That's... very American of it, still? The idea of a single sport in a country is weird and silly from a US point of view. I'm more interested in hockey, why would anyone think that would make me not a fan of basketall or football or baseball?

But... so? I thought we were talking about if these sports had "nearly no popularity"? Not if they were displacing soccer entirely. "Nearly no popularity" is pretty obviously false based on eyeballs and sales, even if soccer is more popular... And there's a lot more countries and people in the world than just Europe. (But also very American of you to ignore them ;) .) How much would it even matter to the NBA if China is or isn't primarily a basketball country, or just a country with hundreds of millions of fans that also have another sport above it in their personal rankings, if they're making money either way?

EDIT: and of course the name "soccer" originated in England because there were multiple foot-related games and so people made a more specific name. So maybe the weird countries are the ones that lost a fun multi-sport ecosystem and ended up a monoculture...