Football Still Fighting A Losing Battle For Media Attention In North America

You’ll have to excuse the blog a little this week. It’s going to be pretty Vancouver Whitecaps centric.

With the Caps looking forward to Saturday’s USL Championship final first leg, and the chance to defend their title, it’s hard not be a bit excited.

The fans, the players, the whole front office of the organisation can think of nothing else. With Vancouver being a sports mad city, you’d expect the local media to be the same.

Sadly this doesn’t appear to be the case.

Monday’s Vancouver Province newspaper had the chance to do the team proud by featuring their triumphs right there on the whole of the back page. But they didn’t. What did appear there was a picture of a kitten.

Yes, you read that right – a kitten.

The reason for the pussy pic was for the dismal form of the local ice hockey side Vancouver Canucks and centred around the quote “other lines have looked as dangerous as a kitten with a ball of string”. The picture they used didn’t even feature a ball of string!

The story of the Caps success was buried thirteen pages in.

It just makes you shake your head and emphasises the struggle the game has in Canada (and the US) to get the column inches it deserves. I understand it’s a hockey town, but there was no need to feature that picture after the city’s most successful sports team had just done the city proud again.

You just have to wonder what on earth the team has to achieve to merit the plaudits they deserve. No wonder people don’t buy newspapers anymore.