I'm American, like F1 and NASCAR but rarely spend time watching either (or any other television). I also prefer to drive on a winding country road in a European touring sedan versus more boring routes.
I played soccer (shouldn't he have said football?) when I was younger and I'm fine with the metric system (the real question is why they taught it in elementary schools starting in the '70s, but didn't bother switching).
I think there are a lot of people in the US like me, but we don't spend enough money to get sponsor/advertiser attention. When was the last time you saw F1 tee-shirts, or F1 drivers on beer cans? Which events are offered is all about the almighty dollar.
Oddly in most of Europe it's 'football' as well, EUFA, IFA, Ligue de Football and so on, seems to be quite fractured depending on whereabouts in the world you are, and with the rise in people learning American English through TV/movies/etc I can see it becoming more popular to call it soccer.
In fact, we have multiple: 'football' here can refer to rugby league in QLD and NSW, AFL in pretty much every other state (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barassi_Line ), or soccer.
Over the last few years, there has been a move in Australia to use "football" for soccer. The 3 other footballs (rugby league, rugby union and AFL) are more commonly "rugby" or "footy".
i have to agree on "...is all about the almighty dollar."
at the end of the day, one-directional media consumption (almost anywhere) is driven by maximising ad dollar expenditure. we just need for the Formula One Group to make the same sales effort in the US as they've done in asia. since the sales push in asia (during the past 3 years) a whole bunch of new asian sponsors/cars/drivers have joined F1. i guess it's a matter of time.
I played soccer (shouldn't he have said football?) when I was younger and I'm fine with the metric system (the real question is why they taught it in elementary schools starting in the '70s, but didn't bother switching).
I think there are a lot of people in the US like me, but we don't spend enough money to get sponsor/advertiser attention. When was the last time you saw F1 tee-shirts, or F1 drivers on beer cans? Which events are offered is all about the almighty dollar.