Sports Predictions
Lavalle obtained prominence in the media, advertising and sports marketing industries for his prediction in 1989 that figure skating and NASCAR would be the sports of the 1990s in the US. NASCAR indeed experienced major expansion during this era, building new tracks across the US outside of its traditional Southeastern base, and continues to be a major American sport today.
In the 1990s, Lavalle was a frequent critic of soccer, including the 1994 FIFA World Cup. Before the event, Lavalle's surveys had claimed that soccer was less popular than sports like college wrestling, log rolling, skeet shooting and dog racing, and that the World Cup organizers had botched the event. Afterwards, the New York and LA Times quoted Lavalle as saying "for World Cup soccer worldwide, the World Cup gets a grade A; for staging of the World Cup in America, it gets a grade A. But for the future of soccer in America, the grade is incomplete. If you want a prediction, it seems like the term paper will be turned in and it will get a failing grade. To say that it will ever be on par with hockey or golf or even wrestling is way off the mark." About the launch of Major League Soccer, Lavalle was quoted as saying in 1994 "There is no chance it will survive. Absolutely no chance whatsoever."
Major League Soccer has now operated continuously since 1996 and has expanded to 19 teams in the United States and Canada; in 2011 it had a higher average attendance than either the NBA or the NHL. In 2012, a Luker/ESPN survey showed that soccer was the second most popular sport among Americans aged 12–24, behind only NFL football; seven percent of this age bracket described themselves as "avid" MLS fans.
Read more about this topic: Nye Lavalle
Famous quotes containing the words sports and/or predictions:
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—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
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