To put this in context: I recently listend to a talk about the history of soccer in Europe. The first organized games, under set rules, took place in England at around 1910.The sport was first played by private schools who competed against other.
Soon, less wealthy communities wanted to be part of. Also teams like Manchester United were found by rail wail workers. You get the point.
The sport has always been heavily linked to society itself. It could have been any other sport, probably. It was more about competing against others.
Do you know any sports team in the US which is still influenced by factors likes this? Like, the Pittsburgh Steelers aren’t about steel workers anymore c. Many European teams really identify with their cities history. Singing old miner songs for example
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Short answer: No.
No. Our big sports are focused around big teams. We don’t have a bajillion little football teams like the English have with soccer.
Depends entirely what you mean.
I mean, there aren’t actually Lions in Detroit…but they play at Ford Field and the whole building has a very ‘factory’ feel to it.
“Going to Work” Pistons were very Detroit. So were the Bad Boys.
Bill Belichick keeps lobsterbacks at bay. Defender of New England and the long snapper.
The minor league soccer team in Indianapolis is really big with the Spanish speaking population here. Some of the players are from Latin America, they advertise on the Spanish speaking radio stations in town. This isn’t so much a class thing, but you definitely feel the diversity at the games.
In terms of the professional sports, the Colts (NFL) are the most popular team in the city despite the city and state historically being basketball country. There’s no concept of “this is a working class fan base” or “this is a fanbase of the riches”. But that said, the games can be really expensive to attend between tickets, parking, and concessions. For a lot of fans, they may only attend one game a year. The people who attend multiple games a year have the luxury of time and money to do so.
The more budget friendly sports team to see, besides the soccer team, is the minor league baseball team. You can get lawn tickets, bring your own lawn chairs/blankets and even food (except alcohol) and basically have a picnic while watching the game. Its a great activity to do on a good weather evening. They usually end the show with fireworks too.
No. We don’t have a club/association system like the UK. All of the franchises (except the unique arrangement in Green Bay) have been owned by insanely wealthy people since their inception.
Most people simply support their local franchises. If not, they choose based on other factors like it was their dads favorite or maybe there was a great player on the team when they were developing an interest in the sport.
There’s some similarities between the club system and collegiate sports here, but there’s no parallel.
Not in general but there are exceptions when areas have multiple teams.
A good example of this is the Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers. Neither are likely to put it on a poster but the Lakers are effectively the city’s white basketball team while the Clippers are their black team. They share an arena but there fanbases are very different. The Chicago Cubs and White Sox also have very different fan bases but they play in different areas of the city which have different demographics.
If you’re an Italian-American baseball fan in the NYC area then it’s far more likely that you’re a Yankee fan whereas the Mets cater more to the Hispanic community. In fact the team will occasionally wear Los Mets uniforms.
As far as major sports leagues you have to remember that not all states even have a team. Growing up in Central Florida we didn’t have a Major League Baseball team and the closest one was in Atlanta. Same with basketball. You sort of lose that home town team feeling when the team is 6 hours away. Although you might still be a fan, it is less about you and where you grew up.
Considering everyone on that field/court in a pro sport is a multi Millionaire and the team is owned by multi Billionaires and they play in stadiums that cost somewhere between several hundred million to almost two billion dollars, no they don’t have much in common with average people anymore.
Not really
Major League teams are big business and generally not especially related to their local areas, but there are over 200 “Minor League Baseball”® teams in the US, DR, and Canada, affiliated with Major League teams, plus countless regional and local semi-pro and amateur leagues which reflect local culture.
Not in the top pro leagues. Too much money and too national to do that.
We get that more local touch with minor leagues, college and even sometimes high school sports.
Good take, I didn’t know the history of colleges or college sports 🤞🏻I like how us sports are mostly about the sport, but this adds some flavor to it
No. Ie. A lot of the best baseball players come from places like the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela… It’s more about who the team can afford than anything at all to do with the city the team is named for.
I think that exists more in college sports. One reason the Duke/UNC rivalry is such a thing is the perception that Duke is an expensive private school for out-of-staters who don’t care anything about North Carolina or living here after they graduate, whereas UNC is a less expensive state school that encourages NC natives to matriculate there.
Carolina Panthers. Charlotte the city they are in is a large banking hub. Like bankers the panthers are relatively boring with wild boom or bust swings every 10ish years
I think the *branding* of some teams plays off of the area they represent.
Steelers are branded on defense and hard-nose physical football, akin to the working class populace they represent. Milwaukee Bucks and Buffalo Bills take on the persona of their small metro regions – often forgotten about on a national level, leading to some chip-on-their-shoulder type stuff. “Showtime” Lakers out of LA adopting a sort of Hollywood persona, etc.
Interesting to wonder whether it’s a personal thing of me seeing these teams through the lens of my own personal bias of how I view their markets – perhaps there is no correlation and it only exists in my head. But I do think team branding often leans into those types of things in order to connect more with their fanbase.
Not so much. Hockey and football you’ll see it every now and then. Like Philly fans being tough assholes to their team playing like that.
Bears fan not believing in the forward pass and the bears still acting like its 1985.
College sports much more embody the regional spirit. Bc they are much more regional
No.
In general, the enlightenment concept of breaking down the social strata may have originated in England with Locke and his social contract, but it never fully made into practice. You still have strong classism that leads to things like a House of Lords and House of Commons in the UK, and sporting teams that are aligned with people of the economic or social strata.
We don’t have that at a team level. American society in that regard is more geographically oriented.
Where economic strata comes into play are the seats within a team. Suites, behind home plate, 50 yard line, court side seats go to the wealthier folks.
A lot of teams have a general vibe to their fanbases, but they aren’t as localized as European (especially British) soccer teams. The Detroit Lions have a “blue collar” fanbase by merit of being in a rust belt city, similar to somewhere like Cleveland. A team like the LA Rams has a very different vibe, being a high-spending, large-market team in the largest city in the country. The players and coaches tend to have very little local connection, though. You’ll have some players become local legends or “folk heroes” but in general the leagues are a business first and foremost, and players bounce around to wherever they can get paid market value for their services.
San Francisco vs. Oakland teams.
My dad grew up the son of a dirt poor farmworker in Modesto, which is about 90 minutes inland from the Bay Area. His household were 9er/Giants fans, and this was considered unusual. Every other poor and blue collar household in that neck of the woods went for Oakland teams, or so it seemed to him.
And here’s a funny anecdote. Shortly after I moved to Las Vegas, this old timer was going on about how since hardly anyone was actually *from* Vegas, there were NFL fandoms from every last market in the country. To the point that every NFL fanbase had its very own sports bar.
Me: “Hey, my dad’s a 49er fan. Is there a 9er bar in town?”
The guy: “Yeah…” [dismissive handwave] “they have their own sushi bar.”
I told my dad later and he got a pretty good chuckle out of it. But yeah, if you say “9er game” and “tailgating” a lot of people think of crab cakes and chardonnay.
Sports brander here.
Yes, there are parts of the country where the people are still closely tied to the organization itself, the most oft-quoted example is the Green Bay Packers who are a publicly owned non-profit.
As far as other forms of ties to the teams, such as their names, there are a number of teams that still have very close ties to their team’s origins. As a brander in the sports realm we are always looking to create and reinforce historical ties of cities and regions to their respective teams. Some teams already have this, i.e. Mil Brewers, Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Steerrs (as you mentioned). There are very strong ties in both the visual and storytelling of a city’s history of many teams. What has been lost is the direct connection that owners and the people have in the clubs. There once was a time in American sports history where teams were funded and created by locals. Even up until the 1950s things like Minnesota Townball was big. In the early years of baseball and basketball, teams were often created with locals at the YMCA, or just clubs of individuals. Eventually this gave way to promoters who paid for teams to compete and travel, and they gave way to ownership who would eventually go on to sell to increasingly wealthy people. Today we see those people selling to large groups of shareholders. So we are witnessing the slow death of sports as entertainment and the rise of sports as a commodity. Especially with the legalization of gambling. You’re seeing more and more sponsorship deals on uniforms as well. All of this is just an indicator of the corporatization of all sports as they’ve become major business.
As a New England patriot fan we still sing Yankee Doodle growing up and celebrate the Fourth of July. Does that count?
Just because you sing songs about miners doesn’t mean you’re miners, the steelers connections to the cities background are just as relevant as the United
For pro teams? Not so much, they’re all pretty much leveled-out by the leagues as a whole, due to the way those national leagues are structured. Especially since players move between teams through trades, free-agency, etc.
But the personality of the local fan base is certainly influenced by the local character of the city they play in, which does sort of carry over to the team itself. Some teams seem glamorous, others gritty. That sort of thing.
The citizens of Green Bay own the Green Bay Packers.
Where do you get 1910 from?
The Football Association in England was founded in 1863
There are Aussie Rules and rugby clubs in Australia, and rugby clubs in England formed in the 1850’s