Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and is now arguably the 4th most popular sport in the US placing it ahead of NHL (Ice Hockey) and it is fast expanding in reach and popularity across the country. Part of the reason for this is that it is generally a very accessible sport to both play and watch as a spectator. Even for the casual attendee, it provides a fun atmosphere to experience - you don't need to be a hardcore fan to enjoy it.
The most recent expansion team, Austin FC, sold out 100% of every home game in their inaugural season with an average of 20k+ attendees in a privately-funded city-owned stadium.
Also let's not forget about the USWNT who are the most successful team in international women's soccer.
Really? I'm not into watching pro sports, but if I had to pick the most boring one it'd definitely be baseball. People barely even move, and at least in golf they manage to hit the ball somewhere basically every swing.
“Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game”
- Edward Abbey
For what it's worth (vanishingly little), I say that basketball is the most boring sport: everyone runs to one end of the court and somebody shoots and does or doesn't score, then everyone runs to the other end of the court and the same thing happens. This repeats until the last minute or so on the clock, which takes an unbounded amount of time to play because of fouls and free throws.
Yeah, a sport where you wear a sweater during the summer. For five days.
This is also the best sport to show in an office, because people don't watch anything but the wickets. I used to work on a trading floor where they showed it all day on a screen, no problem.
The sport is not my cup of tea but I recently listened to a (sadly paywalled) episode of the TrashFuture podcast which gave me a newfound respect for Cricket. There's a ~10 minute preview of it here: https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/preview-britainolog...
Oh speaking of tea, a thing non-Cricket-knowers might enjoy is that a cricket match will traditionally stop for "tea" during the game. Players will go into a pavilion, have some cakes and sandwiches then resume play a little later.
Professional cycling. 4+ hour races, where 3.5 hours are people "just riding along" (granted at speeds that us mortals can only dream about). The sprints and the climbs are exciting, but everything in between is seriously boring for anybody who isn't a cycling geek (I am, my wife is not; she likes the 20 minute highlight reel, I spend most of July on the couch watching the Tour).
That's the whole 'charm' of American Football. Every player is hyper specialized to do exactly one thing (I guess you can say American Football follows the Unix philosophy in that point). I mean they have two entirely different sets of players dedicated to kicking with each one specializing in a particular type of kick.
The most recent expansion team, Austin FC, sold out 100% of every home game in their inaugural season with an average of 20k+ attendees in a privately-funded city-owned stadium.
Also let's not forget about the USWNT who are the most successful team in international women's soccer.