I'm not nearly as much of a sports fan as in the past but there was once a time that ESPN was basically all I watched. I grew up with American Football and Basketball (mostly college before the NBA) and have always enjoyed both. I didn't watch Baseball as a kid but I learned to like it well enough and appreciate certain aspects a lot. I'd never even seen an NHL game until middle school but when I did, I liked it almost immediately and became a big fan for awhile.
Likewise, when the big push for Soccer started in the US, I turned my attention in that direction. That would have been one of the World Cups, the one with the Vuvuzela. We had it playing all the time at work so I got to see plenty of matches. Unfortunately, in a first for major sports, it failed to capture my attention at all. I found myself hoping for another ridiculous flop or that the cameras would continue to pick out pretty girls in the audience.
When you stack it up against the other prominent sports in the United States and Canada, I think it's simply not as entertaining. All things being equal, I believe that the reason it hasn't caught on here is that the competition offers better options in different ways.
