the money they can potentially generate. However, to make such a change most sports need the votes of their members, the various nations across the globe. If such a plan saw participation numbers remain, or increase every two years for countries that have a funding model similar to Australia’s this is great news, so they would no doubt support such a move.
In all of this debate few will ask what the fans want.
The question as to what constitutes the success of a sport is one that is very hard to answer. Even when we look at viewing figures, as anyone who delves into this space knows these figures are now distorted, and unless you know what you are looking for you can can be sold on figures that are in fact false. For example one social media platform classifies a view if your finger scrolls over a video, even if you have not even stopped to watch it. This is great for the ego, but not a true reflection of the interest in the clip.
Alternatively YouTube is one of the best when it comes to recording legitimate views; unlike some of the platforms created for various sports. YouTube checks that the video in question was played by a human on one device, and only then does YouTube confirm it to be a legitimate view.
YouTube also has a magic figure of 300 views. Once a video reaches 300 views YouTube temporarily “freezes” the view count to confirm that those are indeed legitimate plays by real humans. Their system then begins to track incoming views, as well as the first 300. It can delete fraudulent views as they are identified. The counter then resumes and YouTube continues to measure any fraudulent activity, and does not count these as views.
With the monetisation of videos, YouTube soon realised that having a viewer refresh a clip was not going to be good for business. So now you can refresh a video as many times as you like, but it will still only record it as one view.
This is a platform that has taken their role seriously and done everything possible to report accurate figures. Should others be made to do the same? Should there there be more governance as to how these figures are reflected?
One way to possibly tell if a sport is progressing could be to look at its World rankings and see if new teams are breaking through into the top 10 and top 20. Or is it the same nations that are contesting the major tournaments every four years.
Many people commented in relation to the recent FIFA World Cup in Qatar that the fact that many of the ‘traditional’ teams were beaten by other nations showed that football has seen the game develop globally and now we are witnessing more upsets.
Yugoslavia was traditionally a strong team in Europe before it was disbanded and became a number of new countries, but the performances of Croatia have been remarkable. Having gained independence in 1991, they have qualified for six out of seven World Cup Finals and in those six tournaments have come third twice and been runner-up once. All with a population of only four million people.
Looking at Football’s world rankings 20 years apart, comparing 2003 and the current rankings there has not been much of a changing of the guard when you look at the top ten teams. Brazil still are ranked number one, France were second in 2003 but are now third. Argentina the new World Champions were fifth in 2003 and are now second.
Three teams to have dropped out of the top ten from 2003, they are the Czech Republic, Turkey and Mexico. The latter now ranked 15th while the former two fall outside the top 20. Coming in to replace them are Belgium who were ranked 16th in 2003, Portugal who were ranked 17th and the aforementioned Croatia who were ranked 20th in 2003.
When one looks at the teams ranked from 10 to 20, the following teams are now in this group that were not there 20 years ago, Morocco, Switzerland, Uruguay, Colombia, Senegal and Japan. Those dropping out of the top 20 in that time are: Denmark, Republic of Ireland, Cameroon, Costa Rica and Sweden.
So does this show that development is working in football? That the gap is closing at the top? Even though seven of the nations that were in the top 10 20 years ago are still there, and that of those seven teams six of them have been World Cup winners, only the Netherlands has failed to lift the trophy.
One interesting aside is that there is still not one Asian side in the top 10, but Japan are now in the top 20 as the sole Asian representative. In 2003 there were 14 teams from Europe in the top 20, in 2023 there are only 11. In 2003 just one African team was in the top 20, twenty years on there are two. Moroccos’ coach in Qatar 2022, Walid Regragui said after the tournament he wanted African born players to play for African nations, one wonders how much that would impact the number of sides from Africa being in the top 20 if it happened.
From North, South and Central America there were five teams in the top 20 in 2003 and in 2023 there are six.
If we look at Rugby Union, once again their World Cup has seen only four nations lift the trophy. Those nations are still dominant. In 2003 all were ranked in the top six, in 2003 they are still ranked in the top six.
In their top ten teams only one team has changed, Samoa who were eighth has dropped to 11th and Japan who were 18th come in at 10th. There is also little change in the teams from 10-20th. Only Canada has dropped out of the top 20 and Spain has come in.
So does this stagnation reflect a lack of growth? Or does it reflect the small pool of international nations that play the sport at the highest level? Some would say it reflects where the money is spent.
In Rugby only one Asian team remains in the top 20. The same is true in relation to Africa. Just two teams from South America and the number from North America has gone from two to one. Three nations remain from the Pacific island which falls under Oceania meaning that with New Zealand and Australia they have five nations in the top 20.
Cricket some would argue has an even smaller pool when it comes to top flight international competition. It will come as no surprise that the top five Test cricket nations in 2003 are the exact same top five in 2023. All that has changed is their order, although Australia remains at number one. The remaining five teams again have changed places too.
When it comes to One Day Internationals there has been a change, South Africa and the West Indies who were in the top five in 2003 have been replaced by India and Pakistan. New nations such as Afghanistan, Ireland and Scotland have entered the rankings but apart from Afghanistan who sit ninth the others are in the bottom three with only Zimbabwe below them.
There are many who claim that the format of the ODI World Cup has been altered to protect the teams at the top. It was sold as being a way to even up the competition. It has certainly seen more than enough changes of format. In 1999 and 2003 the Super six format came in. The top three teams in each pool advanced to the Super 6. These Super 6 teams then played each other. As they advanced, the teams carried their points forward from previous matches against other teams advancing alongside them. Critics claimed that this was a protectionist move, to give a team a chance to reverse an earlier defeat and not lose out. The top four teams from the Super 6 stage progressed to the semi-finals, with the winners playing in the final.
In 2007 this became a Super 8 along similar lines. In 2011 and 2015 the teams played in two pools of eight with the top four teams in each pool progressing to a knock-out format. While in 2019 we saw each team play each other in a round robin format with the teams that finished first and second on the league table playing in the final.
So even if a smaller nation does cause an upset their chances of progressing in the tournament is unlikely. Although out of all the teams competing in the ODI World Cup there have been six lift the trophy since 1975.
In Field Hockey Only two teams have dropped out of the top ten from 2003 to 2023. Pakistan and Malaysia have given way to Belgium and New Zealand. In the rankings from 10-20 Poland, Cuba and Scotland have all slipped and been replaced by Ireland, Wales and Austria.
In 2003 the top ten was made up of four European nations (Germany, Netherlands, England and Spain), four Asian nations (Korea, Pakistan, India and Malaysia), one from Oceania (Australia), and one from Pan America (Argentina). Come 2023 there are five European nations in the top ten, two from Oceania, two from Asia and still one from Pan America.
Like cricket six nations have won the Hockey World Cup since the first event in 1971.
Also like cricket the world of Hockey has changed the format in recent times. Again we have been told it is to give the lower-ranked teams a chance to progress, but so far it appears to have made little difference to the dominance of the higher ranked sides.
So it would appear that no matter the sport only a select few nations are good enough to claim the mantle of World Champion. In many of the team sports the top ranking teams appear to be almost set in stone, apart from a shuffling of places. Does that reflect growth in a sport or have nothing to do with it at all?
One of the comments attributed to the success of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar was that the closing of the gap in World football has meant that no longer are results guaranteed. Few would have predicted Saudi Arabia to be the only team to defeat Argentina as they marched to claim their third world championship. That is what makes a World Cup magic. Sure, one of the old brigade eventually won, but it was made harder by teams that in the past would have been thumped.
Other sports need to look at this and work at raising the standard of the teams from 10-20 in their world rankings and even those teams below 20.
Rugby Union has been guilty ever since the game turned professional of limiting the opportunities for the island nations of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Some players from these nations have been forced to turn their back on their homelands in order to pursue a professional career in Australia or New Zealand and pledge allegiance to those nations in order to play in their professional teams. All that does is keep those nations down, and is ultimately not good for the game as a whole or in the nation they come from or the one that has adopted them. Remember that there were so many South Africans playing for other nations at the last World Cup that they could have fielded another team!
Few would predict that a great footballing nation like Germany would be outside the top ten, but history will show that in 2003 and 2023 they were. Of course in that 20 year period they did manage to lift another World Cup in 2014. It is interesting to note that Germany has won the World Cup on four occasions in 1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014. In between each victory there has been a decade in which they have not won; although they lost a final in the 1960’s two in the 1980’s and one in 2002.
With so much sport available now the one thing fans do not want to see is predictability in terms of the outcome of a match. The more even the playing field the more viewers and sponsors you will see; it may also result in more participants. It would definitely benefit all sports to have every team in the top 20 capable of defeating each other. So should that be the goal for those running the various sports?
If that were a reality, would that be marked down as a success?
