Book Review: Gaming the World

Perhaps US soccer and MLS would have a brighter future if we could see more images like this.

I have always maintained numbers are just a means-to-and-end in understanding the beautiful game. They provide a semblance of order and understanding to what is a chaotically beautiful game with relatively simple rules. As such, I balance my statistical blogs and books with a few cultural ones along the way. Wading too deep into the numbers makes one forget the emotional aspect of what makes sport great. While not taking such a numerical tact, Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture does take an academic approach to describing the wider cultural impacts of sports and is a must read for anyone comfortable with a book that comes from an academic press (Princeton University, to be exact).

The premise of the book is simple - describe how global sports culture has become hegemonic and helps knock down barriers society would rather leave up - and complex at the same time - why did soccer succeed in Europe and not North America even though both continents had nascent soccer cultures in the 1800's? As with any academic book, the authors have a substantial number of citations for each chapter, providing a great historical walk through the issues they tackle - the rise of global sports culture, the clash and reconciliation of competing sports cultures, the feminization of sports culture, and a great study of the unique nature of US college athletics. This book is a product of two authors who represent its main themes - a German and an American attached to their own sport cultures who fell in love with University of Michigan athletics and quickly realized they had fertile ground to explore. Given the path they travelled to writing such a book, the material within it is easily understood by the casual fan who wants to understand how the major sports of our day - soccer, basketball, American football, baseball, and hockey - evolved and the challenges they face as they as they now intersect each other in a globalized world.

The first takeaway from the book could clearly be "let your talent travel overseas". In studying the success of North American sports that have grown overseas or overseas sports they have seen grow in the US, there is one common theme - to build interest in a newer sport a less experienced nation must allow their talent to compete in the top professional level in the more experienced nation. After recounting what the "Nowitzki effect" has done for basketball in Germany, the authors start Chapter 3 with this observation:

Just think of Lance Armstrong's immense influence on having spawned a coterie of superb American bicycle racers and on having raised his sport's profile in the United States. America professional soccer, thus, is in need of a Lance Armstrong equivalent to emerge as a superstar in one of Europe's premier soccer leagues to dramatically improve its cultural roll stateside.

I couldn't agree more, and that's why I feel that having Landon Donovan stay in MLS is a huge mistake for US soccer. Some might argue that he's not the caliber of player to be considered a "superstar", but we'll never know as he didn't take the chance when he was in the greatest demand. Imagine how much attention would be paid to him and US soccer if he had translated last year's World Cup run into a full time stint in the Premier League? Instead, he came back to an LA Galaxy side that had clearly peaked earlier in 2010 the season, saw them fail to make the MLS Cup, and then saw the leading goal scorer from his team depart for a second tier German squad. All the while, people are now calling for the US national team to be built around another American who is making waves in England rather than play in MLS.

Yet all hope for US soccer isn't lost. While MLS's product is still inconsistent and clearly second tier on the world scene, there is growth in US soccer. Recent immigrants "import soccer into the United States and instantly provide a strong base for MS games, which have an average attendance of circa 15,000." This type of attendance figure makes MLS one of the top ten in the world when it comes to game attendance (on the other hand, television viewership leaves much to be desired). Ultimately, the authors argue that soccer in America is still an "Olympicized sport", meaning that most US soccer fans show up for the big international competitions like the World Cup, but fade away when it comes to the annual MLS season.

The authors do a great job of also explaining the difference between US and European professional sports. Key differences include:

• A greater amount of success achieved by minority athletes when compared to Europe, which serves as "an integrative substitute for other forms of social (welfare) mechanisms".
• The geographically large area of the US contributing to long travel distances that inhibit travel by the away team's fans, making the in-stadium experience very different than Europe's soccer stadiums. This distance also leads to an unbalanced schedule that is a key difference with European soccer.
• The presence of a single team in a city (except in New York and Los Angeles), which ensures larger stadiums and less intense rivalries
• By effect of a lack of such local proximity, intense cross-town or cross-state rivalries are saved for the uniquely American college athletics landscape. The authors do a great job in taking a whole chapter to explain the rise of US college athletics, how they are most similar to European national soccer leagues, and how they serve to democratize the US sports scene.

In studying the cross-cultural sports landscape, it appears there are two areas where the authors see the United States as more advanced - inclusion of women and acceptance of minorities (except the GLBT community, which is still universally marginalized). While the authors do argue that sports in general do provide a good bit of cross cultural acceptance, they can also incite a nativist backlash that focuses on local identity. This "counter cosmopolitan" reaction is especially prevalent in the second tier of European soccer and Italy's Serie A, as is the continued second-tier treatment of women in sports. As a counter-example, the authors look to the United States as a shining example of racial and gender integration. Racist taunts and anti-Semitic salutes found in European stadiums would never be tolerated at the lowest level of American athletics, while US women's teams in soccer, softball, and other sports dominate the world stage due to their equal treatment in the college athletics that help feed the national teams. To be sure, female pro athletes still have a long way to go to match their male counterparts, but on a national level the success of the US Women's soccer team is certainly the envy of the US Men's team.

The authors' detailed history of such gender and racial developments is key to understanding their real point about sports' true capital: cultural, not economic Sports, especially in the US, become a prime mode of recreation for millions of participants and an even greater number of observers. It dominates talk radio, our weekends, and sometimes even our weeknights. Americans buy jerseys, scarves, high-definition televisions and cable services, and tickets to matches. Stadiums are routinely sold out, and the recreational calendar is dominated by which sport is in season at the time. The book compiles some interesting statistics:

• College football generates $2 billion in revenue a year.
• Men's basketball brought in $600 million during the 2007-2008 season.
• College hockey and baseball brought in far less.
• The professional leagues, while bringing in a far more respectable $15 billion per year, would only rank 170th on the Forbes 500.

Of an interesting personal note, that would put them between a company named Computer Sciences and my employer, PACCAR. Thus, it is the outsized cultural influence that makes someone like me don an Arsenal jersey every weekend even though I will be lucky to go to a single match at the Emirates in my lifetime. Certainly their financial position in the world of soccer helps provide access to their product, but it pales in comparison to other companies that could be demanding the time and effort many of us put into following, playing, and interacting via sports. It's the cultural interactions - in the stadiums, in the pubs, and online - that drive such a disproportionate amount of our time to an activity with such a minimal economic impact.

Ultimately, that's perhaps the most re-assuring aspect of the book. Sports predominantly grew out of working and lower-middle class communities looking for a way to compete, relax, and build community identity. It's how soccer began in working class English communities, and why college athletics took off in remote locations of the United State via land grants from the government. For all the money that gets wrapped up in sports, it is the kid who picks up the basketball in the inner city, or a suburban girl who picks up a soccer ball, that helps democratize the sport and the wider culture. We always need to be vigilant of someone trying to buy a championship or violate the rules of amateurship, but by and large sports are natural to humans and the biggest effect they have is to empower the players and they provide a wider acceptance of the minority the players represent.