It pays to pay attention to trends in the 'real world'

Which of these three teams is the most popular in the United States?

1. The New York Rangers
2. The Los Angeles Kings
3. Chivas de Guadalajara

If you said "Chivas," go to the head of the class.

Sunday evening's "SuperClassico" soccer match between two of Mexico's premier futbol clubs, Club America and Chivas (pictured), drew 4.3 million viewers in the United States.

According to Soccer America, it was the largest audience for a club soccer game on American television in the past 13 years.

Perhaps more interestingly, America-Chivas "surpassed the U.S. viewership of every National Hockey League telecast on both NBC and Versus (formerly OLN) during the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 NHL seasons with the exception of Game 7 of the 2006 Stanley Cup final series between Carolina and Edmonton, which aired on NBC and drew 5.45 million viewers," the magazine reports.

The Sports Economist blog, in a post titled "Step aside, NHL," says the numbers point to a painful truth for the National Hockey League:

"Other large national team matches such as U.S.-Mexico games, World Cup qualifiers, and World Cup matches routinely propel Spanish-language broadcasters to the top of the Nielsen ratings in selected markets such as Los Angeles.This doesn't look like a case of 'when will soccer arrive' but 'why haven't any English speakers noticed it's already here?'"

Of course, the real story here is the nation's rapidly changing demographic mix, not the decline in popularity of Canada's favorite export.

But the end results are the same. And they also serve as an example of how markets can shift and change over time due to a wide range of factors. For example, both Club America and Chivas have huge fanbases here due to immigration, but also because their visibility has helped win the attention of non-Latino soccer fans, too.

In other words, it pays to pay attention to trends (other than Second Life or Twitter).

You might never have heard of Chivas or Club America, and you probably don't care about soccer. But lots of people have, and do. There's a lesson there for all of us if we'll just stop and think about it.