By Joshua Corcuera
Last Sunday, the 2022 FIFA World Cup opened in Qatar—marking the start of a month of 64 football matches featuring the world’s best national football teams. The sporting event is considered to be one of the most popular and well-known in the world.
Here in basketball-crazy Philippines, the FIFA World Cup may be unfamiliar to some people which should not come as a surprise. Due to the historical fact that the United States influenced our culture throughout their colonization of the archipelago during the early 20th century, it should not startle us that the most popular sport in our homeland is an American sport—basketball. Wherever you go, it is very likely that you would see a basketball court in this country. And even if there is no basketball court, many Filipinos have creative ways to play hoops which require smaller spaces such as in the streets where kids can play even if there is only one basketball ring.
After basketball, other popular sports in the Philippines include volleyball and boxing; in other words, football does not receive enormous attention among Filipinos. Probably, the only time when football gained popularity was during the early 2010s after the Philippine national football team—the Azkals—defeated Vietnam in Hanoi, 2-0 during the 2010 ASEAN Football Federation (AFF) Suzuki Cup. In that same tournament, the Azkals debuted in the semi-finals of the region-wide competition where it lost both its first and second matches against Indonesia with the same score, 1-0.
Recently, however, the national women’s football team—the Filipinas or Malditas—were crowned champions of ASEAN as they won the 2022 AFF Women’s Championship defeating Vietnam in the semi-finals, 4-0, and Thailand in the Final, 3-0. The Final was attended by thousands of Filipinos—more than 7,000 if my mind serves me right—in the Rizal Memorial Stadium in Manila. More importantly, the Filipinas have qualified to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand where they are grouped in Group A with hosts New Zealand, Switzerland, and Norway.
While football is still emerging here in the Philippines, billions will tune in to watch the 2022 FIFA World Cup. According to Forbes, an estimated 5 billion people globally would watch the World Cup on their televisions. In comparison, the global reach of the 2018 FIFA World Cup reached a staggering 3.56 billion, according to Statista, which is hundreds of millions higher than the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics at 3.05 billion and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at 2.01 billion. Furthermore, Statista reported that the match audience, in terms of audience TV viewership, of the 2018 FIFA World Cup final where France defeated Croatia, 4-2, reached 517 million. Other similar estimates are even higher reaching 1.2 billion people.
With this in mind, it is important for the general public and authorities to support our athletes in other sports because they may excel in these aspects. Undoubtedly, our country has placed enormous support on basketball and boxing, the challenge is to replicate the same effort onto other sports, especially those where the Philippines can gain popularity such as football given the fact that it is the most popular sport in the world.
