Football in Australia: “The World Game” – Is this marketing phrase a tad deceptive?

“The World Game” is a clever marketing phrase for the game of soccer created by the SBS soccer guru of Les Murray. Both Murray and his close friend Craig Foster have been particularly fond of using this slogan as a way of promoting their preferred sport of soccer. Yet like a lot of clever marketing slogans unfortunately the term “The World Game” is a tad misleading.

 

 

Les Murray in his book refers to the first time he utilised this phrase as if it was a thunderbolt instruction from God and how he thought it would “woo more converts to the true faith.” Murray appeared overjoyed when he stated in his book, By The Balls, “Today, football (soccer) is referred to as the ‘world game’ not just by its fans but by even its enemies.”

 

 

 

 

Before Murray hyperventilates any further though one would have to point out some errors in his estimation of soccer being “the world game”. For starters, he seems to conclude that the whole world is one homogenized mass enamored with soccer, yet he completely overlooks the fact that people have different sporting interests even in so-called soccer-mad countries. Some people in these countries even dare to prefer swimming, golf, hockey, basketball, tennis and rugby amongst other sporting activities. Perhaps these people can be deemed as being defective in some way for not falling in love with “the world game”.

 

 

That isn’t to say that soccer is the only sport to have overreached with its marketing. One slogan the AFL had back in the early 1990s was “Australian rules rules Australia”. This clearly was not the case then and they have a long way to go before many people in this country even adopt the Australian code as a point of curiousity. And then there is rugby league’s “greatest game of all” moniker which seems more hyperbole than reality. Yet this article is focused on “The World Game” as this phrase has resonated unlike the others mentioned and seems to have gained traction. Is this traction justified?

 

In England, the home of association football, recent surveys have indicated that more people participate in athletics and in swimming than in soccer[1]. Is it right to give soccer “the world game”moniker if even in England, the home ground of soccer, it is being outpointed in participation numbers by swimming? Shouldn’t it be a pre-requisite for the status of the “world game” to be number one in England?  Les Murray has quite a bit of work to do to get the homogenized world he is aiming for.

 

 

 

The other aspect that makes “The World Game” phrase misleading is the requirement to ignore the countries and peoples in the world that were ingenious enough to create their own sports before the English introduced the game of soccer into their countries. For example, Japan has the home-grown sports of sumo-wrestling, karate, judo and kendo.

 

 

All of these sports, as they are Japanese, have a special place in the sporting landscape of Japan. Kendo has over 1.6 million participants in Japan, and there are over 50 million participants of karate worldwide. Instead of England exporting their sporting culture to Japan, in this instance Japan has successfully exported their sporting culture around the world.

 

 

 

 

Another country that hasn’t fallen under the spell of soccer is Canada. Just like the Japanese, the Canadians were ingenious enough to create their own sports. In particular, they created the sports of Canadian football and ice-hockey. The passion Canadians have for ice-hockey is well renowned. I have met Canadian supporters of the Calgary Flames, and they have just as much vitriol and hatred directed towards the Vancouver Canucks as what an MCG full of Carlton and Collingwood fans have for each other.

 

 

In Canada, unlike Australia, they are even audacious enough to refer to soccer by the phrase “soccer” in their newspapers and call Canadian football “football”. Perhaps the newspaper editors of papers such as The Vancouver & Toronto Sun haven’t been given the word that there is a new world order and the “The World Game” is at the centre of that order. Here’s hoping Les Murray can get on the phone immediately and rectify this situation.

 

 

 

 

Then there are the countries of Australia, Ireland, Thailand, India, the United States & China amongst others that have locally devised sports and leisure activities that by and large have priority over the game exported from England known as soccer or by Les as “The World Game”. The home grown product here in Australia obviously being Australian “rules” football, which was created many years prior to soccer, rugby league and American football.

 

 

 

Americans located in Boston, for example, are even crazy enough to waste their time supporting the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics and the New England Patriots in baseball, basketball and American Football respectively. If only the Bostonians knew the errors of their ways. If only they knew more about what Les Murray refers to as “The World Game”. Perhaps this is calling for Les as well – to “educate” these ignorant Americans about where they have gone wrong.

 

 

 

But back to the game of soccer, there is no doubt it is vastly popular in most countries around the world, but there is an element of hubris in play when one refers to it as “The World Game” as if people’s other interests are somehow not worthy enough to be noted. Does McDonalds label itself as “The World’s Restaurant” due to its popularity or does their management accept that there are people that actually prefer to dine out on Italian, Greek and Thai food amongst countless other variations? I would like to think they are not arrogant enough to give themselves the title of “The World’s Restaurant”.

 

 

For some people, McDonalds is not even a restaurant option even though they have been given the word via various media outlets about how popular McDonalds is worldwide. How many restaurants do they have now? I heard they have over 30,000 restaurants worldwide. For some people this statistic may be impressive, but surely it doesn’t really matter how popular McDonalds is as long as people have the option of dining out on other food. Similarly, some of us actually prefer to dine out on other sporting options other than soccer, no matter how crazy it must seem to Les and Craig.

 

 

There is no doubt Les’s phrase is clever, as it makes it seem it is inevitable that we Australians will fall in line with some new world order where soccer is played and nothing else. Yet if soccer is to be accurately deemed “The World Game” it should have to be the most popular sport in every country across the world and be universally respected, but as we have seen there are many countries where people have decided to have interest in other sports, and that is even after these people have known about the existence of soccer. Some of these countries even like basketball, baseball, other forms of football and cricket more than soccer. Maybe they just need to be educated by Les and Craig and then we can all rest easy knowing that “The World Game” is coming to enrich your life and make the world a better place.

 

 

 

[1] http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/22806853