Sitting here watching the Super bowl - one of the biggest events in the US national calendar - I've finally put my finger on what it is that irritates me about watching American sports. Spectators are treated like children. To be clear - I'm not talking about the sports themselves. There is a lot to enjoy about the tactical complexity of American Football or the athleticism and precision of basketball. I'm talking about the presentation of those sports to the average spectator/ viewer. By way of a couple of examples:
The constant stoppages in play. American sports are designed to be consumed in small doses (i.e. four quarters rather than two halves, multiple opportunities for 'time-outs' during the game etc). The in-game entertainment is supposed to be as much a part of the experience (whether live or on TV) as the game itself. The viewer, like a child, is not expected to have an attention span of longer than a couple of minutes and so is never left in peace to just watch the game without interruption.
Audience participation is completely contrived. When I attended a Celtics game a few weeks ago, I was amazed to see that the big screen is used to prompt particular chants at certain points in the game, rather than allowing them to develop spontaneously from within the crowd. Its as if the spectators aren't trusted enough to be civil (40,000 people chanting "the referee's a w****r" would not go down well with the TV companies): they need to be told what to say and when.
British sports coverage is far from perfect (I don't miss the patronising football pundits or smug tennis commentators) but I would hazard a guess that American sports coverage is uniquely infantalising...
