Average length of professional sports games

In this area, basketball and football are failing tremendously. In contrast, I am often amazed how good of a job soccer and hockey officials do. Finally, I would just like to add that I have no doubt that in 25 years,, soccer will be more popular in the U. Macho meatheads can criticize soccer all they want, but facts are facts, and there is no doubt that the sport is become increasingly popular in this country.

Look at the recent popularity of the Premier League in this country and how many cities are clamoring for an MLS franchise. In contrast, look at the diminishing numbers of Little League participants. Look at a typical crowd at a MLB game and the lack of Millennials in attendance. And again, baseball is 6 minutes of action over a three-hour span.

Sorry soccer-haters, the sport is only going to continue to grow in popularity. Thanks for the comments Don. As you can read from the other comments on this blog …. Todd, thank you very much. Your numbers confirm my preferences. Hockey has always been 1. Sometimes I watch entire game. Especially in playoffs. Hockey or soccer? Kicking a ball or a puck out is not the same. First of all, icing. Goalies may face over 30 shots. How many shots in soccer? Hockey is definitely 1 in terms of real quality time.

I want to take a break myself. Just not too many. Is it fair to compare football to chess on the field? Chess may seem boring with little action. Once you understand, you can enjoy it. Baseball and Football when highly edited are pretty good watches; imagine 15 minutes of straight action. That being said, while I am VERY quick to bash throwball, I mean the NFL and college football, for that whole lack of action and commercial breaks, I will concede soccer is really 90 minutes of commercial.

You have an electronic ad board all along the sideline across from the camera PLUS you have the sponsorship of all clubs. Does that take away from the viewing experience, no? Does it work? Hey Nick, thanks for chiming in! Man Utd gets 53 million pounds a year for that shirt deal.

The people who are providing this modern day city-state war re-enactment entertainment are paid so much more money than average pay. Like the teams owners and the advertizers have tapped into a repressed violent underlying nature of human beings who are seemingly compelled to suffer through so much just to see a few minutes of actual playing of some sport as some surrogate for war. I agree life tine NFL fan but lately just bored with it, too many penalties, commercials, bad tackling, annoying announcers.

Soccer if it got rid of that offside rule where every time it looks like a fast break as in basketball someone is called off sides it would be more fun to watch. Split screen a soccer game and a football game at the same time and see which one you find yourself watching more!? Would like to see more Australian Rules Football broadcast — real tough men like hockey players without pads or helmets.

Ditch offsides rules altogether and watch scoring soar in soccer. Might force teams to play man to man, rather than all the various zone formations now employed. No offsides in basketball seems to give their fans a thrill when they see a dunk by a really tall player on a fast break. Breakaways in soccer are exciting for fans too, but rare because of the current offsides rules.

While the action time may be similar to soccer which I also like , for intensity of the action, hockey wins for sure. Think about it. It is the only one of the sports mentioned that has player substitutions without a stoppage in play. In for seconds and giving it everything they have. Exhausted and time to come out and in comes the next line. OT hockey is the best also.

Scoring chance at one end can feel like a win is coming only to lose it on the other end in 5 seconds. Comparing sports like this is a bit arbitrary. I also realize that each game is completely different. The reverse is also true. Now I do agree that the amount of commercial breaks in football is incessant, but the entire reason anything is broadcast on TV is for the sake of selling ads.

Programming is there to entertain you enough to sit through commercials. Soccer players just wear the ads on their jerseys. People like different sports for various reasons. If the amount of action time is what excites you most about sports, you have a compelling case for why you prefer soccer. In that respect you can absolutely compare across sports, and I did, offering quantitative summaries of of minutes and of ads. A typical Australian Football quarter might run from 27 to 33 minutes, but may be even longer if, for instance, injuries cause delays.

Australian Footbal breaks after the first and third quarters are six minutes, with a minute break at halftime. Thus, a match with quarters averaging 30 minutes would last about two and a half hours. The research found that MLB games were just under 3 hours and had about 18 minutes of actual […].

Pace of Play is Pure Poppycock fromthe Chess games last hours but the players only spend second actually moving the pieces. Any idiot can kick a ball around. Antonio: the article was about live action time, not a judgement on the sport. I love baseball and freely acknowledge that it has too much deadtime. But you clearly made your opinions evident, without understanding the point of the article, which shows more about your own ignorance than mine.

Every sport has tactics and strategy, and every sport takes specialized skills. But it is […]. Soccer has its fans worldwide and in larger numbers, but it is undeniably the least popular in US, whether it is the MLS or international variety. NFL rules sundays and is easily the most well packaged entertainment for the buck in spite of the commercials.

Actually the commercials flock to this sport because of its entertainment value. Corporates and fans alike, are not idiots. I know enough about either sport and have no patience to read your responses here.

Yes, its difficult to criticize the NFL with some people. And I get it; its the same for baseball, a sport that was designed for a previous generation in terms of his pace of play and relative idleness. You want the experience; lots of people look forward more to the tailgating than the game itself. Or look forward to hanging in a bar with friends while watching the game.

So its less about the game, more about the experience. In American football a game could have been as few as 5 scores. And if I miss a score, at the sound of the crowd I can look up and there will be 4 replays. American football excitement is about offense so they have the scoring system to increase the perception of excitement: a defensive football game is boring. The excitement in low-scoring baseball, soccer, and hockey games IS about the defense.

And I played college basketball! You can weave everyday life through a football game. Maybe mow the front lawn at halftime. Agree on scoring sentiment. Had this debate with a friend the other day. Sports lend themselves to pausing differently. A Marathon vs the mile comes to mind. Drag racing vs oval racing… Without comparing the intensity of the action and strategy employed the findings in this article are just mute points.

Football is strategic bursts and diverse action where soccer is steady movement with less strategy and less diversity in play.

A football fan looks at soccer as too simple and just a bunch of ball passing. A soccer fan looks at football as a bunch of strategy meetings with occasional action. Running plays right into a crowded line for no gain, incomplete passes, penalties, delays of game, nedless challenges and reviews of plays.

Consider this: have you ever watched high-level squash? Its maddening to me … but its the way the game is played.

No; its just the nature of the game. When considering the excitement level of soccer, it is important to remember the value of each goal. I would say roughly the equivalent of a grand slam in baseball. So every time a team mounts an attack with a powerful striker, it can be thought of watching an at bat with the bases loaded.

Hello Redneck inbreeds i come in peace. I went to watch a rugby game at the weekend. Tom not so Brady. Thank you for your numbers, Todd. I am writing a book with three other people for school ant this helps a lot! We are going to the book to third graders so this will intrigue them! I watch first time in my life Super Bowl. I don t understand how people can watch that, 5sec action 5min break, you are watching commercial with small break for few sec of sport action, and u have to watch that for more than 3hours!!!

I found today highlight and this is far better to watch than 3h of advertisement. I m from europe, i love real football, volleyball and ski jumping. Strategy in soccer is very important like in american football ask any soccer coach, player or somebody who knows about a game!!!!

American football is most popular for Americans only, Cricket in India Australian football in Australia and for rest of the world most popular sport is…. Football soccer. If you check popularity of sport in the world Soccer is always first, and NFL you can not find in top10 most popular sports. The beauty of soccer is that, first of all, they try all the time, and that you can have a beautiful goal within 10 seconds of any moment in a match.

I just need to turn on the tv exactly at X hour, then 15 minutes after the first half. Hope it lasts. Europe will never understand why would anyone give more than half an hour to a football match, which would cover all ball in play, line-ups, strategy, etc.

A report on Rugby sevens at the Olympics says that in Sevens the ball is in play for 52 percent of the time at 7 minutes and 14 seconds out of 14 minutes of game clock time. I am surprised how much action there is watching the world cup as I was mostly familiar with watching kids soccer when I was also a kid and thought it was terrible. In baseball, most pitches involve a total of two players.

Pitcher and catcher. For an average pitch, the batter does nothing, but we could change that to three because the batter has potential to do something. That is for both teams. I have never seen all 9 players involved at the same time or in the same play. In soccer and basketball, there can be quick passing and a lot of players involved in a few short seconds. In football, every play involves 22 players, and usually a minimum we have 8 or more players involved from both teams.

Pass plays and run plays may be different. In basketball, there is often isolation plays that take only two players, which can be quite boring. Whereas some plays the ball is passed to all 5 players before the a shot or a play at the rim. Each sport has different quality of action. A lot of fans believe scoring is the highest quality of action.

So in soccer, there might only be 0 to 5 scores. Scoring usually is abrupt, and about 2 or 5 seconds per scoring play, including pass or drive for the score. So a game, might have a total of 2 to 5 seconds of the highest quality of action. Based on scoring, soccer is often considered to have only have 2 to 25 seconds of scoring action. In basketball, there is a lot more scoring. How many seconds of scoring is involved? Similar to soccer, basketball has 2 to 5 seconds of action per score, including assists and drives, etc.

But there are over 40 scores per team. So we are looking at to seconds of scoring action. However, it should be noted that the more scoring there is, the more deluded the quality of the average scoring action is.

In soccer, the scoring action is huge, but there is so little of it. Sometimes none. Is it too seldom? In basketball, each score is not as huge, so is it too often? Football usually has more scoring than soccer, but it does something interesting. It extends the scoring action with extra points. Station Info. MN News. Next week, three former Minneapolis police officers will go on trial in federal court for violating George Floyd's civil rights.

There will be no cameras in the courtroom, which is different from Derek Chauvin's trial that was livestreamed around the world. The average length of an NBA game is two hours and 11 minutes as of The actual playing time in an NBA game is 48 minutes, which is divided into four quarters that are 12 minutes each. If there is a tie, there is also an overtime period, which lasts for five minutes. If the game is still tied after five minutes, another five-minute overtime is played.

There is no limit to the number of overtime periods. Many times an NBA game can last two and a half hours long. M any thing s can affect the length of an NBA game, such as timeouts, out-of-bounds balls, fouls and halftime, which is 15 minutes. Managers wearing a path out to the mound in a late May game can be criticized as extraneous. Getting huffy about the practice during a deciding playoff game shows a disregard for the importance and appreciation of the moment.

A three-hour baseball game is preferable to a four-hour, minute one. Longer does not equate to better. But the opposite is also true. A shorter, less entertaining game is a worse experience than a marathon thriller.

This is not to be dismissive of some of the arguments.