Football never seems to go away. Between international tournaments, transfer sagas and pre-season tours, the game hums year-round. But last weekend’s EFL fixtures and this weekend’s Premier League matches mark something more definitive: the start of the new English season. The return of tribal loyalties, tactical debates, and the weekly rhythm that defines so many lives.
Despite the thousands of options available globally – over 8,000 competitive sports, according to the World Sports Encyclopedia – one game continues to crowd the world’s attention: football (or soccer, if you’ve an American zip code). Could it be because it is, perhaps, the perfect sport?
If you were to design the ultimate sport from scratch, what would it look like? Would it be fast-paced or strategic, or could it be both? Individual or team-based? Played indoors or out, or capable of either? The truth is, perfection requires a cocktail of ingredients that, when mixed just right, create something irresistible to players, fans, broadcasters, and sponsors alike.
The ingredients
Start with simplicity. A child should grasp the basics within minutes. Football’s ‘kick the ball into the net’ objective is as intuitive as it gets. Compare that to cricket’s LBW laws, or American football’s playbook complexity, and you see why simplicity matters.
Then there’s accessibility. You shouldn’t need expensive gear or a bespoke venue. A ball and a patch of ground suffice. This is why football thrives in favelas, deserts, and icy tundras alike. Contrast that with sports like golf or sailing, which require significant financial and geographic privilege.
Global reach is essential. The perfect sport should be playable and watchable in every climate, culture, and economy. Football is played in over 200 countries, with 250m registered players and 3.5bn fans. No other sport comes close. That can’t simply be an accident that’s been centuries in the making, since man first kicked a pig’s bladder or bundle of rags.
It must also be compelling to watch, not just to play. Drama, unpredictability and moments of brilliance are non-negotiable. Football consistently delivers all three for spectators. The tension of a nil-nil draw can rival the thrill of a 5-4 penalty shootout.
Football matters
Scalability matters. From grassroots to elite, the perfect sport must scale. Football has thriving amateur leagues, youth academies, and a pyramid structure that allows for upward mobility. It’s as relevant to players in a Sunday league as it is to fans of the Champions League. And it’s a commercial juggernaut – shirt deals, global media rights and billion-dollar clubs.
Finally, the perfect sport must be able to embed itself across geographies and cultures. It must become part of the social fabric. Football delivers on this score. It is religion in Brazil, politics in Argentina and poetry in Spain. It’s the soundtrack to life across vast swathes of the world.
Other sports have their merits, of course, and might be considered contenders for the perfection accolade.
The ‘others’
Basketball is fast-paced, urban and increasingly global. It scores highly on simplicity and accessibility. But it’s still heavily American in its cultural DNA and its global reach – while growing – isn’t yet as universal.
Cricket is deeply embedded in South Asia and parts of the Commonwealth. It has cultural depth and scalability, but its formats – Test, ODI, T20 – can be confusing to outsiders. Accessibility is decent. However, the game’s rules are anything but simple.
Athletics is the purest expression of human physicality. The sport is simple and globally understood. But its event structure is fragmented, missing the coherence of sports with continuous leagues and lacking the tribalism that fuels long-term fan engagement.
Then there are new contenders to the crown. Padel, a rising star with 30m amateur players worldwide, is easy to learn and is rapidly gaining commercial traction. It has the ingredients to go global if it can both drive down the cost to play and expand court capacity. No easy challenge. Or there’s ultimate frisbee – a wildcard. It’s simple, cheap, and inclusive, but currently lacking the visibility and cultural weight needed to scale globally.
Each has strengths, but none tick all the boxes quite like football.
Football is not perfect
Let’s not pretend football is flawless. Fifa’s scandals are legendary. Diving and gamesmanship can undermine the sport’s integrity. VAR hasn’t solved everything – it has simply changed the arguments. But perfection doesn’t require purity, merely resonance. And football resonates more deeply, more widely, and more consistently than any other sport.
This dominance isn’t accidental. Football has all the right ingredients, and they have been baked into global sporting culture over many decades. Fifa, for all its flaws, has built a machine that churns out tournaments that are television gold. The men’s World Cup is the most-watched sporting event on the planet. The Premier League has become a global brand. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are household names from Glasgow to Guangzhou.
And football continues to grow. The US is finally warming to the game. Africa produces world-class talent. Asia is investing heavily. The women’s game is booming. It is telling that Saudi Arabia, with its petrodollars and geopolitical ambitions, sees football as the crown jewel in its sporting portfolio.
If you were to engineer a sport to dominate the globe, you’d end up with something very much like football. It’s simple, scalable and spectacular; cheap to play and emotionally rich to watch; both tribal and universal. It’s imperfectly perfect.
So while Sport inc. finds joy in celebrating the kaleidoscope of global sport each week, let’s acknowledge the obvious: football is the closest thing we have to the perfect sport.
Unless, of course, you’ve got a better idea.
Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com