I don't understand the thrill of the game

[venta]

Today I've had Xfm on, streaming from my computer. It's sufficiently cool today that we don't need the aircon on, so I can hear music properly. Most of the DJs have talked about the football, everyone who's called in has been asked about/mentioned it. Some of the adverts are football orientated. There's even been adverts for a club which is "the only place to be after the match".

Over on elle_'s journal, it's clear that companies all over the place are using the match as an excuse for a jolly. Someone else mentioned that their company is shutting up shop early this afternoon.

Now, I'm not a football fan, not even at times like this. I come from a family of sport-despisers. When a passing French bloke tried to take the piss on Sunday night, it was completely lost on me because, though I knew there was a match on, I hadn't known it was against France, and at that point I didn't know England had lost.

I know there are plenty of people out there who're not bothered about footy. So, without wanting lots of frothing comments along the lines of how the match tonight is getting in the way/sodding up your plans/annoying you: what percentage of the population cares ?

The prevalence of the little car-flags, the quietness of the streets when there's a game, everything else suggests "near 100". But a surprisingly high percentage of my friends are rabidly anti-. Is this just me knowing an unrepresentative sample ? Is it that the football apathists are just much quieter about their apathy than the supporters are about their support ? That people are worried they'll be deemed sad, uncool, unpatriotic or pummelled if they admit they don't give a stuff ?

I'm genuinely curious.

Comments

It's times like this when I need a "Statto" icon

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

what percentage of the population cares ?

That's a very bateleur-esque space before the question mark. :-)

I've been thinking about this on and off for much of the day, and I would estimate the percentage as being between 40% and 70%. It really depends upon your definition of "cares"; there is a long and continuous scale between antipathy and, er, pathy. (Propathy?)

The source of my figure is largely based upon TV viewing figures. Important England football matches attract between 15 million and 20 million registered TV viewers, but there is sufficient doubt about the TV ratings methodology which does not take into account viewers at pubs and clubs that it is not unreasonable to increase that to between 20 million and 30 million. Then we play around with people who care about football but didn't see the match, or who saw the match but would not self-identify as caring about football, and we work out what proportion of the population is ineligible to answer one way or the other, and get something like "between 40 and 70". At least, I do.

At one end of the spectrum, I would estimate there are probably about 600,000 club season-ticket holders in the UK and perhaps 2%-10% of the population who would identify that football is one of the most important influences in their life (cf religion, their significant other and so on). I would pluck figures out of the air that perhaps 10% of men and perhaps 40% of women had antipathy towards football, with the rest being apathetic.