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The caller to our newsroom on Monday morning was mighty miffed.
He demanded to know why we had put Spain’s World Cup win over Argentina on the front of the sports section while relegating a Blue Bomber win he described as “historic” to the third page.
As the conversation went on, it was clear he wasn’t a fan of the FIFA brand of football that had punted the CFL inside, and there was little we could do to placate him unless we banned soccer coverage for the foreseeable future.
To be clear, I love the passion of our readers — especially those who are fans of the teams we cover. I also don’t mind hearing their take on our editorial decisions; it helps keep us on our toes.
But the wide world of sports is getting ever wider. Not only does our newsroom cover the Bombers and Jets, but there’s also the Goldeyes and Sea Bears.
Next year, Winnipeg will also welcome our first professional women’s team with a franchise in the Northern Super League – a compelling reason why we won’t ban soccer coverage for the foreseeable future.
And let’s not forget about curling, golf and high school sports such as volleyball, basketball and track.
The men’s World Cup only comes along every four years and with Canada as one of the hosts of this year’s tournament, more than a few Canadians took in what we still call soccer.
Viewership data released by TSN showed more than 30 million unique Canadian viewers (75% of Canada’s population) tuned into some of its live coverage.
Our newsroom tracking also shows a huge bump in soccer readership during the World Cup as nearly 50,000 readers came looking for their “footie” fix, which included analysis from our columnist Jerrad Peters. That is 10 times the readership prior to the World Cup.
I can assure all our Bomber fans that their team will make plenty more appearances on the front of our sports section before the season ends.
But I hope that Bomber fans — and all sports fans — see value in a newspaper that has reporters covering not only the Bombers and Jets, but all sorts of other sports — including the Beautiful Game.
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