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Before proceeding to a spicy part let us summarize some statistical figures. Already in WW1 STD was one of the deadliest weapon disabling whole armies: 150.000 Brits and 350.000 GIs were disabled only in France for lengthy times lasting several weeks. And there was no Penicillin.Syphilis was treated with injections of mercury, which usually did nothing to prevent the fatal progression of the disease years later. But the contraction of an infection meant a hospital stay of about 30 days. It was a worthwhile trade-off for some, if it enabled them to escape the carnage of the front line.Dominion soldiers from Australia, New Zealand and Canada might have received about six shillings a day for their wartime service, the British soldier just sixpence. It was a financial advantage that entitled colonial troops to their pick of the prostitutes.If military rule was not persuasive enough, perhaps fear of contamination would be—hence posters alerting GIs to the dangers of venereal disease.Let's take a closer look at WW2 using Susan L. Carruthers and othersAP PhotFrom the moment Allied occupation troops entered Germany, two things became apparent: first, that GIs would waste little time in finding new sexual partners and, second, that with just as much gusto, American reporters and photographers would alert stateside audiences to these liaisons. No occupied territory excited greater or more prurient interest than the female body. Nor did anything more speedily tarnish the image of America’s postwar occupation than the avidity with which American servicemen of all ranks engaged in what was euphemistically termed “fraternization” with defeated former foesMilitary leaders had expressly forbidden American service personnel from fraternizing with Germans, of all ages and both sexes, in any way whatsoever. GIs were reminded about this prohibition at every turn, from the Pocket Guide to Germany to orientation films, radio spots, posters, and large billboards that lined the routes along which Allied soldiers poured into the Third Reich in the war’s closing months.At first, Germany—and German women—appeared suitably hostile or simply absent from the visual record of Allied conquest. Life magazine’s March 19, 1945, issue carried a striking, full-page image of an amused American corporal cinching a female figure with a passing facial resemblance to Marlene Dietrich. On closer inspection, her extravagantly arched eyebrows turned out to be the least improbable feature of this GI’s inamorata—a mannequin wearing almost nothing other than a long wig and a Wehrmacht officer’s cap. “American soldiers are forbidden to ‘fraternize’ with real German girls,” the caption explained. Although the text went on to remark that fraternization was “hard to prevent,” Life offered no further illumination. That would soon change.A ban on fraternization between American GIsand civilians in occupied Germany did little to thwart interactions of all kinds. (Photo by Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)Four months later, the magazine devoted several pages to a photo story illuminating the “No. 1 gripe of American GIs in Germany, the official policy of ‘nonfraternization’”: a rule that meant “soldiers are forbidden marriage, visits, drinking, shaking hands, playing games, hobnobbing, exchanging gifts, walking, sitting, dancing or talking to the Germans.” To show how egregiously American soldiers were violating the ban, Life devoted an entire page to a photograph showing a GI pinioning a young woman against the wall of a dreary apartment building, his body angled toward hers, their faces just inches apart. “In a back yard near Wiesbaden, U.S. soldier corners a pretty, laughing German girl,” the caption read.But the other photographs in the story served a rather different purpose: to show that the truly ingenious players in occupied Germany’s game of cat and mouse were the fräuleins who set out to tease and ensnare guileless GIs. German women, in effect, were doing the real pinioning. Wearing “flimsy” summer dresses—or even less at Germany’s beaches and pools—they paraded their untouchable assets. “Girls flaunt themselves partly to taunt the Americans,” Life explained, “but chiefly in order to get ‘frau bait’ of candy, gum and cigarettes.” Stars and Stripes published similar photographs of solidly constructed young women in two-piece bathing suits that both reminded GIs about what was off-limits and encouraged them to disregard the prohibition. “Verboten—but not too bad from this angle,” ran one caption.The claim that women solicited their occupiers’ attention—for both amusement and profit—quickly became a dominant explanation for the breakdown of soldiers’ sexual restraint in occupied Germany. No less an authority than Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery endorsed this thesis; the British general accused the country’s female population of practicing a “new form of German sabotage by wearing fewer and fewer clothes, thereby undermining nonfraternization policy.” Time reported that this treacherous striptease had disarmed both Tommies and GIs: “German girls in brief shorts and halters systematically sunned themselves in full view of U.S. engineers…. Military policemen…had their patience tried by a girl who patted her backside and whispered ‘verboten’ every time she passed…. The effect on [troops] was exactly what the Field Marshal feared.”Sad revengeThis story encapsulated the contradictions that characterized the press’s take on sex and the occupation soldier. On the one hand, nothing seemingly sullied the good name of the American occupation government more than illicit intimate contact between American personnel and German women. As war correspondent Percy Knauth pointed out in Life, they were “girls who used to go out with the guys who killed your buddies.” That German women were “preoccupied”—the former lovers of Nazi Party bigwigs or Wehrmacht small fry—made them all the more dangerous, or, worse yet, all the more alluring. Yet, however lamentable this sordid state of affairs, GIs were not wholly, or even primarily, to blame.The “unspeakable” was also highly marketable. Rarely did magazine editors pass up an easy double entendre. When Collier’s magazine published a story in October 1946 entitled “Heels among the Heroes,” it illustrated Edward Morgan’s essay about low morale and lax morality among American occupation forces with a photograph of three “comely German Fräuleins” in bikinis protesting an “off-limits” sign planted at a beach. The GI they petitioned was dressed only in bathing trunks. “It takes a strong man to remain firm,” the caption nudged.Can You resist it??? Wearing mask, washing hands and most importantly using a modern Social distancing!!!The press accused German women of taunting occupying soldiers. British Field Marshal Bernard L.Montgomery called it a “new form of German sabotage.” (Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)One troublesome word, “occupation,” thus found itself inextricably entangled with another: “fraternization.” It was an “awful big word for most GIs,” an army field surgeon wrote to his wife from Germany in July 1945, but it “usually just means one thing to them.” A much simpler, four-letter word could readily be substituted for this cumbersome term—or it could be abbreviated to “frattin,” with no truncation of meaning.Neither before nor during World War II had American military commanders hit on a reliable formula for constraining soldiers’ sexual activity in all its unruliness. A ban on fraternization had been tried in Germany before, when American troops occupied the Rhineland after World War I. The prohibition failed and was quickly rescinded. During World War II, soldiers overseas had become accustomed to having sex with or without the military establishment’s direct facilitation. It was inconceivable that troops would cease and desist from all sexual activity upon entry into Germany, no matter what stern injunctions SHAEF—Allied supreme headquarters—might issue. Recognizing this, one senior officer proposed that if superiors insisted on a fraternization ban, “we should import into Germany at the earliest possible moment our own women in as large numbers as may be.”As that chimerical recommendation suggests, the antifraternization rule was not exclusively, or even primarily, a military device contrived to starve soldiers of sex. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s order prohibiting all social contact—issued on September 12, 1944, the day after the first American troops occupied a small pocket of southwestern Germany around Aachen—reflected the tightening of Washington policy on the so-called “German Question.” As such, the ban sought to impress on citizens of the Third Reich their “collective guilt” by force of complete ostracism.A Pocket Guide to Germany for American soldiers contained warnings about fraternization.To help Germans “see the error of their ways” they would be “held at arm’s length,” as General John H. Hilldring, commander of the War Department’s Civil Affairs Division, put it. The terms of Eisenhower’s prohibition made his figurative expression literal. Germans wouldn’t just be held at arm’s length; they wouldn’t be held at all. Even handshaking was banned. The prohibition of more intimate physical contact was left unspoken but implied.Washington’s line on fraternization toughened under popular pressure. Soon after American troops occupied Aachen, photographs appeared in stateside newspapers showing soldiers enjoying the hospitality of German families—taking convivial meals together, with GIs’ arms familiarly draped over children’s shoulders. Within days, President Franklin D. Roosevelt cabled Eisenhower about photographs “considered objectionable by a number of our people.” The president asked that SHAEF both stamp out fraternization and ensure that “publication of such photos be effectively prohibited.” Eisenhower responded that he had already insisted “that fraternization be suppressed completely,” but the ban would henceforth be more total in its remit.Military commanders found themselves in the uncomfortable position of imposing a prohibition they believed unenforceable. They employed every conceivable argument to urge men away from contact with Germans—playing, in particular, on fears of contamination. Anti Fraternization propaganda construed German women as doubly dangerous: carriers of noxious ideological strains as well as sexually transmitted diseases. Posters presented a lurid image of female siren-saboteurs poised to infect American boys’ minds with the bacillus of Nazism and their bodies with syphilis and gonorrhea. In the spring of 1945, after the Allies had liberated the concentration and extermination camps, anti fraternization warnings also incorporated photographs of Germany’s victims to underscore the message that Americans must shun the perpetrators of these abhorrent crimes.But the terms of the ban were extraordinarily difficult to respect. Military personnel whose work required them to interact with German civilians on a day-to-day basis found it especially awkward. On occasion, drivers, translators, and other subordinates rebuked military officers for unthinkingly offering their hands to German civilians or returning salutes before they had had time to curb reflexes of military courtesy.Some checked their instincts but wondered whether they had been correct to do so. On May 22, 1945, Major John Maginnis recounted in his diary that he had gone to pick up some photographs from a small shop in Berlebeck: “In the normal European fashion, [the elderly proprietor] courteously preceded me to the door and extended his hand as I departed. I did not take it and somehow it bothered me that I did not. Had I given him the customary brief handshake, would I have been fraternizing? Probably.” Maginnis did not pursue the logic of his unease further. But others certainly wondered whether the ban was not calculated to engender more hostility than remorse, particularly among Germans who had not been party members and bristled at the undifferentiated guilt Americans attached to the entire population.One nettlesome question was whether children deserved to be stigmatized in exactly the same way as their parents and other adults. Sidney Eisenberg told his family in the Bronx about a fleeting encounter, two days before Germany’s final capitulation, that had rattled him: “As you know I take this non-fraternization business very seriously—far more than most. I slipped up once. I walk home from work every day—3 1⁄2 miles—for the exercise and completely ignore the Herrenvolk en route. But the other day a sweet little girl—about 7 years old—dragging a tiny kid brother, smiled at me faintly—hopefully. I grinned at her efforts and she immediately broke into the loveliest smile imaginable—one I shall never forget tho I felt guilt about even this afterward.”Ban or no ban, American soldiers found Germany alive with sexual activity in the spring and summer of 1945. One particularly galling phenomenon to many GIs was the fact that German POWs were being released and returning home by the early summer. “Darling it sure does burn the boys over here to see all the German soldiers walking down the road going home and then we have to stay here and watch them,” infantryman Aubrey Ivey wrote to his wife from Landa on May 26, 1945.Worse yet, these demobilized veterans were publicly resuming their romantic lives, and seemingly flaunting their freedom to do so, under the disgusted gaze of the occupiers. On June 6, Leo Bogart, a sergeant in the Army Signal Corps, wrote his parents in Brooklyn on the subject: “To the GI who is faithful to a woman back in the States, or who just wants to keep his nose clean and sticks to the non-fraternization rule, there is something extremely irritating in the sight of a Nazi soldier, in his uniform, walking slowly down the street of an evening in the embrace of a good-looking Fräulein.”Former Wehrmacht soldiers were not the only ones enjoying an instant “peace dividend.” Some female Displaced Persons—many of them former forced laborers from Eastern Europe—were also running “miniature houses of joy,” as one military government officer put it. “I broke that up fast for the two were Polish and therefore had to be shipped to a repatriation center if they weren’t doing useful work,” Second Lieutenant Maurice Kurtz informed his spouse, quipping that “useful” was all a matter of perspective. Predictably enough, the Poles’ clientele was not limited to other DPs. Since the fraternization ban did not extend to other nationalities, American soldiers quickly entered into liaisons with DPs.Life also alerted its readers to the way in which GIs would spuriously “renationalize” women to circumvent the ban against fraternization, pretending that German girlfriends were not, in fact, German. “The boys never admit fraternizing, and it’s always a French girl, or a Belgian, or a Russian, or a Pole involved. They’re very cagey,” Dr. Felix Vann, a major in the 863rd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion, informed his wife in late May.In an attempt to stamp out this ruse, Twelfth Army Group headquarters began issuing colored cloth armbands to DPs that would identify them by nationality: a practice uncomfortably redolent of the Nazi insistence that persecuted populations literally wear their identity on their sleeves. Another unit tried something similar with lapel buttons. Predictably, these readily discarded markers of identity did not prove an effective impediment to GI ingenuity. Indeed, enlisted men’s can-do entrepreneurialism simply ensured that a brisk black market developed for DP armbands and buttons.Officers were just as quick to circumvent the fraternization ban as enlisted men. But where the latter often required deviousness to maneuver around rules, officers simply bent them on a grander scale. Officers, after all, both devised and enforced the rules—or ignored them.Felix Vann expanded on his observations about enlisted men’s associations with DPs, or Germans they passed off as such, with equally scathing diatribes about officers. Many of them, he noted in July 1945, were “going off the deep end.” Married and single officers alike routinely maintained relationships with women they had met earlier in France and Belgium, issuing themselves passes so they could return west at whim to visit their girlfriends. Unlike enlisted men, officers enjoyed the self-assigned leisure and mobility required to sustain long-distance romances. Others, Vann noted, were “shacked up with WACs [Women’s Army Corps] and nurses,” leading to another common complaint of enlisted men: that their superiors monopolized all the available American women.With some officers openly pursuing affairs in Germany and beyond, enlisted men inclined to break the rules no doubt felt all the more vindicated in pursuing their own amorous adventures. In this permissive environment, punishment for violations of the fraternization ban was rarely severe, especially after V-E Day. Enlisted men faced fines of $65 for fraternization, a sum equivalent to two or three months’ net pay for most, but few offenders were actually docked.Despite omnipresent warnings—enlisted men and officers alike widely violated the ban, with few punished. A courtroom scene shows a rare exception. The fine was $65. (The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images )Officers tended to be especially lenient in excusing one another’s “indiscretions.” Major Maginnis, who in his diary had expressed misgivings about his interaction with a German shop owner, also recorded his vexation that a general, Frank Howley, failed to take a serious view of two field-grade officers openly “having social parties” with German women, letting the men off with nothing more than a “good dressing down.” Meanwhile in the Bavarian Alps, Colonel Clifton Lisle, commander of the 2nd European Civil Affairs Regiment, tried to hold the line by court-martialing an officer who had consorted with a woman Lisle described as a “notorious Nazi whore.” (His diary noted his incomprehension over “such things,” but not the verdict.)Despite some officers’ best efforts, the line was not to be held. As army historian Earl Ziemke writes, nonfraternization policy “did not end, it disintegrated.”The first substantial retreat came on June 4, 1945, when SHAEF quietly released word that contraction of VD would no longer be “used directly or indirectly as evidence of fraternization”—an indication the ban had done nothing to curb escalating rates of infection. In fact, halfhearted attempts to respect nonfraternization had just the opposite effect. One army medic noted that after Eisenhower’s initial order was decreed, the bowl of condoms that had formerly sat at the end of the chow line was removed—with predictable consequences for the sexual health of soldiers and their partners.However, these pragmatic rationales for rescinding the ban hardly made for the best PR. The public narrative, as spun for the home front, attempted to turn a negative into a positive by first authorizing friendly relations between military personnel and children. Eisenhower made this announcement on June 11, conjuring a heartwarming image of the generous GI to whom youngsters everywhere were irresistibly drawn. This surely elicited knowing chuckles from men only too well aware that it was hardly the dispensing of Hershey bars to infants that had preoccupied the high command. The new amendment also seemed almost to encourage GIs to set their sights ever lower, since interaction with young girls could now, however disingenuously, be justified by the official sanction given to friendly dealings with children. In this vein, Life tellingly captioned a photograph of a GI greeting a young German woman, “Goodday, child.”What was left of the ban lasted only another month before Eisenhower announced that soldiers could henceforth engage German adults in conversation. Gamely, but misleadingly, he asserted that this move reflected the great strides that had been made with denazification. By permitting verbal exchanges, the ameliorated policy would encourage yet more progress since, Eisenhower suggested, GIs would now be able to express their outrage to Germans about the horrors of the extermination camps. Few, one suspects, had either the language skills or the inclination to take up this opportunity. Rather than reflecting the success of denazification, the retreat from nonfraternization actually demonstrated how unworkable the hard-line policy had proven in practice.A photographer used the German word for bath or spa—bad—to playful advantage in documenting the ban on fraternization. (National Archives)Reporters greeted the end of the ban as tantamount to an order from Ike to copulate; at any rate, they announced that GIs had gleefully taken his “fraternization order” that way. Some officers agreed, infuriated that enlisted men were now quite openly consorting with German women in public. Indeed, according to Brigadier General Jack Whitelaw, it was impossible to go outdoors in Berlin without tripping over fraternizing couples: “Yesterday being Sunday, I took the afternoon off and went for a walk around the lake,” he wrote to his wife on September 17, 1945. “The thing called fraternization is still going on there full blast; in fact, it’s increasing and I’ve about decided that I must find some other form of exercise.”Whitelaw did not give up his perambulations around Berlin’s Grunewald, but his attitude toward German civilians soon softened. By winter 1945, he and many other officers were more alarmed by the possibility of Germans starving or freezing to death than by no-longer illicit liaisons. Over time, American recollections of the occupation would also soften as Germans transformed from bitter foes to firm Cold War allies. Hollywood, meanwhile, turned postwar Germany into safe territory for squeaky-clean teens. In 1960, America’s best-known soldier serving overseas, Elvis Presley, rued the unavailability of German girlfriends for lonesome American boys in GI Blues. Without any need for a formal ban on fraternization, chaste fräuleins apparently kept GIs at arm’s length, issuing their own stern injunctions against inappropriate trespass. “They all wear signs saying ‘Keepen Sie Off The Grass,’” Presley crooned regretfully in the title number. The wholesome Germany of GI Blues was a far cry from the days just after the war when American journalists decried the “unbearable availability” of German fräuleins, lamenting how swiftly VD had followed V-E. ✯

Community outreach and mobilization can encompass a range of interventions and approaches, including: community meetings; training or sensitization sessions with traditional authorities, community or religious leaders; street theatre and other cultural activities and marches and demonstrations.Mass media campaigns normally use radio, television, billboards or other media to reach a wide segment of a community. It also offers individuals, especially young people, anonymous access to valuable information and resources without having to go through others they may not trust (e.g. doctors, teachers, etc.).Entertainment-education or ‘edutainment’, is a particularly useful strategy that entails the “process of purposely designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience members’ knowledge about an educational issue, create favourable attitudes, shift social norms, and change overt behaviour” (Singhal et al., 2004). Edutainment may have a particular appeal to young people and thus may present a special opportunity to affect norms before they are fully set.Other innovative approaches that can be effective in reaching diverse audiences include: games, electronic technologies (mobile phones and computers), street theatre, art, music and cultural activities.Together, communication and social marketing campaigns are some of the most popular means for engaging society in primary prevention. Evidence shows that these mediums can produce positive change in the attitudes and behaviours associated with men’s perpetration of violence against women (Donovan and Vlais 2005).Though community outreach strategies and mass media campaigns are two distinct strategies, the most effective examples of such approaches tend to combine mass media intervention with community-based action.Programming Recommendations and Lessons Learned about employing community outreach and mobilization and mass media:Combine strategies via integrated programmesProgrammes that integrate multiple strategies, usually group education with community outreach and mass media campaigns are more effective in changing gender norms and behaviour.Promote community ownership and sustained engagementIn order to be effective in changing harmful beliefs and practices, such as violence against women, an initiative should engage directly with members of that community. By strengthening individuals’, groups’ and institutions’ capacity to be agents of change, programmes can work to ensure that activism will be sustained long after a specific project ends.How can community ownership be promoted?Instil hope and excitement regarding alternatives to violence;Personalize the process by reflecting that each person can be a part of the solution;Engage community members to take up the issue and become activists themselves;Frame violence against women as the community’s responsibility, not as individual women’s problems; andInclude men as part and parcel of community mobilization (Michau 2007).Example: A Comprehensive Community Involvement Approach: Raising Voices ( Uganda )In Kampala, Uganda, the Centre for Domestic Violence Prevention was committed to working in Kawempe Division over a period of four years. The centre involved community members, staff from institutions such as the police and health centers, and other key stakeholders in analyzing the situation regarding domestic violence. ‘Ordinary’ community members (85 in fairly equal numbers of women and men) became community volunteers, counsellors, and activists. They involved their friends, colleagues, neighbours and relatives with help and support from the organization. Opinion leaders such as parish chiefs, traditional ‘aunties’, and village-level local government officials were engaged as allies, who went about inspiring others and shifting their own practices. So for instance, local government officials recently passed the first domestic violence prevention by law inUganda that covers all of Kawempe Division. Officials from institutions such as the police, religious establishments, and health care facilities were identified and encouraged to engage in a process of reassessing their existing policy and practice, and were guided toward instituting more pro-woman attitudes and practices. Gradually, as a result of these activities, a new value system is taking root in Kawempe Division. Domestic violence is now seen as a problem in the community, there are local support mechanisms that help women, people are more willing to confront men who use violence, and institutions are more responsive to violence. Domestic violence still happens in Kawempe Division, but there has been a shift in the level of social acceptance of that violence.To learn more about the initiative and the process of passing the Domestic Violence Bylaw, see the Raising Voices Study.Source: Michau. 2007. “Approaching Old Problems in New Ways”, Gender and Development 15(1):95-109.Use a human rights approach, but frame it strategicallyViolence against women and women’s rights may be controversial and sensitive subjects in many communities. Therefore, it is important to frame the issues strategically by:Highlighting the benefits of human rights and non-violent relationships for both women and men; andAddressing violence in the context of healthy relationships and healthy families, rather than taking an individual, rights-based approach (Michau 2007).Example: Jijenge! Women’s Health Centre for Sexual Health (Tanzania)In the experience of Jijenge! Women’s Health Centre for Sexual Health in Tanzania, some communities that were unfamiliar with the language of rights found it quite threatening. The result was that women shied away from identifying with statements to avoid being labelled ‘troublemakers’ and men became defensive, accusing the initiative of encouraging rebellion among women.To address this issue in future programming, staff decided that the idea of women’s rights and health made little difference to women whose daily lives were limited by the threat of violence and reoriented the programme to focus on personal safety and control over the integrity of one’s body before turning attention to other human rights.See the article on Jijenge!Source: Michau. 2007. “Approaching Old Problems in New Ways”, Gender and Development 15(1):95-109.Make use of existing theories to understand how individuals changeEffective programmes are based on scientific theories of how problem behaviour develops and how it can be changed. (WHO Primary Prevention) Some of the theories employed in initiatives aimed at changing gender norms include:Stages of Change model developed by Prochaska, DiClemente and Norcross (1992) proposes that individuals change in fairly predictable ways following four stages: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation for action, action and maintenance.Theory of Reasoned Action developed by Martin Fishbein and Icek Ajzen proposes that an individual’s perception regarding the expectations of those who are closest to them greatly influence their behavioural intention.Diffusion of Innovation Theory by Everett Rogers proposes that opinion leaders – trusted trendsetters – through their actions, attitudes and views influence those of other members via social relationships.Paulo Freire’s theories of communication for social change emphasize: The importance of working with people through a problem-posing approach;The need to value local knowledge and respect local culture;The need to learn continuously from those with whom one works; andThe relevance of continuously revising strategies and assumptions (Mato 2002).Employ a social norms approachA social norms approach uses communication techniques, such as social marketing, to:Foster healthier norms regarding gender roles, relationships and violence.Gather and disseminate data that highlight the gap between men’s perceptions of other men’s agreement with violence and sexist norms, and the reality.Enable men to recognize the disparity between the actual and perceived norms regarding behaviour and attitudes.Encourage men to intervene when they identify a situation that may lead to violence.(For a discussion about how social norms approaches can be used to address violence against women, please see, for instance, Fostering Healthy Norms to Prevent Violence and Abuse: The Social Norms Approach by Alan Berkowitz 2006 available in English.Promote change at the societal level, beyond the individualTargeting boys’ and men’s individual behaviour alone will produce limited results. It is important that interventions target their context by addressing relationships, social institutions, gatekeepers, community leaders, etc.Examples of initiatives that have employed multiple strategies to target both the individual and his social context:Sexto Sentido (Nicaragua)Program H (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, India and other countries)Coaching Boys into Men (US)Soul City Series 4 (South Africa)Employ formative researchMore successful initiatives, particularly in mass media, use formative research to:Identify existing normsIdentify and test messagesDevelop characters or storylinesDetermine the most effective and relevant channels to reach the target audience (WHO, 2007)For an example of how this can be done, see the One Man Can Campaign by Sonke Gender Justice in South Africa.Example of an intervention that employs extensive formative research: Soul City (South Africa)Two elements are at the heart of Soul City’s work, centred on TV soap operas to influence social transformation: formative research and partnerships.Formative research is carried out with both audiences and experts to develop and field-test materials to ensure their effectiveness. The formative research process involves the following steps:1) Consulting widely with experts and key stakeholders on the issues.2) Consulting audience members about what they know, their concerns, their attitudes on the issue and the barriers that exist to positive change.3) Presentation of the findings from the first two steps to the TV and radio actors and experts.4) Development of a message brief or ‘blueprint’ for the creative team who will develop the TV and radio dramas.5) Integration of issues into the entertainment vehicle by the creative team.6) Production and testing (with experts, role players and audience members) of a draft outline.7) Writing and testing of scripts.8) Production, broadcast and distribution of the material.9) Evaluation of material and integration of lessons learned into future productions.Engage the target audience in programme developmentDevelop persuasive messages by understanding the behaviour of the intended audience.Actively involve them in the planning, design and implementation and monitoring of the programme, rather than just disseminating information to them (Harvey et al., 2007).Allow for sufficient preparation timeBuild in time into the initiative to:Allow for the selection of appropriate technical partners.Implement polling and focus groups.Select types of media.Test potential messengers and messages (Rosewater 2003).Apply the information collected during the preparatory phaseThe information collected in the initial phases of the programme will contribute to the knowledge base on men and boys and violence, including their perceptions of violence and of healthy relationships, their aspirations, gender equality and other life matters (Rosewater 2003).Use positive, affirmative messages and images of menProgrammes that use positive images and messages showing that men can change seem to produce more effective or promising results (WHO, 2007). Strategies can include images and messages that:Show what men and boys can do to change;Affirm that they can change;Show men changing in positive ways; andDemonstrate to men and boys what they can gain from changing gender-related behaviour.Examples of using positive images include the Men Can Stop Rape campaign slogan “Our Strength is Not for Hurting”. See the posters.Identify and engage positive role modelsEmploying (in campaigns and community outreach initiatives) individuals or groups (coaches, fathers, religious leaders) who can influence the behaviour of other men by modelling gender-equitable attitudes and behaviours has shown to be an effective strategy to promote change.Lessons learned: Be careful when selecting role modelsIt is important to recognize that selecting role models and spokespersons can be a complex issue. For example, celebrities may offer star appeal and credibility to deliver a message. But on the other hand, youth and men may relate more closely to role models with whom they can identify, such as parents, teachers, and friends (Crooks et al., 2007). In any case, it is essential that a celebrity’s behaviour be consistent and coherent with the message being conveyed. Therefore, care must be taken when selecting role models.Additionally, it is important to recognize that there may be tensions between the intended message and sexist and violence-supportive cultures. This is often the case with sports from which role models are often drawn.Speak to men’s and women’s own experience and concernsCampaigns should identify appropriate entry points to convey their message. An example is a campaign by the Non-Violence Alliance which appealed to men’s love for their children with the message: “You love your daughter. You want to give her the world. Start by being a father who treats her mother with respect.”For more information, seethe website.See also the Campaign posters.Highlight the shared benefits to men and womenAppeal to men by:helping them understand that traits traditionally considered ‘masculine’ (such as being unemotional, competitive, uncaring, and rule-breaking) may also have a negative effect on their lives (de Keijzer 2004);enabling men to see the costs of traditional forms of masculinities, for themselves and for the women and children they care about; andhelping men and boys understand how they may benefit from sharing power with girls and women, such as by having more intimate relationships with their partners (Esplen, 2006).Lesson learned about helping men see the shared benefits of more gender equitable relationsIt is important for programmes to understand that it may be difficult for men to adopt more gender equitable norms. Even if men are interested in changing, the social pressure to conform to dominant forms of masculinity is considerable and the costs of not conforming may be severe.What is one type of exercise that can be used to highlight the shared benefits of more gender equitable relations?A ‘fishbowl’ exercise is when one group (in this case either men or women) sits in a circle facing each other and talking to each other about a particular experience. Those in the inner circle can be given questions to discuss, such as what effects sexism has had on them. The other group forms an outside circle and listens attentively to the inner circle’s conversation. The group in the outer circle is then given some time to react to what was said in the inner group.Consider whether the campaign will focus on men and boys in general or on specific groupsBoth types of campaigns – those that target specific groups of men and boys (such as fathers) and those that target men and boys broadly – have shown evidence of change in attitudes and behaviours (WHO 2007). The choice of target audience will hinge on various factors, including the specific aim of the campaign, the funds available and other factors.What are some of the principles of effective campaigns?Effective campaigns are:Grounded in evidence of the problem, including the risk and protective factors;Define clear and measurable objectives;Identify indicators and data collection methods to measure the effectiveness of the campaign;Ensure that baseline measurements are taken;Select the intended audience;Use consumer research with the intended audience to develop messages and identify the best sources, channels and materials to reach them;Build in evaluation mechanisms from the start; andContinuously use research to monitor, evaluate and improve the campaign (Harvey et al., 2007).What are some tips for developing campaigns?The UNFPA/PROMUNDO manual, Young Men and HIV Prevention: a Tool Kit for Action, suggests the following steps in developing campaigns:Carry out a needs assessment – including gathering information on knowledge, attitude and practices around the target issue and mapping social networks and media access;Develop a profile of the ‘typical’ character for the target audience, including socio-demographic characteristics, hobbies, attitudes and behaviours, access to services and programmes, etc. This exercise will help develop messages and strategies that are relevant to the target audience;Determine the sub-issues of the campaign, based on the findings of the needs assessment;Develop basic messages for each topic of the campaign;Map the target audience’s sources of information and influence (the manual also provides a specific tool for this purpose);Determine which type of media and social channel may be more strategic based on the mapping exercise above;Pre-test messages and campaigns with the target audience and with secondary audiences – pre-testing can be carried out via interviews or focus groups.More information on the above steps, as well as the tool which can assist in mapping the target audience’s sources of information and social networks, can be found in the tools section of Young Men and HIV Prevention: a Tool Kit for Action (Promundo and UNFPA) under “Creating Campaigns: Step by Step”. Available (page 23) in English, Portugueseand Spanish.What are elements of good practice for designing and delivering violence against women public communication/social marketing campaigns?In a recent review of the characteristics of effective social marketing campaigns, Donovan and Vlais (2005) identify the following elements of good practice:Beware of unintended negative consequences, such as messages that encourage women to feel empowered to end violence on their own. While utilizing the mass media and other dissemination channels to ensure that abused women are informed about where to go for support is essential, messages that urge women survivors to take action could reinforce the idea that they are somehow responsible for the violence. Messaging should also be carefully crafted so that men do not become defensive and escalate their controlling and violent behaviours.Mass media advertising and media advocacy strategies should be integrated and mutually reinforce on-the-ground activities assisted by multi-stakeholder networks and partnerships, and where applicable, by policy/legislative changes.Include media advocacy strategies that obtain free media coverage and which influence unhelpful ongoing representations of violence against women.Find ways to sustain the campaign beyond a single ‘dose’.Generate public will to support one or more calls to action based on specific behavioural objectives.Conduct thorough formative research.Base interventions on comprehensive theoretical models of health promotion and social marketing.Ensure political support.Source: Donovan, Robert J., and Rodney Vlais. (2005). VicHealth Review of Communication Components of Social Marketing / Public Education Campaigns Focused on Violence Against Women. Melbourne: Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.Ensure sufficient exposureEvidence suggests that most effective community and mass media campaigns last four to six months, with some lasting up to one year and seek to present their messages on a weekly or daily basis (WHO 2007). Some initiatives, such as Raising Voices, argue that a true and comprehensive community mobilization may take years.Lesson learned about sustaining changesFollow up is required to sustain changes, which makes this a challenge in settings of unpredictable funding, staff turnover, or high levels of unemployment or residential mobility (Harvey et al., 2007).Consider integrating bystander interventionsThese programmes aim to:Teach men and women skills to de-escalate risky situations and to provide support for survivors.Foster a sense of community responsibility for violence prevention.For additional guidance, see the bystander intervention section.Ensure the availability of services for survivors and readiness for increased demandPrimary prevention programmes may increase demand for services by survivors/victims and perpetrators by raising awareness of the issue. It is important from both an ethical and practical perspective to be prepared to provide survivors with access to information about services and referrals. An effort should be made to identify existing services and possibly partner with existing services to ensure that they are willing and able to respond to increased demand. Steps that can be taken:Map out existing services; andOrganize them into a directory and disseminate them amongst staff and the community.Care should be taken to work collaboratively with organizations providing services (including women’s centres, shelters, hotlines) so that they are able to meet increased demand for services that may result from the dissemination of information.Resource:Developing a Referral Network (International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region). This document outlines recommendations and lessons learned for service availability in resource poor settings and provides guidance on developing a referral directory. It is available in English.Build on other successful initiatives and link to other related workSocial marketing and communication campaigns have been used to address a number of related issues, such as adolescent pregnancy and HIV and AIDS prevention. New initiatives should review the history and evaluation of earlier programmes to build on lessons learned. Violence against women can also be integrated into existing and related initiatives by adding a module specific on this topic or by addressing violence within the context of other issues.Initiatives should explore strategies to integrate violence into campaigns and other activities addressing related development issues, such as HIV and AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, economic empowerment, etc. Soul City in South Africa and Sexto Sentido in Nicaragua provide powerful examples of addressing multiple issues within a single initiative.Foster coalitions, grassroots movements and men’s networksCoalitions and networks can work to:Increase a ‘critical mass’ behind violence prevention effortsMobilize men’s involvement in violence preventionImprove collaboration on interventionsReduce unnecessary competition among organizations (Flood, 2008)Men’s networks against violence against women have been created in several countries, with more emerging in others.Examples of men’s networks, movements and coalitionsThere are several grassroots men’s groups and networks and it would be impossible to profile all of them. The groups below illustrate the range of types of initiatives that exist around the world.White Ribbon CampaignBegun in Canada in 1991 and now operating in over 60 countries, the White Ribbon Campaign mobilizes men and boys to take a stand against gender-based violence. By wearing or displaying a white ribbon in public, they pledge never to commit, condone, nor remain silent about violence against women. The campaign is also a call on governments and other institutions controlled by men to seriously address the issue. White Ribbon’s basic philosophy is that while not all men are responsible for committing violence against women, all men and boys must take responsibility to help end it. It is non-partisan and includes men from across the social and political spectrum. The campaign works closely with women’s organizations and urges men to listen to the voices and concerns of women; it conducts public awareness and education activities and involves high-profile men in speaking out against violence; and it provides tools and resources for work in schools and local communities

Questions about what is the world's most popular sports are often asked and possibly has never been definitively determined. A quick search online found many references to the top sports in the world, and soccer / association football is nearly always on top no matter what the criteria for the list.a large crowd attends a football matchWhat Does Popular Mean?The problem with listing the world's most popular sports is coming up with a clear definition for popular. By popular, do you mean most watched, the most played, or the most talked about! Just some of the factors which could help determine the lists of popular sports include the number of spectators, the number of registered participants, the number of national associations, the number of people that play the game, stadiums and facilities worldwide, tournaments held all over, and merchandise sold. Many of these should be factors in a list of the world's top sports, though it would be difficult to combine them into a single list (hence the many popular sport lists).Soccer is KingMost of the lists we have seen, whether based on most fans or most participants or whatever the definition of popular, World Football / Soccer is top of the list. Depending on what criteria you use for popularity, the next sports in the list may include basketball, cricket, volleyball, baseball and other versions of football (American, rugby).Most Watched (Most Fans) SportsWatching sport can include watching live, on TV and even online. Most information points to the most watched sport as football (soccer), though using online audiences can be biased with regional differences in support for certain sports (e.g. US sports such as basketball, baseball and American football). Another sport that is viewed in high numbers around the world is cricket, despite not being played in many parts of the world. See more about the most watched sports.Most Played SportsWhen discussing popular sports around the world, the sports most played is often considered, not just what people like to watch (there is a difference). Soccer is played in the streets by millions of kids worldwide, though they are not always counted on the most played sports lists as they do not participate in organized games and are not easily counted. Using official figures, sports such as Volleyball and Table Tennis have very high participation rates. See more about the most played sports.Other Sports Popularity ListsMost Viewed Online — a popular sports list based on the analysis of sport page views on Wikipedia.Most Searched — the most commonly searched sport names on Google.Most Popular Olympic Sports — analyzing the top sports online and in newspapers during the Olympics.Most Widely Played Sports — finding which sports are played in most countries.Meta-List — a comparison of all top 10 lists found online to find the most common of the most popular.Most Popular Sports Pages on Topend Sports — the most visited sports pages on this site.Most popular sports in the major regions of the world — using data of the number of National Federations.Biggest Global Sports— a statistics-based analysis of the world's most popular sports.Most Popular Online Searches per Country — top sports search terms in each country.Sports Spectators in Australia — sporting attendance figures from the ABS.Topend Sports Poll — what is your favorite sports to play and to watch?Share:FacebookTwitterRelated PagesOnline lists of most popular sportsNational sports — the most significant sports for each country, but not necessarily the most popular.Most popular marial artComplete list of all sportsThe world's most popular athletesOther world sport listsGot any comments, suggestions or corrections? Please let us know.Old CommentsCommenting is closed on this page, though you can read some previous comments below which may answer some of your questions.I don't know where you got the information stating that football is the most popular sport, unfortunately you're mistaken. It's table Tennis and has been for decades. Most people at sometime in their lives have played this sport either socially or for a team in their local league.shuttlecocker (2013)According to Bill Clement ESPN analyst and Hockey personality, Badminton is second only to Soccer in worldwide participation. That statistic has been supported by many other sources of reputable standing. Currently the fastest shot (smash) on record is 493 kph set recently by a top Malaysian doubles badminton player. That translates out to about 306 mph I think or more. If you compare it to other sports, it's hard to dispute that it is extremely popular around the globe and speed, both of player and 'birdie' is a standout feature of this Olympic sport. More and more people are starting to play it competitively and are benefiting from its rewards, toward better health and vibrancy.kumar (2013)everyone commenting here just talk about the game which they play as the greatest,but the real thing is each and every game has its own style,there s a big difference in all,for insistance-we cant compare a horse with an cow..of course both are important in there own use..its not fair comparing like this..and last but not least..am an footballer...so,,,FOOTBALL IS THE GREATEST..sorry couldnt give up the game..;-);-);-)Rober kumar (2013)FOOTBALL is lifeeeeeeARTHUR LUGISSE kumar (2015)KUMAR...WE DID NOT ASK WHAT YOU LIKE...WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS THE MOST PLAYED SPORT AND THAT'S SOCCER ...NOT AMERICAN FOOTBALL...UNLESS YOUR FOOTBALL IS SOCCER...HAHAHAaganigi (2013)The second popular sport is basketball. That sport is very popular in north america, europe, china, phillipines and some african countries.Baseball is only popular USA,antilles, Venezuela,South Korea, Japan, TaiwanCricket is only popular of british colonies such as Indıa, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh.Ice hockey is also popular north europe and north americaRugby is popular in Africa, Oceania and UK.In my opinion1. Football (Soccer)2. Basketball3. Cricket4. Rugby5. Tennis6. Ice Hockey7. Baseball8. Voleyball9. Boxing10. Martial Arts11. Motorsportsian senior aganigi (2015)Its difficult to see Basket ball ahead of Cricket with the Indian sub continent of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangla Desh, Pakistan & Afghanistan having a population of 1.75 billion....to say nothing of other countries such as West Indies, Australia,United Kingdom, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya etc.ARTHUR LUGISSE aganigi (2015)I AGREE SOCCER AND CRICKET ARE THE TWO TOP SPORT IN THE WORLD...BASED ON PLAYING AND VIEWERSHIP ...IT IS GLOBAL...BASEBALL OR FOOTBALL MIGHT BE THE #1 SPORT IN AMERICA...FINESports Guy aganigi (2015)Definitely rank baseball ahead of Ice Hockey. Popular in All of North America (Canada, USA, Mexico, Central Am, and Latin Am.) parts of South America, East Asia, even the Netherlands (professional league is over 100 yrs old), and growing in Australia. Ice Hockey is played strictly in Canada/USA and North Europe like you said, and draws little interest anywhere else.Liam (2013)i hate how everyone is so negative toward cricket. They think it is all so boring, but they have never watched or played it. They think basketball takes more skill; I'm not denying it doesn't, but I'm sure Brett Lee can sink a hoop whereas Lebron James can't face a ball at 150km/h...Ricky Liam (2013)Very well said Liam we don't like cricket we love it..subh Ricky (2014)yes u rt dear we love cricket an India alwals in favour of all sports.Chestha Arora Liam (2014)ppl talk trash bud! cricket is the best!! once i saw Michael Dawson trying to play cricket! he couldn't even hold the bat properly!!john america (2013)once you know the cricket you reealy feel exited every ball..i once had the apportunity to watch indian premier league and guess what its aweasome....and footbal its just about goals only but cricket..ohhhh...you guys you just watch one or two ipl matches and then should ask yourself which one you likeNishad john america (2013)Why would anyone watch cricket and try to learn it when u have football which is simplest sport in terms of understanding rules, Cricket is a hard pick for anyone, its very lazy sport, i will not recommended cricket to play as football can make u more fit.Goutham Nishad (2013)The worst thing I ever heard in my life from so many people who are actually lazy..."Cricket is a lazy sport". Just play cricket of test format of one whole day..you will know how much patience, stamina, talent and concentration are required. You guys are even lazy to play & even watch a game for more than 90 minutes..that's why soccer became popular. You know what... watch or play at least shorter form of cricket as a bowler, batsman & an active fielder..I bet you will enjoy cricket, agrees it as a most active game..& soccer goes second in your list..if you really enjoy true sports...I played both..& I love Cricket.Ralph Long Goutham (2015)As opposed to cricket which used to last longer, even days at a time? Football became popular because it spread throughout Europe, Africa, Central America, and the rest of the British empire.ARTHUR LUGISSE Nishad (2015)NISHAD....WHEN YOU HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT YOU ARE SAYING...AND PEOPLE LIKE ME AND THE REST OF THE WORLD HAVE TO READ YOUR COMMENTS...KEEP THEM TO YOURSELF...AND BE EXPLICIT ...ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT SOCCER OR AMERICAN FOOTBALL .... RIDING A BIKE IS EASY FOR WHO CAN...FOR THOSE WHO CAN'T IT IS DIFFICULT...THAT DOES NOT CHANGE THE FACT THAT RIDING A BIKE IS FUN... PLAYING CARDS IS LAZY...HAHAHAAkhil Chandran john america (2014)Football is most existing game ever I watch.Its most popular.Second one is cricket .Its gentlemen games.But now a days some IPL cricket loss of standard of. Cricket.IPL is just boring ...now cricket its waste of time..bad...from india Akhil Chandran (2015)These **** Americans !! They think that what's played in America is the only and one popular game in the world. I think that Americans don't have good brain to understand games like cricket and other few.kevin121519 (2013)Its fot_ball, nots soccerSoccer not football kevin121519 (2013)There another sport called football in america so we call it soccerveer Soccer not football (2014)its ruby not american footballSports Guy veer (2015)Rugby is a complete different sport. It's American football. American's call it football, and it's made in America. There's Rugby in America tooUSA4LIFE kevin121519 (2014)Soccer is for pretty boys that are afraid to use there hands. It's all about hockey,baseball, and football not soccer. USA USA USA!!!AH USA4LIFE (2014)hahaha USA in desperationTPG USA4LIFE (2015)Well actually soccer is the most popular sport IN THE WORLD as you can see so very many people disagree.USA4LIFE kevin121519 (2014)I also forgot NASCAR !!!footisfoot (2013)I thought there is football and there is sports. Football is a religion, inspiration, lifestlye, human heritage, and the life of billions. Football is #1, everything else is #2, all other sports are #3vitaly footisfoot (2015)soccer is the greatest sport other sports dont even compare to soccersoccer is lifeinayath (2013)CRICKET IS THE BEST SPORT IN THE WORLD, here sponcers wil get true sponcership,because after every over, but in case of football they had to wait upto 45min, in cricket all the 11players of the team had chance to become a match winner, but in football the person who hits the goal that one wil be shine,like these so many things are there. If u ppl want to knew how cricket is famous come to asia and especially beautiful india....(from: banglore, india)mohit Nishad inayath (2013)cricket in mot popular in asua, its football,thete are 4 nations in subcontinent that pkays cricket, there are more nation in asiaNatty Goess Meooww mohit Nishad (2013)1. Football (Soccer)2. Cricket3. Hockey4. TennisNow shut up and accept the facts. All sports are good let it be Cricket or Football!ARTHUR LUGISSE Natty Goess Meooww (2015)1) FOOTBALL (SOCCER)2) CRICKET3) BASEBALL4) BASKETBALLTHAT IS THE WAY IT IS...NO REGRETS ....THE FOR TOP SPORT...RUGBY I CAN'T LAY BUT IT IS GETTING THERE I LOOKED AT WORLD RUGBY 2015 AND WAS AMAZED AT THE COMPETITION LEVEL...I AM 64 TO OLD TO PLAY IT HAHAHAHCricket inayath (2013)Cricket isn't the best sport, Soccer is the best sport.ARTHUR LUGISSE Cricket (2015)NO BODY SAID IT WAS THE BEST SPORT...IT MIGHT BE THE MOST PLAYED SPORT .... SOCCER IS THE #1 AND WE ALL AGREE...PELE MADE SURE OF THAT....hovvert inayath (2013)cricket is not very popularErik Torp (2013)you know *soccer* is real football, your country is the one country with american football, but the REAL football is the one from europe, most of countries have real football as their main sport, amerixan football is the main sport in one country,to understand the game you need a sertei percetage of tolerance and understanting, in american football they just hurt each other and run, it is only the team with strongest people who win, in real football there is real tactics and real effort to win.vitaly Erik Torp (2015)yupMichael B (2013)There is another list based on global media coverage at Biggest Global Sports. It seems quite fair with weighting per country size, including India, China etc with top sports being:1. Football2. Basketball3. Tennis4. Cricket5. Baseball6. Formula 17. American Football8. Athletics9. Golf10. Ice Hockey11. Boxing12. Badmington13. Volleyball14. Snooker (due to Chinese interest)15. SwimmingAsif Arshad (2013)All sports are good, the world most popular sport from pretty much any stand point is Football. The highest paid sport is arguable, but I would have to say Boxing (Without sponsorship otherwise maybe Golf). Football is really popular because all you need is a ball to play, not everyone has access to ski slopes and badminton courts so those sports suffer. Cricket is popular in Asia, I hate how Eastern guy's come on forums and argue how Cricket is the best sport in the world and how we don't understand the complexities of the game. I do not want to sit through 5 day's of bowling, Cricket is comparible to snooker, if you like the sport, fair play to you, I like F1 (And I know loads of people that say that's boring). Most attended sports are probably motor sports, (Superbikes MotoGP, NASCAR they get 100'000's per event). Most athletic sports? obviously athletics comes to mind, but maybe some form of cycling or martial arts? All in all there are so many sports to choose from, what I am trying to say is, instead of wasting your time writing a stupid comment about why YOUR sport is the best, try and considerhow lucky we all are to have so many options.... I love sport (Main sports are Ultimate Frisbee and Tennis) and it is just frustrating when people are posting so much rubbish online.priya (2013)basketball is the best no doubt its the msot stylish yet skilfull game love itjack priya (2014)you are wrong cricket is more skilful and stylish and hard game and more rules and more things in it more high technology i wached both games from my chilhood u watch first ,basketball is jest a ordiary gamelike valley ballJake (2013)Go Football! Not American Handball!Nick (2013)Coming from Canada:Ice HockeySoccer (props to indoor b/c it reminds me of ice hockey)American FootballBaseballBasketballNASCARGolfCurlingLacrosseLol Nascar.. Nick (2013)Lol NASCAR! Yay another left turn.. WHOOOOOOHOOOOOO!! Another left turn! And to change things up.. ANOTHER LEFT TURN!Mikeyho (2013)I've been to 11 countries. In S. Korea, Taiwan, China, U.S.A., the Philippines...actually, even in Europe you see more people playing basketball on a daily basis then any other sport. Football will probably forever be king, but I would guess that basketball is played unofficially a great deal. Anyone have any other sports they've seen being played? Which countries?Malvin Singh (2013)Best sport ever is rugby ( NO arguments about it )Holani Taufahema Malvin Singh (2013)Yepp I agree wif u Mann rugby is a real man sport but football is still number one but who caresrahid kh (2014)of course cricket..................Pezza (2013)To be honest what you think is a better sport is completely opinionated, every sport requires a specific level of skill to be better than a vast majority of other people who also play that sport, I'm English so naturally football is my favourite sport quite right it takes a high amount of skill to play with the pros but the same applies for basketball,rugby,nfl,ice hockey,polo,tennis,cricket and so on every sport requires skill reaction,vision,awareness I can't just claim football is harder and better than say cricket it's a different sport that requires different key attributes that either way take a lifetime to master or apex so I don't believe anyone can claim that something requires more skill to play than another. :)Vishesh Katoch (2013)T20 will change the perception of whole world about cricket. Its not even 10 years since t20 cricket came up and we have lucrative leagues like IPL, Big Bash, Champions league, BPL, SLPL,WICL(starts in july 2013). T20 is perfectly suited for American market becoz of advertisement which is shown b/w the overs. If cricket is marketed well by ICC then after 30 years the time will come when we will have more than 20 billion viewers of T20 cricket. Yes, football will always remain the number one game. But it will narrow the gap b/w no one and two. But on the other hand as being the fan of Test cricket I don't see a major boost in the number of test cricket playing nations. Imagne 40 countries playing Test Cricket then you will get to see Ind vs Aus after almost 35 of their tours which can take 8-10 years. So ICC should market T20 cricket and at most odi cricket becoz its very hard for non cricketing nations to understand what does it means to Play Test Cricket. All I can say T20 cricket is a child who has world on his feet and who has a potential to conquer the world if guided well and Test cricket is like a grandpa who tried to rule the world in his time (late 1800s and early 1900s) but ended up with a little Tartary of world. But he means a lot to that tartary.matias Vishesh Katoch (2013)WE HATE ADVERTISING!!! YOU ONLY THINK ABOUT MONEY, THAT'S WHY LATIN AMERICA WILL NEVER WATCH THAT SPORT!!Chestha Arora Vishesh Katoch (2014)cricket will become the best one day!!debvil (2014)u guys have no idea what cricket is cause u say cricket requires no strength or skill but u have got it all wrong cause cricketers can easily play football on basic level but footballers or any other sports athlete can even attempt to play cricket on a basic leveldelhi guy (2013)Football(soccer) is best, cricket is worst as its for unfit lads,Karan Singh delhi guy (2013)maa ki chut teritop class cricket where balls are bowled at 130 kph cannot be played by unfit people cricket requires much better skills eye and power . football is more popular because most of the people are not CAPABLE AND SKILLED enough to play this tougher sportSahil Aqeel (2013)Cricket is best need some special skillsMIAMIHEAT999 (2013)basketball all the way nbaSoccer player (2013)To the person who reckons soccer is an easy sport I'd love to see him try play it and he thinks ice hockey is the best because not everyone can ice skate he needs to know not everyone has the chance to ice skate so we can't play it.marian marks (2013)BASEBALL IS BETTER THAN CRICKET.Football is best sport in the world and is widely watch. if you want to see the 2014 world cup. it would cost you $600 to $2,000 to watch a single game on the stadium. and soccer will be played forever till the END OF THE THIS WORLD AND BEGING.A German (2013)If Football/Soccer can be played by any one why aren't all countries good at it because it is not everybody that can play and it is the most popular sport and classed as the International sport even though I prefer Basketball as they are more complete athletes, Football runs the scene at the moment as for cricket and hockey tell me when your teams have players as athletic as basketballers, sprinters, soccer players, American Football players and Rugby, Cricket requires no strength or effortChestha Arora A German (2014)well u know nothing about cricket then!! u better stick to football!!Richard (2014)The game is called football not soccer. How can u call a game football and the ball is played with in your hands. Thats stupid. Stop calling football soccer!!!American (2014)Watch the sports science on cricket and baseball the cricket guy couldn't hit the ball to save his life but the baseball player could clearly hit the ball in conclusion cricket takes lots of skill but you can't bash baseball for being easer than cricketjack American (2014)and the bowler is spin bowler it means a bowler bowl very slow speed but spin it it will spin only in cricket pitch specially made so dont be fooled by ignorant video makers and in cricket weather is very important there is weather report these people who made that video is not experts of cricketjack American (2014)i saw real cricket played by baseball players when they block the cricket ball they bleed too much and cant hit ball boundary by just blocking the ball cricket groun u have to hit the ball 70 to 100 meter i understand that sports science video is so fake usuall cricket bowlers will not ball short pitch ball and in that video bowler bowling short pitch ball it is very easy to play and it should be bowled in a pitch that is made for cricket and in cricket bowlers can bowl to the body cricket ball is much harder and it is not so possible to hit the ball with baseball bat in cricket groundSoccer 4 life (2014)Soccer is the best. I have played it FOREVER. I play club so I so much fun. Love Soccer and play forever!!!!!!!!Krizzzzzzzzzz (2014)Cricket is the best sports.....it is the only game providing entertainment in every secondsKanti (2014)I was going through the previous comments and found couple of insensible people!Sports is the most healthy entertainment and all sports are good. Without any doubt Foodball by faaaar is the greatest sports of all times.. Can you think of any other sports which is officially played and watched by more than 200 countries? Few countries that don't play football either do not have big enough landscape or of extreme weather.Stretch Sportguy (2013)Soccer and Cricket are top end sports. Rugby too. But I love gymnastics, parkour, extreme break dancing, tricking, roller derby, MMA, team acro, and my forthcoming premier sport called Polearmball.plantt (2013)football may be the most popular but cricket is the bestjames (2013)basketball is the best what are you talking aboutjack james (2014)basket ball is like valley ball only valley ball more better some timesJoe (2013)The term "football" originally referred to any game where the ball could be manuevered with the foot rather than just hands. "Soccer" is derived from British slang for "Association Football", stemming from the original codification of the rules of play. Many communities preferred their own versions of the rules and looked upon Association Football with derision. The Yanks may be the only ones to still call it "soccer", but the Brits coined the term.Rob Admin Joe (2013)The Yanks are not the only ones to call it soccer, here in Australia it has traditionally been referred to as soccer.1Rio (2013)Mann u r real crazy to say that cricket is the best sport in the world ...everywhere in every field football/soccer rules...u keep saying overs and runs ...cricket is a good game but not a 100 miles near soccer ....soccer beats cricket hands down in every way.....in soccer you need skills, change of pace/agility, good team chemistry, finishing, accuracy, etc.. soccer is thereby undisputedely the best sport in the history of the world.niloy (2013)every game has his own way & we should respect that. But there is no shadow of doubt that soccer is the only TRUE international game & the most popular.Sports like cricket,rugby,americal football,baseball,basketball etc are all very good sport & popular but they are mainly played by couple of countries.There Are Also a lot of people who are from indian sub continet think cricket is the most popular. i respect there thought but the fact is 15-20 years ago they shouted HOCKEY is the best in the world & now hockey is like nowhere because india,pakistan,bangladesh now watch cricket. so surely football/soccer is the most popular.Hafeez ea (2013)SOCCER is the best game in the world. it is most viewed, played, loved game. Some years ago i was a cricket fan but i understood it is very much boring. Indian's are less stamina because cricket is heretrolled (2013)First of all when u talk about soccer remember that the most expensive players are soccer players. Secondly, the most spent on between stadiums, players, equipment and leagues are football leagues, especially the La Liga, and Premiere LeagueChestha Arora (2014)I could not stop laughing when i saw a few comments saying cricket is a LAZY GAME!!!!!!!!! well let me ask u- seriously??!!! its the BEST DARN SPORT on earth. i am a kind of girl who was never, never into sports but cricket got me!! and trust me people, i Can go on watching cricket for the rest of my life!! well, let me give u a brief justification of some ILLOGICAL comments here1. Cricket is not played everywhere- the reason being , it is a TOUGH GAME!! NOT EVERYBODY'S CUP OF TEA!! and VERY VERY COMPETITIVE, REQUIRES HUGE FUNDS!!2. FOOTBALLERS ARE BETTER- very funny but cricketers have got more energy n stamina levels; THEIR NAMES ARE COMPARATIVELY "EASIER TO REMEMBER"; THEY ARE WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY BETTER LOOKING; MOST OF THE LIFE OF THE FOOTBALLERS IS SPENT CAUGHT UP IN CONTROVERSIES!! cricketers are more RESPECTABLE3. cricket is nothing as compared to football- CRICKET IS BACKED UP WITH ALL THE TECHNOLOGY FOOTBALL CAN EVER HAVE!!THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ENERGY AND STAMINA LEVELS REQUIRED IN AN APPROX,. 2 HOUR GAME(football) AND A 3 hour,9 hour, 5 day game(cricket).so people, plz hold your horses!!Youft Chestha Arora (2014)your the one who should hold your horses lol, getting too emotional there. The reason why futbol is played in more countries is bc you don't need fancy equipment in order to play it, you just need a ball and your foot (nothing to do with toughness).I don't know anything about cricket but you "names easier to remember" depends on what language your used to, and I personally find any futbol player more attractive than cricket players (from what i see in pics of them). [again this is a matter of preference].Do you honestly think that futbol is unable to get better technology than what cricket has....if so then your a derp.....there isn't that much technology in futbol bc its not required for a simple sport [sure they could get a way to help the ref's out but no biggie]I rather watch a fast paced futbol match for a good 90 min than drag the game for 5 days and bore myself (there is a thing as dragging something for too long making people loose interest)My 2 centsJay (2013)American football (the real football) is by far the most exciting!shuttlecocker (2017)A lot of people have no clue. They eat what's fed to them and are incapable of doing their own fact finding. Badminton (the real indoor competitive sport, not outdoor goodminton) is the fastest racket sport in the world by far. Largest indoor sport for decades, second most 'participated in' sport on the planet behind soccer and most watched Olympic sport in the 1996 Games where 1.1 billion people tuned in to watch it. It actually made its debut as an exhibition sport in the 1992 Olympics and was overwhelmingly voted in. Now, I suggest for everyone to do some up to date fact finding on competitive indoor Badminton. Google it, You tube it etc. You will open wide, and I mean both your eyes and your mouth, lol! Because the action is absolutely stunning, mind numbing and will arrest your very being.Cheers!U r wrong (2016)Ya all Americans on here seem to think that 'soccer' (which is not even its real name)and baseball are the most popular but that's not true there is a world out side America seriously Americans just think of themselves not very nobody plays baseball outside North Americashuttlecocker (2015)Badminton is the second most popular sport in the World behind only Soccer. That's in terms of most played and most watched.Do your research and fact finding from reliable sources and you'll be surprised.It's about facts, not what you happen to think. One of these stats actually even spelled it wrong.I've heard it mispronounced Badmitten, Badmington and so forth. Badminton is right!cassidy steensma (2015)rugby is the bestSoccer lol (2015)Soccer is "king" because it takes a ball and two sticks as posts to play. It is often the ONLY sport those in third world countries can play, hence it's popularity. The truth is, soccer may be fun to play, but it is God awful to watch and there is no integrity in the game at all... Players flop around and fake injuries to draw advantages against the opposing team... What kind of sport allows this? It's pathetic... And a huge reason why soccer will never be respected as a legitimate sport in North America. Why the hell would we want to waste 90+ minutes of our day waiting to see whether the game ends 1-0 or 0-0. It's so damn boring!!!Soccer doesn't actually take much skill... Everyone who is physically able, knows how to run. The net and field alike, are huge. You have like 10 people to potentially pass to at any given time. Half the game you stand around catching your breath. I last played soccer when I was 12. I can say with utter certainty that given 10 penalty kicks against a professional soccer goalie, I could score at least 5 times. I actually feel sorry for people who call this shameful activity their favourite sport.Kdmcjkx (2014)Football is the most corrupted sport on this planet.football players are the most spoiled sports people with the highest ego with no respect for the others.that all affects kids who are playing football acting like big stars.football is a great game but is run by mafia like fifa and uefa.stingray (2014)For me.College footballAmerican (2014)Basket weaving is the best sportGaelforce (2014)Everyone go look up Gaelic Football. It's an Irish sport that goes back thousands of years. Kind of like a cross between soccer, rugby and basketball. Very fast, physical and skillful. What's best, the entire sport is AMATEUR. No playing for money= no overrated, overpaid divas à la soccer/golf/NFL/NBL. No transfers or draft either, you play for the county you're from. Players play with true pride and passion. It's got clubs all over the world and and a growing fanbase. Check it out, you won't be dissappointed. It's quite simply the greatest game in the worldmicheal jordan (2013)basketball is first 2 soccer 3 football 4 rugby 5 ice hockey 6 NASCAR 7 cricket tennis 9 lacrosse curling my opinion no dough about thatRohan kudale (2013)my opinion1. Football2. Cricket3. Basketball4. Rugby5. Tennis6. Ice Hockey7. Baseball8. Voleyball9. Boxing10. Martial Arts11. MotorsportsFootball should be on 1 but 2 is cricketbasketball played more countries than cricket but still is cricket better than that.Another sport that is viewed in high numbers around the world is cricket,Anik (2013)Badminton, if you know the sports.BhvihifutcucutcgcugxeEtaeh (2013)Im sorry, but where is tennis?North queenslander (2013)State of origin 8 in a row for Queensland love australia love NRLcamilo (2013)true... cricket is the most popular sports ... but largely from an advertising standpoint... you luv it becuz u were brainwashed at too young an age to realise the beauty of any other games... u have become easy prey for the admen to target their products after every six balls... notice any break from the action in football or hockey or tennis or ... need we go on. :)awesome (2013)badminton is awesome!!!!!Matt awesome (2013)Right on broSomeone (2013)UR WRONGDREW (2013)SQUASH IS THE BESTTim (2013)Auto racing I was told was the the most popular sportkumar (2013)Everyone commenting here just talk about the game which they play as the greatest, but the real thing is each and every game has its own style, there s a big difference in all, for insistance-we cant compare a horse with an cow, of course both are important in there own use. its not fair comparing like this ... and last but not least, I am an footballer so ... FOOTBALL IS THE GREATEST.. sorry couldn't give up the game ..;-);-);-)inayath (2013)CRICKET IS THE BEST SPORT IN THE WORLD, here sponcers wil get true sponcership,because after every over, but in case of football they had to wait upto 45min, in cricket all the 11players of the team had chance to become a match winner, but in football the person who hits the goal that one wil be shine,like these so many things are there..If u ppl want to knew how cricket is famous come to asia and especially beautiful india. (from: inayath, banglore, india)Princevegeta (2013)American Football is by far the best game in the freaking world. I know its not world wide, but you know what it should not be becuz only Americans deserve such a fast paced, bone crushing, adrenaline rushing sport, and other sports suck such as soccer which is so slow and there is a goal every ten years.MRLONG Princevegeta (2013)Thank god people like your self don't watch real football (soccer), we don't need ignorant people such as your self spoiling the fun.Holani Taufahema Princevegeta (2013)And rugby too man!! They don't wear any amour or helmet but its similar to NFL bone crushing too1. Football/Soccer, 2. Cricket, 3. Basketball, rest who cares (from LOL, Apr 2013)Soccer is sooooo boring! NOTHING EVER HAPPENS!!! Don't get me wrong, soccer players are some of the greatest athletes in the world. And soccer is an extremely difficult sport. But so is baseball. But both are just sooo boring. But, I once read that the most difficult thing to do in any professional sport is to hit a baseball in the major leagues. You have about 20 yards to swing a 34" wooden stick w/ a 2.75" diameter to perfectly time a range of types of pitches and hit the 3" diameter ball reacting to possible breaking balls that look as if they're going to hit you to landing on the opposite side of the plate, change-ups that throw you off balance, fastballs that travel up to 100+ mph, etc. Basketball seems to be increasingly losing it's popularity because of the evolution of athletes has made it where it's not really exciting anymore. Football is still doing well. MMA is becoming popular. Which I would rather see boxing come back. But they screwed themselves. There is 17 weight classes, and at least 5 (recognized) belts per weight class. So that means that there could be 85 boxing champions!!! Seriously!! 85 champs! No wonder why boxing is losing popularity at a faster rate than any other sport. Seriously! There is 3 Heavyweight Champions right now (go ahead, look it up). And there is actually 2 boxers with the same belt! How is that even possible? Wladimir Klitschko & Alexander Povetkin are both WBA Champs! How!!! Not only that, but other than the WBA belt, Wladimir Klitschko owns 3 other belts and his brother, Vitali, owns another (WBC). There's 6 cruiser weight champs, 4 lt heavywt, 5 super middlewt, 5 middlewt, 5 super welterwt, 6 welterwt, 6 super lightwt, 4 lightwt, 5 super featherwt, 6 featherwt, 4 super bantamwt, 4 bantamwt, 5 super flywt, 4 flywt, 6 lt flywt, & 6 minwt. For those keeping score, that's 84 f***ing boxing champions! While MMA also has several commissions out there, the UFC is the obvious front-runner, and there is 8 champs (& that's just recently added. It was only 5). Remember the days, or hearing, watching, or reading about the days when the boxing heavyweight champion of the world (Dempsey, Louis, Marciano, Clay/Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Holmes, Tyson) was THE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMP! No longer! For one, boxing's heavyweight has had a drought of exciting fighters. And two, I looked in the paper and saw a WBA junior welterweight championship bout between Khabib Allakhverdiev & Breidis Prescott. I never heard of either of these fighters...and I try to keep up with boxing! It's ridiculous. The WBA used to be the one! But when I looked this Khabib Allakhverdiev and saw that he and Danny Garcia both have the WBA Belt!?! How is that possible? And why aren't Allakhverdiev and Garcia fighting? I know the obvious answer to all of my questions is MONEY! But come on Boxing! If you keep being greedy, boxing is going to fizzle into oblivion. Y'all rich, powerful ***holes need to do what's right for our sport, not what benefits you a few extra dollars that you don't need. Come on!!! Please!!!I was jst readin all ur comments, and 4 does of u of u who don't like or love football(soccer) u all re pdestrians.but 1st speaking soccer is not only played on but its an heavenly game 2,football is like a human on its own because human has d gud, d bad, and d ugly so as football,there is no other games to b compete wit football isn't richies, naughty, fans, facilities, manna,e.t.c. Dis is a game that god himself create not human's. So like i said earlier football has everything u can tink of. so does of u who does not not like football(soccer) should go hell. but all other sport are grate 2 (from kevin, Apr 2013)If football (soccer) wasn't in dis world racism could have been d greatest disease (atomic bomb, nuclear weapon, the movie name 2012 earthquake, by force invasion of d earth, sodom and gomorha) (from kennist4, Apr 2013)i think SOCCER IS ONLY FOR EUROPE BECAUSE MANY SOCCER CLUB MADE IN EUROPE.BUT CRICKET IS POPULAR ASIA,AFRICA,USA(CARRIBEAN),AUSTRALIA AND SOME EUROPE COUNTRIES (from jamer, Mar 2013)To the people saying soccer/football is so easy to play, I dare you to play on a competitive level. I bet none of you will even last 10 minutes. (from Calionfire, Mar 2013)From my piont of view we should respect every sport second i like cricket alot then soccer bcoz its really hard to play ones need a very good stamin but if someone talks about street soccer then than would be preferable bcoz thats when u get fun in soccer plus it gets more entertaining when raining is going on at the same time!!!but still CrIcKet is CRicKeT ;) (from Yawar, Mar 2013)Football is the best sport in the world also it's called football not soccer. NHL, NFL, basketball are all boring, only yanks call it soccer (from Ryan cabble, Mar 2013)Love real football ... I'm from the US. But am immensely ashamed of how people here think their sports are the best in the world. Makes me wonder if their ignorance well ever go away. (from Cristobal Villalpando, Mar 2013)Football game is my favirate game , i love football . lazy cricket game ... 5 billion fan football in world ,and cricket fan 1.25 billion .........hopeless cricket... (from vishal desai, Mar 2013)I really don't understand you americans!! How can you say baseball en football en ice hockey are the best? They don't even compete at an international level!!!! Obviously soccer is the most famous. But nothing beats rugby!! No padding and helmets, just men playing a beautliful game!! (from south african, Mar 2013)Basketball is the 2nd most popular sport in the World yo! It is one of the major 4 sports in North America. One of the most popular team sports in China. And also is very popular in Europe, Africa and the rest of the World. (BTW I'm an ASIAN)! (from hoopking, Mar 2013)CRICKET IS THE SPORT OF LEGENDS. soccer - the whole thing is corrupt for one, just look at the EPL and Fifa all corrupt and the pussies who play it get a little flick on the leg and jump on the ground like they've been shot, god, no skill is needed what-so-ever. its one of the worst sports ever. (from Cody Ackland, Mar 2013)Without a doubt, football/soccer is both the most popular and my personal favorite sport. By the way, I find baseball, basketball and hockey very boring. I don't need to mention NASCAR because it's not a sport. (from An American, Feb 2013)Some people talk about football while they don't anytin about http://it.it is the most sweetest sport in the WORLD.IT - High Technology Craftmen contains every u can ever tink of, suspense, heartbreak , joy, wildemotion, sorrow, pain, shout of jubilation when your team scores. it require strength, starmina, speed, balance agility, sportmanship spirit it is not a lazy sport.people don't watch it becuz of it popularity but becuz of the joy and love it carries behind it.sitin down in the stadium or a sport bar 4 a whole 93minute 4 a goaless draw and stil watch their next match it is not just a game but a bond uniting people frm different part of the word 2gether in peace and harmony.football is more than a game and people should respect it becuz it is the most dangerous, most difficult in fact the hardest game on earth,seeing player having injury that can last 4 more than 2years,playin in a very harsh whelter condition an stil the stadium wil stil be full i don't there is notin more than to say it the most greatest sport on earth. (from Silent player, Feb 2013)Soccer is a gentleman's sport played by hooligans. Rugby is a hooligan's sport played by gentlemen. Football is a hooligans sport played by hooligans. This quote says it all. Rugby is a game of elegant violence. We are not slugs who's main purpose is contact. (from Player, Feb 2013)Best sports in the world is cricket .2nd place for hockey & football only ..that's it .. (from kamal.gamelover, Feb 2013)For the guy who said not everyone can ice skate - Not everyone had ice in their country. And football is not just about running and kicking. Maybe that's how fat people view it as! (from RaptorFlightSchool, Feb 2013)football soccer is the most popular sport and lionel messi is not only the best footballer but he is the best sport person in this world.i love football and i love lionel messi.leo messi is the best .....!!!! (from neetu, Feb 2013)Maybe study is better sports ... Creates a intelligants tradgedy than ever ... ! So drop it make your own sports. (from Sunny, Feb 2013)We must divided sport by professional and for recreational, amateur or hobbies. I think no one sport is best because of every sport have differentiation and uniqueness. Just enjoy our sport. which one sport that every person in the world no matter their age, their body condition, their mental condition could play? (from royan, Jan 2013)Soccer is the most popular sport. Even though it's being ruined as the day goes. All around the world national federations are choosing to create new leagues which changes the tradition of football. If football was always the same with not to many changes it would flog every other sport by a mile. (from Ustasa, Jan 2013)The only reason Ice Hockey is not the most popular sport is because NOT EVERYBODY CAN ICE SKATE!!!!! and the only reason soccer is BECAUSE MOST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD KNOW HOW TO RUN AND KICK!!! Soccer is the biggest pussy sport if ive ever seen one.They dive and cry and are probably the most uptight people ive ever seen. Everyone knows that hockey is the most diffucult all around sport. Between conditioning, technique, physical presence, and many more things like stickhandling, shooting, skating, and for goalies, having the quickest eyes and reactions in sports. Hockey is THE GREATEST SPORT ON THE PLANET BECAUSE ONLY A SPECIAL BREED OF HUMAN CAN PLAY IT!! (from matt, Jan 2013)Cricket does not qualify as a sport. If you wanna talk sports, let's talk soccer, hockey, basketball, tennis but not cricket.Ok. Soccer and Cricket is the best ever..!.. There is no doubt..no need to be proven.. Coz.. These two have been proven all the way..!. Love Cricket..Love the Soccer..and feel the fright, fight,light,excitement.. and endurance ... vibration of heart beats ... !.. All the way you are taken into a new world of curiosity with what happens next ..so, Cricket all most has got what need to be a special figure in the world ... Soccer all the way ready to debate with Cricket.. Who wins..? it is up to the world.. not to a person..! (from Uchith, Jan 2013)Officially soccer is the most famous world sport, but sports are viewed differently in different places. (from BOB, Jan 2013)DODGEBALL ... OBIVIOUSLY IS THE BEST SPORT ME KING U NOT ... BOOYAKASHA PEOPLE. (from Juan Avila, Jan 2013)Cricket is most popular sport in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, srilanka, Afghanistan, & 2nd popular in Australia, New Zealand, west Indies, England, south Africa & Zimbabwe. near about 5 billion people like cricket. on the other hand football is liked by 30 billion people. so football is more popular then cricket. but in terms of interesting game its cricket. CRICKET IS MOST INTERESTING SPORTS IN THE WORLD. 5 year ago football was most popular sport in Bangladesh, but cricket grab that position. now 90% people like cricket. & i m 100% sure within next 10 year T20 will Rock the world. (from Saikot, Jan 2013)lol. soccer is the worst game. i wonder why people just watch the ball or the round sack of air go to the net. same types of shot every time. some socceroos or dont have brain cells. cricket is a lazy game doesnt mean the game is lazy. actually it was a game to make the lazy people active and lazy people means those royal families. so we can say that cricket was born in the royal family of england. and where was soccer born i think in the ancient slums of england. but baseball is the worst sport in the world. the father of baseball is a theif made that game from cricket (from the real american, Jan 2013)gymnastics is the best because i am a junior elite on the competitive team it so totally rocks and i love it!!! (from Sara, Jan 2013)I am from india my opinion is soccer is the best followed by cricket, hockey, basketball, tennis. (from aakash, Jan 2013)cricket is the best sport in the world. the players like sehwag, sachin are popularised game . according espn survey in 2020 the cricket fans are dominating soccer/football fans (from santhosh, Jan 2013)Football is far better then cricket or any other sports b coz its a game which is played all over world but cricket the worst game ever. how can any one can watch the test match all day man its too too too crazy to watch cricket or its waste of time (from Saroj, Jan 2013)BASEBALL ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the most boring is golf aand cricketanyone who thinks footballis the best are stupid idiots, its the most over hyped boring over paid over injured softest sport in the world, touch the geeks n they die, no loyalty all money grabbing divs, no class at all (from annon, Jan 2013)Cricket is the best game ever. it checks the real sportsperson. it is a game to be played by full concentration. soon hopefully it will be biggest sports. n sachin tendulkar is the god of cricket salute to him. salute to millions of indian fans. salute to cricket. love this game. (from george, Jan 2013)cricket requires high skill. you got to understand it. it has complex rules even great players of cricket dont understand or know many of these rules. its a mind game, requires a lot of skill in bowling, batting, fielding. you will have, left armer, off spiner, leg spiner, carrom bolwer, doosra bowlers, fast quickers, medium fast, hard hitter, good tempered, pinch hitters, well groomed, highly technical, orthodox, unorthodox batsman a lot of things involved here. some people did their Phd while making some rules of cricket like darkworth and lewis method. even cricket can be played indoor. i would say its a game required a lot skill, practice and you can only learn it by playing all around the globe. becasue different part of the world demands different skils. (from akm sabbir, Jan 2013)I'm sorry if offended, but I don't understand how americans thi their sports are most popular. If you go to other countries the will have no idea how to score a touchdown or even skate! Ie got good and bad points to all sports. Cricket is intresting to watch on TV but not on ground. Football vice versa. They both take very long. For me Rudgy is a mixture of both! Plus it's not like American Football where people have to wear all sorts of pads ( girly girls ). Seriously. Tennis is also very entertaining on ground and tv. I think both rugby and cricket would be more popular if they start more leagues including more countries like Super Rugby and the 20 20 series in Australia (from None, Jan 2013)Football is very good game this sports played by 200+ countries. But in recent time cricket is become more popular than football, they have more fans now. so in present time cricket is have slight edge on football. (from Dheeraj, Jan 2013)El cricket vale callampa, aqui en Chile ni se conose, solo hablamos idioma Futbol. El futbol (soccer) es el deporte predominante en el planeta, no solo porque los yankees y los indios ql jueguen al cricket significa que es el mejor. El futbol es más que una pasion, es un sentimiento. El que dice lo contrario, es porque nunca a hecho un gol, o levantado una copa. (from Zitro MC, Jan 2013)This is honestly worse than youtube comments. (from A Literate American, Jan 2013)Actually each and every sport is boring unless or until there is a team you support.yet t20 and odi are exciting to watch because you get a result and get to see the fast or slow balls go for a six or a four.football is also interesting but its like test cricket that sometimes you waste your time for seeing a draw match and sometimes a single goal in ninety minutes.sachin is the god of cricket and messi is for football. (from maiem,bd, Jan 2013)like hell cricket.. its just a biased game. the mostt beautiful game was..is.. will be football (from su, Jan 2013)why the hell is TEAM HANDBALL not on the list?! It's an awesome sport!! Wtf?! (from De, Jan 2013)Dear foolish football fans, football is not saving your time afterall it is cheating to you and wasting your money by joining with you for only few hours/95mins only.They are only making you fool and sometime they score 1,2,3or4 goals for that people would join that sports again and to get http://popularity.so leave that foolish and selfish football sport and join the jentle sport 'cricket' which is the best sport in the world and the king of all http://sport.so you football fans come to right and play/see the right sport which is cricket. Think for cricket and for your life. (from Mohd.Taushif, Jan 2013)Soccer is the most beautiful game ever invented and it will always be.I think Nordic skiing and ice hockey are the most demanding sports. Nordic because Not only do you go 6 miles skiing with 200 other skiers it uses every muscle in your body. In ice hockey your on the ice for 1 minute starting stoping blocking a solid 50 mile an hour puck all on a blade less than an inchSOCCER IS THE BEST SPORT IN THE WORLD. SCREW SPORTS LIKE BASEBALL AND CRICKET AND CURLING. SOCCER IS BOSS AND WILL NEVER BE BEATEN! I LOVE SOCCER!!!! (from somebody, Dec 2012)every one here is talking rubbish things. Tennis should have been the best game but since its a game of only rich people its not played in most of the places. what u need to play the soccer is just a ball and an open field. and for cricket a ball and a bat and an open place. but tennis isn't like that. Its a descent and amazing game. (from Sunil, Dec 2012)FOOTBALL of course is the number 1! and why the hell we call it soccer in here? its FOOTBALL forever.but other sports have their own fun part except baseball, and American football. (from koorosh from Texas , USA, Dec 2012)Most of you guys are just excellent examples of how the majority of people these days can't see a thing beyond their own opinions. Sad sad world man. (from Anonymous, Dec 2012)cricket is a glorious game.but football is a global game. it has become so global that it has bored all. in cricket U can see the beauty of runs.but in football u may not be able to enjoy a goal (from sovren, Dec 2012)Cricket is best best game in the entire planet because it is the most interestig game by its t20 flavour and it is watched by billions of people all around the world. (from farhan, Dec 2012)cricket is by far the best. if u disagree u do not know the meanin of sport (from anonymous, Dec 2012)i love baseball ... its the BEST sport EEVVEERR !!! (from anna, Dec 2012)Cricket is best, coz u can see sixes,catches,fours,wickets, fasters, spinners, fielders, mind games, cricket is not a game of luck like soccer. i dnt want to spend 2 and 3 hrs to watch 1 and goal which goes luckily and blindly in d net widout any skill. (from Roll, Dec 2012)Cricket realy realy beast sport of the world. yes or no?HEY PEOPLE!!!! SOCCER IS THE BEST SPORT EVER!!! SO SHUT UP IF U DISAGREE!!! IT IS A PROVEN FACT SO TALK TO THE HAND BECAUSE THE FACE IS JUST NOT INTERESTED!!! CRICKET IS THE STUPIDEST SPORT EVER!!! IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL!! BASEBALL IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN CRICKET!!! BUT REMEMBER, SOCCER IS THE BEST!!! (from Anonymous, Nov 2012)NASCAR is the worlds #1 largest spectator sport on average over 145,000 people attend every race on average that blows all other sports out of the water. Also NASCAR is America's 2nd most watched sport on television. (from Will Johnson, Nov 2012)CRICKET SUCKS! First learn to play soccer, you "perebas", then you may get something to say!!! BRASIL, the only FIVE TIMES FIFA WORLD SOCCER CHAMPION!!! (from Emilson Werner, Nov 2012)Cricket is 2nd famous sport in the world.but one thing is funny that 200 countries make the football no.1 but only 10 countries make the cricket no http://2.so if only china play cricket then the fans of 11 cricket countries are more than 200 football countries fans. (from khyizer swati, Nov 2012)I like football. But i love cricket.Cricket is the best sport in the world. In near future T20 will rule all other sports by its massive popularity ... I love cricket. (from Shahed, Nov 2012)I believe that baseball and basketball is the best sport in the world. Cricket is the worst sport in the world. (from nun ya, Nov 2012)It's Called FOOTBALL, Not SOCCER! (from Anonymous, Nov 2012)Soccer? Pfft ... the only thing I like about soccer, is when a team loses and the fans get angry enough to start a riot. Usually happens with low income countries and low income people whom don't know what civility is. (from Wilfritz, Nov 2012)cricket is the best game in the world no other sports us before cricket athough football playyed mostly but cricket is the best of all (from kartik hooda, Nov 2012)Soccer is the best and clearly the most poupular sport in the world and always will be so all you ppl saying t20 will overtake you are sadly mistaken (from StevieG, Nov 2012)Guys for your info, Basketball is the 2nd most popular game in the World. It is very eagerly followed in both USA and China which are the 4th and 1st Largest populated countries respectively.The best comment on here is that American football would be up there. A sport controlled TV stations is ridiculous. Poor version of rugby (from Peekay, Oct 2012)I think cricket is so much boring ... Bcoz it played only in limited countries . If someone like china,usa ,germany etc. Will play , then it will become more interesting. (from Vgs, Oct 2012)Gymnastics is clearly the best sport ever. It requires much more strength and skill than any other sport there is. Many people might try to argue that it's not a sport, but I can throw a ball around. Try to do it and then see how much of an amazing sport gymnastics really is. (from Jared, Oct 2012)Only retards on here really. Cricket? loool 100% of starving India and Pakistan must have voted. No-one else gives a damn about these countries and sport. Also people comparing anything to European Football, get a grip.Football is by far the best sport. (from Paulo Bernardo, Oct 2012)ICE HOCKEY is by far the best.. It's played in North America, Europe, and even some parts of aisia. It's fast pace and it doesn't stop every two seconds like American football.. Every one on the ice is moving at full speed For 45 seconds to a minute, so while they arent in the game as much as players in Lets say soccor, the game is always at a fast pace. Soccer is a close second and the reason for this is because the field is bigger so while maybe 2 or 3 players are running at full speed, most on the field are walking.. Also there is a lot more contact and physicality an agressivness In hockey as opposed to soccer l (from Blake wood, Oct 2012)I don't even want to talk about which is the most popular sport. I read some guys talking about cricket having big fans. Even in India, cricket was the 2nd or 3rd most popular sport for most of the last century. Large parts of the country, Kerala, Goa, Bengal, North Eastern States, Jharkhand, Punjab and large swaths of affluent population in the big cities like Bombay/Bangalore are football fans. Cricket, once an elitist game, subsequently became popular with the middle class, primarily the baniya's on western India and is loosing fans big time now. The rich kids of Malabar hill (Possibly the most upmarket neighborhood in the country) watch Premier LEague and not cricket. Like Meryl Streep said in Devils wears prada about the masses wearing what fashionista's wear today, the masses will follow what the elite follows today. As the economy grows and the country become wealthier & aspiration levels change, Football will be tower over everything else. (from Yousuf, Oct 2012)FOOTBALL MAY BE FAMOUS YET ... BUT T20 WILL TAKE THAT PLACE SOOOOOOON ... SO SHOUT UP U FOOTBALL FANS.. (from vishan, Oct 2012)I dont know how many indians wud prefer watching a test match in which team india is not playinv we love cricket but only and only those matches in which team india is playing so only indian cricket is best else cricket we r dont care (from suhail, Oct 2012)cricket is best in the world, lol i'm not steal punk or y2j's catchphrase. t20 cricket is better than football (from subbarayan, Oct 2012)football is the king of all games bcoz cricket playing member r only 10 and football is been playing by above 200 countries cricket passion is only in asia leaving other 5 continents who play football and cricket drawback is also that it a time waster game about 8 hrs and football take only 1:30hr that the way football is king !! (from danish, Oct 2012)The most POPULAR SPORT IN THE WORLD is KITE FLYING! talk done. (from nick, Sept 2012)'m from Southern Africa and here is my top 10.`=1. Cricket=1. Rugby3. Tennis4. Golf5. Field hockey6. SoccerThen all u Americans can debate for 7,8,9, and 10 (from Bobbi, Sept 2012)Cricket is the best game in the world.cricket can not be compared to football,because cricket stands top of the world. (from Sprasad, Sept 2012)Cricket is the second most popular game in the world. its most popular in the indian subcontinent and in some other countries, CRICKET SRI LANKA (from Dhammika, Sept 2012)BASEBALL IS THE BEST SPORT IN THW WORLD!!! IN ITALY PEAPLE FOLLOW JUST SOCCER BUT I SAY SOCCER SUCKS I PREFER AMERICAN SPORTS LIKE BASEBALL (FOR FIRST) BASKET AND FOOTBALL. P.S GO DETROIT TIGERS!!! <3 (from Cristiano Falanga, Sept 2012)What about motorsports? (from Fanie, Sept 2012)SOCCER is the best game in the world. it is most viewed, played, loved game. Some years ago i was a cricket fan but i understood it is very much boring. Indian's are less stamina because cricket is here (from Hafeez ea, Sept 2012)Football is the popular sports in the world, but my opinion cricket will be being the most popular sports, if 20 20 begin early 100 years ... (from football n cricket fan, Sept 2012)you all fools stop arguing cuase sports are sports it dont need to be the best SO FROM MY ESTIMATION EVERY SPORT IS THE BEST ! (from bushra, Aug 2012)Cricket, soccer , tennis are popular because they are played around the world, unlike baseball and american football. India has a population of a billion provides the most number of fans for cricket.. (from vigi, Aug 2012)Field Hockey all the way, it's fast, intense, and is way more dangerous then a game of soccer (from Brianna King, Aug 2012)I love my INDIA and i love my cricket. In my point of view cricket is greater than football. Because cricket needs good practise and tatics to play thats why INDIA is very good in it. But football can be played anyone. So CRICKET is the best game in this planet. (from Pavan Holla, 28 Aug 2012)The CRICKET is most popular game in the universe and SACHIN TENDULKAR is god of cricket ... (from Atul patle, Aug 2012)Soccer #1 in the world. Here in US, It goes like NFL, NBA, MLB. Then NHL, Tennis &Golf and then MLS. Others few cared - Zero commercial value; national champion got paid a couple of thousand tops. These days soccer and lacrosse doing well while football shrinking. (from Zeeman, Aug 2012)I'm surprised mixed martial arts isn't in here. The UFC has millions of fans/followers and has events on Fuel, FX, and FOX tv. BTW, in my opinion, and I think I speak on behalf of nearly everyone else in this country when I say Soccer is NOT king!!! (from tyler, 13 Aug 2012)Which sports in 2012 Olympics had most countries entered? (from peter, 13 Aug 2012)Cricket and football Both are good because a real sportsman like all sports. (from Deepak, 11 Aug 2012)Professional Wrestling. (from nick, Aug 2012)250 million Badminton players worldwide (source Badminton England) 265 million Football/Soccer players worldwide (source FIFA - FIFA.com) Do ANY other sports compare in terms of players? (from flatcon, Aug 2012)Football is a great game. Cricket is more sophisticated. But one cannot compare cricket and foot ball. Tennis is not a team game. Cricket needs more endurance than any other game in the list. It is true that it is time consuming. But great things needs time dear ... One thing is that cricket needs high technique and that the standard of cricket internationally is very high and that is only played by a few countries. But the thing in foot ball is if Brazil plays China, they can at least make a no-goal draw, but in cricket, if Australia plays Zimbabwe, it will be devastating and the game will be utter bore ... Cricket is only watchable if the teams are good competitors, but football is enjoyable otherwise. Field Hokey is too complex and fast for a normal person and Rugby is a good aggressive game, but not for normal people. (from arunvivek, July 2012)Cricket is the best and it needs best. Football as its name shows it is place is in foot but Cricket is best football is easy to play even ladies an babies can play it.but Cricket needs special skill that does don't have it can't play it. L U CRICKET. (from Fazal hakim, July 2012)Badminton and table tennis are two of the most watched and played sports in the world. Badminton is the fastest racket sport. The fastest smash hit in a tournament was 206 miles per hour. The fastest smash hit in a practise was 254 miles perhour. (from B Rogers, July 2012): u stupid football fans ... stop criticising about cricket, it is the best game to play and watch ... so all u football fans be quiet ... (from anand, July 2012)Basketball is the second most popular in the world snd it´s very poupular in America, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Asia (from Michael, July 2012)in cricket various skills require in soccer not so much (from ajay, July 2012)I think hockey and table tennis should get first preference in all ... (from mona thakur(india), July 2012)Cricket d great game.made 4 gentlemen nd played by gentlemen.highly respected 4 gud manners (from Arjun, July 2012)football is my life (from sxs, July 2012)Cricket is simply best (from Ranjan Rout, July 2012)CRICKET..CRICKET ... CRICKET ... CRICKET is the most beautiful sport in the world (from kasun)Well for me its football/soccer cos it knows no bounds no matter the culture or race, the game demands so much from a player not to talk of the whole team, yeah other games like criket tennis, Olympic games are also fun but not to the extent football has gone, a lot of great competitions d cup of nations, uefa, leagues in different continents, and d mother of all d world cup, surely games like American football,baseball, basketball are interesting if u understand d rules, and there's so many of them, but what makes soccer the best is that other sports involves using the hands but soccer makes use of just legs and any other part except the hands and it demands a lot of technique, thats y players like messi, maradona, ziddane, ronaldo delima, c.ronaldo, beckham, etoo, drogba, kanu, johan cruff, maldini, figo, recoba, rivaldo, zico, pele, okocha, ronaldinho, giggs, owen, iniesta, raul, rui-costa, God there are so many of them, the game has recorded great transfers 4rm people of different races, where as in other sports its a bit biased. That's my bit guys (from David okalanwa, July 2012)Table tennis is the most participation in the world because you can play this sport in any field, from various ages and can play by disable person. (from royan, July 2012)CRICKET IS THE BEST SPORT IN THE WORLD CRICKET PLAY PAKISTAN INDIA SRI LANKA ENGLEND AUSTRLIA SAUT AFRICA AFGANISTAN TAY ARE THE BEST IN WORLLD (from FAREED, July 2012)football/soccer will be the best sport in every person's mind if they watch Lionel messi play (from NOBODY, June 2012)Lazy people lzy games ... I meant cricket ... it is such a time wasting sport.n.m ... how can people waste their entire day watching this game (from real indian, June 2012)Karate is a tremendous sports in the world. no other sports can take its place. (from Dhriti, June 2012)Hope u forgot badminton ... Coz its a religion in countries like china, Malaysia, Korea, Denmark, Singapore, japan, Thailand etc ... Wat say?Worst game is football. eeeeeeeeeuuu. i hate this game. i think cricket is the best and football/soccer is the worst and very very very very boring. in coming years cricket will be in the top. (from sampada, June 2012)Cricket is very gentleman game. But soccer and other sports like not cricket. cricket is glorious game (from Al-amin, June 2012)Know why so many people love soccer? It's a simple game that requires a lot of skill to play, so anyone even with an IQ of 2 understands the game and can follow it. Cricket on the other hand requires an IQ of at least 100, very intricate sport, definitely not simple. Rugby on the other hand requires real men to play. not sissy's who roll around on the field crying and clutching shins after a clearly missed tackle not to mention the arrogance and ill discipline of sissy err soccer players. RUGBY IS 4 REAL MEN! That's why rugby isn't big in the states or played in the middle east or India (from Dave, June 2012)Cricket is the father of football, cricket is played in 115 countries and football is played in 204 countries till the cricket is most popular sports of the world. (from john harrison, June 2012)Honestly, track & field is the number one. because most sports are centered around running. so, yeah xP (from clean, June 2012)Stop all these foolish arguments you cricket maniacs ... Soccer is the best sport played on this planet by far. (from Sid, June 2012)karate is the best game and also interesting i have ever seen and experienced (from rahul, June 2012)Life>Sports>Football>Manchester United>Wayne Rooney. (from Man Utd Fan, May 2012)football is number one by far followed by cricket which is growing fast American sports just never caught on any where else (from James, May 2012)No doubt it is football. It is the most interesting and popular game. The excitement given by this year's primer league was amazing. I don't consider cricket as a game. It is not giving both the team same opportunity. The result in cricket is depending on the toss, climate, wind, moisture on the field and so many factors. So cricket is rather played by 80 percent by ground and condition and 20% by player. So how can you call it a sport. (from Ganapraveen, May 2012)Why hasn't anyone been saying anything good about RUGBY. It is by far the best game ever. You need strength, speed and endurance to play well but anyone from any age can play. It is suited for almost any weather conditions and it's simply fun to play. (from Max, May 2012)Soccer is the best. Most creative and unique sport in the world. Go away all the ignorant haters calling it boring and dumb. (from Zidane, May 2012)god father of all sport is cricket. Only 11 major countries plays the game and still it is second on list so think wat happens if only china will join with India. Think (from dev ojha, May 2012)Football is such a boring and worst game to watch and only people with goat brains watch it . 22 people chasing a single ball and scoring only 3-5 goals after hours together wat a time waste and boOoring game (from mithun, May 2012)you guys forgot about wrestling or speed games. football is playing in 204 countries. so it is the best game. in America so many fouls have playing so many games idiots. peoples like sports according to their countries (from Godwin Jacob, May 2012)Volleyball is the most enjoyable sport to play because of the diversity. (from bob, April 2012)Most interesting to play - Badminton, Table TennisMost interesting to watch on Ground - FootballMost interesting to watch on TV - CricketMost interesting statistics - CricketMost interesting Tactics - Field HockeyMost brainy - Chess(from pradeep, April 2012)Volleyball is the best sport! your never get bored.Cricket is an all round sport. We play cricket we doesn't always run mad like in football or rugby. There are times we run, we stand, we slide, we fly or it goes on. That's why its a gentlemen game. Watch T20, our latest format of the game. But cricket will become best sport if players so more athleticism. Is anyone agree. (from vinoth, April 2012)Field hockey and football are the best. field hockey is one of the fastest games. football requires power. not like cricket. i don't understand y people call it a sport (from Abhishek Manidhar, April 2012)What about track and field? (from Thrower, April 2012)Softball is the best sport ever, most watched, talked about and played. :) (from hshbdhghdfbfb, April 2012)SOCCER BETTER THEN ANYTHING! (from kevin, April 2012)Football/soccer is undoubtedly the number one sport in the world ... far ahead of any other sport. Cricket is only played in the Indian subcontinent, while in countries like Australia and New Zealand, rugby is actually the top sport. Football on the other hand is the top sport in Mexico, South America, Europe, Africa, and South East Asia ... (from Archit, April 2012)You won't get that thrill in cricket in football! Best game. even make your heart beat faster than usual (from Arjun, March 2012)You fools its Futbol not football. And yes soccer is the best sport in the world. Cricket is a no-lifer, non-physical and retarded activity: not even worth playing. It doesn't deserve the number two spot ... more like track and field. (from Chris P. Bacon, April 2012)cricket is d best in world soccer is giving not thrill like that in few days cricket will be best sport in world (from amol india, April 2012)Dear football fans,now cricket is played by gentlemen and who have mind and technique, you foolish football fans, you don't know about cricket and cricket fans, now we are growing in high speed and will rule all over the world, then you know the power of cricket and its fans for then you find your way to walk out from the world otherwise the result will be very bad to you all (from Mohd Taushif, March 2012)Cricket in Indian sub-continent. Rugby in New-zealand and Aus. Baseball in USA. Ice hockey in Canada ... and everywhere else Football. (from Sachinism, March 2012)tackle football is the best (from clay, March 2012)Cricket is nothing in comparison of soccer and field hockey. There are mainly about 14 countries play cricket but 203 countries play football and 147 countries play field hockey (from Abhishek Manidhar, March 2012)Basketball is the second or third popular sport in the world. It is very popular in North America and Europe. Some European countries basketball is more popular than soccer. Euroleague and Liga acb are totally supported. (from Ahmedi, March 2012)East or west cricket is the best.i like very much cricket .cricket is playing 105 country moreover brazil and Argentina is playing cricket so cricket is the best (from danyden, March 2012).Cricket is the best in the world. my life is cricket. i like football but only world cup but everyday i like cricket. (from zahir khan, March 2012)Football is king! It is most watched, most played in the world. Millions of fans every weekend attend football stadiums around the world!!!! No other sport comes near it!!!! (from Harry Australia, Jan 2012)Cricket is the most boring sport moreover it is known for match fixing in India, Pakistan, SL and Australia (from Syed, Jan 2012)U idiots have forgot handball, in Norway only, there is over 200 teams in series of girls born in 1996, so how many teams are in whole Norway? Think about that! (from Samii, Jan 2012)I am sorry but I have to agree that Baseball is one of the ugliest sport to watch. And there are plenty of Americans who love to play the true game of football (FIFA) (from a Yankee, sorry guys, Sept 2011)I think soccer is the best game and played by most country (from harsh, Aug 2011)Cricket the most interesting game in the world. (Mujahid ali saqib, Aug 2011)first thing first: it's sacrilegious to call football as soccer. Football (international body FIFA) is indeed the king and will always remain that. It is played on every continent (except by the penguins on Antarctica and the yankees in the USA). Loved by Latinos, Caucasians, Arabs, Africans, Asians. This truly is a sport that all of humanity is enchanted with. After football, the most beautiful sport in my opinion is Tennis. Undoubtedly the most beautiful individuals sport. Field Hockey, Cricket, Table Tennis, Basketball, and Volleyball are decent sports as well. The most disgusting game to watch and play: Baseball (Congrats Yankees). The second most disgusting game to watch: Golf. (Though must be delightful to play) (from aqib, July 2011)Isn't basketball like the 2nd or 3rd most popular sports (from like a somebaaaaaady, June 2011)Only 20 countries, even not in the Olympics, not in Commonwealth games, the game of CRICKET is top in Asia!! Some people are saying test cricket is taken long time, but over 80000 thousand watches the ASHES in every day (in ground) what about that? My dear football friends after another few years football will come CRICKET (the honest game) will take lead (from faiq, June 2011).