I’m in an urban park surrounded by fast-food outlets: Taco Bell, the Golden Arches, KFC, Starbucks. The sound system is blasting out raucous rap music; all the men are in blingy sportswear, baseball caps, Nike shoes. I can see big shiny billboards advertising iPhones, Pepsi Max or the latest Marvel movies.
In short, I could be almost anywhere in the world – Australia, Brazil, Germany – such is the power of American exports: soft and hard, cultural and consumerist, Coke to Tesla to Friends. And yet I know I’m in America, specifically in the SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, because I’m about to encounter the one thing America has, peculiarly, not been able to export, not with any great success: American sport. And I want to work out why.
Over the years I’ve seen three of the big American pro sports – ice hockey, baseball, basketball. Each has taught me something. Now I am approaching the pinnacle of American pro games, the most hyper-American of them all: the NFL. Specifically, the Los Angeles Chargers versus the Washington Commanders (previously the Redskins, until woke came for gridiron). And I’m hoping this final piece of the puzzle will provide an answer. Are American sports simply duff, hence unexportable, or is something else going on? Patriotic Yanks may want to scroll away now.
My first collision with the shoulder-padded muscularity of American sports was an ice hockey match decades ago, which I attended with my expat brother in a part of the American Midwest so cold, bleak and godforsaken it was actually in Canada. No matter – it’s all the same. It’s fair to say I wasn’t impressed.
The problems with ice hockey begin at the start: the conceptual basis. Ice hockey is the only sport that crucially depends on a very specific weather condition – iciness. Imagine if you came up with that notion today. ‘It’s like rugby, but you can only play if it’s sleeting.’ ‘Chess, but during a tornado.’
Then there’s the total invisibility of the puck, which is basically a penny tossed across space – a black dot flying faster than the human eye can register. That’s probably why the players fight so much: to distract the audience from the fact that they can’t tell what’s going on. But even the fighting looks strange and contrived – a bunch of Michelin men trying to wrestle badly on grease, as the crowd screams because they haven’t had their eighth hot dog. And yet, it wasn’t all bad. I liked the noise and passion and good-natured rivalry. And the hot dogs.
Then I tried baseball. It was a second-tier game between two OK teams, and it felt like a fifth-tier match in a 19th dimension. This was a shame because I’d been looking forward to baseball; I’d been told it was the most thoughtful, poignant, artistic: the American cricket.
It is not the American cricket. It is the American version of a kids’ game in a park with rules imposed by 12th-century theologians and everyone looks stupid because they’re wearing mismatched pyjamas. It is also slow – but not the poetic slowness of a five-day Test match, with its surges and longueurs, its tea-times, microdramas, near-deadly fast bowlers; it is certainly not the Ring Cycle of triumph, disaster and bittersweet draws that is a good Test series. Baseball is just slow. And the fittest man on the pitch is the guy selling beer.
My encounter with basketball was worse. Basketball is superficially attractive, yet simultaneously dull, tiresome, squeaky and aimed at three-year-olds – the same way noisy toys are aimed at three-year-olds, banging out the same jingle until you want to cry. In basketball the jingle is the score. All they do is score. Oh look – they’ve scored again. Wow, they’ve scored. Wait, someone scored? MAKE IT STOP. Nope, they’ve scored again. The final score is 138–135. I do like the phrase ‘slam dunk’.
Basketball can only be played by people over 7ft 10in – the same way British poetry prizes can only be won by thoughtful people from Ghana
Also, basketball can only be played by people over 7ft 10in – the same way British poetry prizes can only be won by thoughtful people from Ghana. Therefore it’s very niche, which prevents young kids from ever aspiring to play it at the highest level. It takes away one of the major appeals of any sport. No one really wants to grow up to be 7ft 10in – it’s a pain on flights.
So what about the NFL? I don’t know, really, because I’ve left LA’s magnificent SoFi Stadium after ‘the first quarter’, which took 17 hours, because everyone stopped playing as soon as something remotely exciting happened – just in case you were in danger of being entertained – giving you even more time to buy a pint of beer for £23.
I do remember a kind of ‘touchdown’, which seemed fun, but then I learned about the whole ‘quarter’ thing, and the fact there were still three quarters to go. I worked out that if I stayed I’d probably miss my daughter’s graduation ceremony – and she’s only in her first year at uni. And so, after my grand experiment, what is my conclusion? Are American sports simply terrible? Is that why they can only export them to countries they’ve nuked?
Honest answer? No. I might find American sports laughable, but then an awful lot of sports are laughable. American sports are no slower, sillier or stranger than sumo wrestling, shinty, Aussie rules or curling. Therefore the reason for the failure of American sports is different: they were out-competed.
At the time when the great global sports were being established – 1850 to 1950 – it was the misfortune of American sports to emerge just as Britain was imposing its favoured games planet-wide. And say what you like about Britain and its dentistry – the British are the world’s greatest nation, by a distance, at inventing and/or codifying sport. From the genius simplicity of ‘soccer’ to the fluent brutality of rugby to the white-flanneled lyricism of cricket. Also golf, boxing, tennis, badminton, ping-pong. We even invented skiing – and we don’t have places to ski. Even now we are exporting our pub games (snooker and darts are two of the fastest-growing sports on the planet).
So, sorry America. No one likes to watch or play your sports, but it’s not because they’re uniquely bad – they’re just a bit overblown and mediocre. It’s because you got your ass whipped in open competition for sporting consumer tastes. Which is, ironically, a very American outcome.
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