The House View: Premier League’s return signals the start of football’s domination
August 10, 2023
The Premier League is back this weekend and it has been all of (checks calendar) 75 days since last season’s conclusion.
I will be honest at that point, I was ready for the football season to be over and, thanks to a World Cup dropped into the middle, it did feel like a particularly long one. So am I excited for a new season, so soon after the end of the last? Of course I am, I can’t wait. Having my stress levels dictated by 22 blokes (plus five off the bench) chasing a ball around is truly one of my favourite things.
Football has a grasp on the nation like nothing else, and with the summer’s other big sporting events already out of the way, our attention collectively turns back to football. A gripping Ashes series and a historic Wimbledon Men’s final both piqued sports fans’ interests at times but football is back and as usual it will take over.
What fascinates me is the comparison between sporting fandom over here and across the pond in the US. We have had several American interns working for us this summer and it has been really interesting to observe the way their fandom is structured.
They all support NFL teams, NBA teams and MLB teams, then some have NHL teams as well. You then have college sports which is something, as a recent university graduate, I can’t quite get my head around. Of course I wanted my university to do well when it came to sports but I barely attended a fixture. The average college American football game was watched by 41,480 in 2022. That is mad. To put it into perspective, the average attendance of a Premier League fixture for last season was just 40,267.
Almost every major city in the US has NFL, MLB and NBA franchises. In Philadelphia, they all share the same parking lot in some odd three-part cathedral to sport. Seriously, it is amazing.
Over here, at least outside London, it is very hard to find cities with elite teams in multiple of different sports. Leicester has its football team, the Leicester Tigers and a small county cricket ground. Birmingham has a few football teams and an international cricket ground but little else. Manchester has two Premier League teams, an international cricket ground and a rugby union team.
This really emphasises football’s stranglehold on this country and, if we are honest, the vast majority of Europe. It dominates the sports pages and nothing, and I really mean nothing, drives website traffic like football transfer stories.
So strap yourselves in over the next eight or nine months the Premier League and football in general will dominate the sports fan’s agenda in the UK. And it is going to be brilliant.
By Alex Brinton, Content Manager iSportConnect