I genuinely don’t think America has had any influence whatsoever on the game. It’s basically 30 years since the US world cup and I can’t point to one tangible thing that’s American about the game.
It’s usually in the context of American ownership like the Glazers, Hicks and Gillette or the new Chelsea consortium.
Whenever a new American-based ownership group buys into the PL the Guardian runs a headline about how X number of teams now have American ownership. David Conn went big on it a few years ago.
People then conflate American ownership groups or American owners’ desires with what an “American audience” would want which makes no sense to me.
@SRCJJ saying that they wanted to “Americanize” the game only makes sense if you believe they’re going to give each player a gun and no health insurance.
Well owners in the PL.
I understand the thought process I was just adding my view that in reality it just hasn’t happened. Would go so far as to say that it won’t either.
But what has changed? Ultimately nothing.
Probably not in the naked capitalist closed system way the owners would want. I do think a lot of them would love a NFL-style league with a set number of teams, no danger of relegation and tv revenues that only increase. But I don’t think that’s an American thing. That’s just a rich person thing.
Don’t think it’s any coincidence though that there more pre season games played in the states.
The word branding has become a part of the discussion.
That’s partly due to the growth of the product and that’s partly down to owners. Not necessarily a bad thing and inevitable in some ways but it’s a cultural change.
I think those things happened because of the way more connected capitalist society we live in. And yes, Capitalism is essentially a US export but it’s also something we embrace and encourage openly. I don’t think we’d have too different a picture of the owners were all British tbh.
But in terms of the actual game itself, there is no real difference there.
Idk, the way some people talk if all the PL owners were British the game would be a utopia.