Americans are watching sport wrong
I went on holiday!
Imagine this. You’re at the ground of your favourite football team. The ball rolls out for a throw-in. No big deal, you think, as your right-back jogs over to get the game going again. But the moment the ball crosses the line and the ref blows his whistle, Titanium by David Guetta blares from the speakers for as long as it takes the ball boy to get his shit together. If there’s time, a camera will begin scanning the crowd looking for the person who’s dancing the hardest so that they can win a lifetime supply of hot dogs. You can drink in the stands but the can in your hand cost £17. There’s enough toilets for everyone and they’re relatively clean – no thank you!
Yes, I’ve just returned from the USA, and having now watched two (2) live sporting events (Boston Celtics and New Jersey Devils) and one televised soccer game in Hoboken’s finest Premier League-themed bar, I can say with utmost certainty: How Americans watch sport is weird.
Take chants. It’s hard not to find the repeating of “let’s go [my team]!” or “[opposition team] sucks!” rather quaint when you’ve been part of a 60,000 person chorus line chanting “Steve Bruce has got a fat head” or endured 90 minutes of one bloke calling Southampton fans “sheep shagging bastards” because he’s confused Southampton with Swansea.
It’s not that they don’t care – England fans pissing in French fountains also looks quite quaint when you see footage of Philadelphia Eagles fans celebrating their Super Bowl win with an actual riot – but it’s just a strange type of caring. Where’s the anxiety? The dread? I didn’t believe for one second that any of the men watching the Devils or Celtics would refuse to speak to their kids for a week if they lost. That’s some cuck shit. I didn’t see one single ad reminding fans not to go home and hit their wives.
In fact, there’s families (yuck!) together (yuck!) having quite a nice (yuck!) wholesome (yuck!) time. That’s swivel-eyed woke lunacy (SEWL). They just wanna go, watch the game, try and get their big goofy faces on the jumbotron, and drive (DRIVE!) home without ever needing to change gear. SEWL!
Examining them watching football is even more confusing.
Just in case anyone asks me why I support Liverpool despite coming from Bristol, I am constantly armed with a bin bag of ticket stubs, programmes and a binder of legitimising evidence:
a family tree explaining that my dad is from Southport;
a map showing how far Southport is from Liverpool;
a letter from the local council confirming that, since 2014, Sefton, the borough which houses Southport, has been one of the six boroughs within the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (a huge victory for the second-generation Southport-adjacent Liverpool fan community and one we celebrate annually to this very day).
And yet a guy who’s never left New Jersey told me with an entirely straight face that he’s a “Bayern fan” and “it’s hard to watch Lewi (Robert Lewandowski) play for Barca, but he gave us everything”.
God, I envy that sweet, simple boy. Calling the build up to a goal “a play”. Having a sincere discussion about the merits of their respective teams with a guy from Minnesota wearing a full Real Madrid kit who keeps calling Mbappé “Kylian”. Bliss.
It’s a similar sensation to hearing English NFL fans declare themselves fans of the “Ravens” or “Patriots”. Yet somehow it’s purer. Shame and self doubt runs in English veins, we should know better. Americans have no shame, no self doubt. That’s kind of baked into the American dream. Anyone who works hard enough can be a billionaire or shout “Hala Madrid” and it not be the stupidest thing they’ve ever done.
English football fans can probably learn a thing or two from our sport-loving friends across the pond. No, I don’t want a halftime show. I don’t need the guys raking the pitch to suddenly start breakdancing. There’s a lot of fathers and sons at football, a kiss-cam is not the right way to spice up a VAR check. But tailgating looks fun. It must be nice to support a team just because they’re good, rather than it be bizarrely intertwined with your own crippling confusion about who the hell you actually are. Maybe all I really do want is my face on the jumbotron and a chance to win hot dogs for life. Let’s go!
This gave me a good laugh. I’m used to going to football (soccer) matches in Portland where you don’t see kiss cams or much razzmatazz, so it’s even a culture shock for me to go to an NFL game. The time between plays in an (American) football game is apparently just too tempting to leave alone, but I’ll take it over the festival of ads on the television.
Cheers, Harry, I enjoyed that.
As a Londoner who ended up over there for a few years many decades ago, I have to confess to getting in to NFL while I was there though. I mean, I had to do something.
And I picked a team. The Atlanta Falcons. I picked them because they were a bit rubbish and played in red, so reminded me of my team at home, Charlton Athletic. Also they had the only Brit in the NFL as kicker.
But you're right. Having all their major sports based on how often you can stuff adverts down the audience's throat is anathema to us. But it does say a lot about our respective priorities.