I was reading about football/soccer rivalries on Wikipedia today. One thing that surprised me is how often fan loyalty divides on ethnic/religious/political lines; think the sectatarian nature of Rangers/Celtic in Scotland or the left/right aspect to the Barcelona/Madrid rivalry. But this really doesn’t exist in American sports. Why didn’t theis happen in the U.S.?
I think it comes down to geopolitical factors. To take the Rangers/Celtic example, what US city has a stark Protestant/Catholic divide and a long history of enmity between the two? Perhaps Boston comes closest, but Boston doesn’t have two teams in any major sport.
As for Barcelona/Madrid, to duplicate that rivalry you would have to have to have a left-leaning US city that was once the capital of an independent state (to represent Barcelona) vs. Washington DC. And there is no such city.
American professional sports franchises are more marketing-oriented than they are in Europe. Also, the “melting pot” ethos is still pretty strong in American culture. That’s why racial, ethnic, religious, political, and class differences are significantly downplayed. The only differences that are still played upon are regional (e.g., Southern California vs. Northern California in the case of the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. the San Francisco Giants) or historical (e.g., New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox).
Ehr, Barça is about as lefty as Torquemada’s ghost. What they are (supposed to be) is independentists, but from all sides of the spectrum. Originally the divide between them and Espanyol-formerly-of-Sarrià was socioeconomic class (Espanyol being higher, Sarrià remains an upper-class district), that’s not been the case for yoinks and definitely has nothing to do with Barça/Real Madrid. Maybe you’re confused by the politics of some of their respective ultras, but hooligan is hooligan is hooligan, most of them can’t articulate politics beyond “MDK”.
That aside, I agree with NDP’s analysis, Here, the politics get UPplayed by the club’s leadership as well as by any press that’s associated with it. Barça proclaims itself “more than a club”, Real and Atletic vie over which of them is more Basque (while Alavés and Osasuna, the only one with a Basque-language name, munch on some tapas), Espanyol’s songs are all in Spanish (I’ve seen a Barça fan ask an Espanyol one why and the second one answer “haven’t you had your first coffee yet, or are you really dumb enough to completely miss what the name means?”), and in any urban area with more than one big team, the team’s leaderships will do their best to come up with some sort of socioeconomical divide… even if it’s actually about as real as a cow with eight legs.
How many teams can people think of that were a specific identity in the US anyway? Well, I suppose you could count the Negro Leagues and all sports in general before the breaking of the various color barriers. The only other team I can think of is the old baseball barnstorming team House of David (who, despite the name and look, were not Jewish.)
Isn’t it true that professional sports teams in the US were created as commercial enterprises from the get-go?
In contrast to that, teams in Europe usually started out as amateur clubs which were often organized along political, social, religious or ethnic lines. Only later in their history, some of these clubs evolved into professional teams.
These are both factors. Also, the United States is a huge country, and teams tend to be spaced pretty far apart. “Niche marketing” doesn’t work; you want to appeal to an entire city or even a region.
With that said, when teams in a major sport share a metro area, embryonic socioeconomic divides do sometimes occur. I live in Chicago, where there is a long-running perception that White Sox fans are more blue-collar and white-ethnic and Cub fans are more affluent and WASPy. This stereotype was never completely true, and is now laughably outdated, but one still encounters it.
But, the teams never played up that aspect of affairs in their marketing. It wouldn’t be good business. American sports teams depend on public subsidies, and you don’t get subsidies by dividing one part of the population against another.
To expand on this point, American sports are more likely to promote themselves as something that can “bring an entire city together” in times of trouble. We might be fighting each other in the City Council or even on the streets, but we can all agree that the Bulls kick ass.
Just look at some of the names in pro sports. Colorado Rockies/Avalanche. Minnesota Twins/Vikings. Arizona Cardinals/Diamondbacks. Florida Marlins. Golden State Warriors. Carolina Panthers. I know there’s more, those are just some off the top of my head.
While I got sick of the whole “Boston Strong” thing after the marathon bombing last year, on Sportscenter this morning there was a little featurette about the response of the Celtics, Red Sox, and Bruins right afterward and what it meant to a lot of people in Boston.
This was my first thought as well. I think you can still join the clubs in Europe, even though it might be a fairly futile act in a big club with a majority owner. I can’t join the Bisciotti Football Corporation, however; it exists only to sell me stuff.
I can’t think of any major American PROFESSIONAL sports in which fans embrace teams that seem to represent certain religious, ethnic or political ties. But some COLLEGE rivalries certainly have echoes of that.
Certainly, many people USED to (and a few still do) embrace the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame as a symbol of Catholic pride.
Fans of the University of Texas Longhorns and the Texas A & M Aggies definitely have strong opinions about each other, accurate or not. If you embrace the Aggies, you’re ipso facto a hyper-patriotic, Bible-thumping, militaristic conservative Republican. If you’re a Longhorn fan (or a “Teasipper,” in Aggie parlance), you’re an elitist, liberal Democrat, non-God-fearing country clubber.
“City vs. country” trash talking between fans of state universities is also pretty common. For example, in the Pac 12, you see it for Oregon/Oregon State and Washington/Washington State.
Not exactly. The genesis of professional sports is the same in both cases: the leagues arose organically from amateur and then semi-professional play. Professional sports in the US became a primarily commercial activity much sooner, though.
There’s also the fact that the US is really big, and its population centers are mostly far apart. Thus, there would (almost) never be two top-flight teams in the same city.
For the first half of the 20th century there were numerous multi-club cities: Boston Braves/Boston Red Sox, New York Giants/Brooklyn Dodgers/New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies/Philadelphia Athletics, St. Louis Cardinals/St. Louis Browns, Chicago Cubs/Chicago White Sox. Of the “Original 16” Major League Baseball clubs, only Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit didn’t have in-city rivals.
What most of them found however was that splitting a city or region’s loyalty was not viable in the long term.
Most of them didn’t begin in the same league, though.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. They didn’t play many official matches against each other unless both went to the World Series, but they were in the top level of the professional sport and they competed directly with each other in the marketplace for ticket sales, etc. After the National Agreement in 1902 they were competitively equal, so in that sense, they were in the “same league.”
Organizationally, they were split into the American League and National League, but that’s trivia when it comes to the overall economics.
Competing with one another in the marketplace is not what gives European teams their tribal identities. Being a fan of the richest club is not generally a point of pride.
In the marketplace for fans. Who said anything about the richest club? Would The Celtic/Rangers rivalry exist if Celtic no longer had fans willing to buy tickets, merchandise, etc.? Eventually it would could up shop. They’re competing in that marketplace. Over here (except for a very few remaining examples) clubs that had to split fan bases could no longer compete – they couldn’t make enough money to stay competitive – so almost all of them had to find another home.
And the Washington Senators of course.