Sports TV: UK v US

Yesterday evening, UK time, the NFL championship games took place, deciding which teams will contest the Super Bowl. I have an on/off relationship with the NFL – but will flip over to catch a bit every now and then. So last night, when I wasn’t watching Les Miserables on BBC1, I caught a bit of these games including an entertaining overtime in the Rams v Saints game.

I also caught the start of the second game – the Patriots v the Chiefs. The first score was a touchdown for the Patriots. The pictures we got from the host broadcaster, CBS, showed the player celebrating their touchdown, cutting first from the wide shot to a handheld camera that gave us a close-up of the player. And then, the next shot, before we’d seen any replays, or any crowd reaction shots, was of the Patriot’s owner in his glassed off luxury suite applauding the score.

The owner’s reaction to the touchdown is implicitly more important than anyone else’s.

OK, it was a road game (i.e. away fixture), and there were probably very few Patriots fans in the stadium. But there will have been some. And they will have looked less like a company’s board all shaking hands after a particularly good takeover had been achieved.

Compare and contrast with the Premier League. When a goal goes in, we likewise tend to cut from a wide shot of the goal, to a close-up of the player celebrating and being congratulated by teammates. Then we get replays of the goal from a few angles, perhaps a crowd reaction shot, and probably a manager reaction shot.

What nobody is interested in is what the owners’ response is. We almost certainly won’t see them at all. There might be a cutaway at some point in the live game, with the commentator explaining who the person is. But most coverage will ignore them altogether unless there’s great fan unrest towards the owners.

The only UK sport I can think of where owners might get some acknowledgement is horse racing. If your horse wins the Gold Cup or the Grand National, the horse and jockey get most of the attention, then it’s the trainer, and then finally the owner.

I shouldn’t be surprised by the American angle on sports. These aren’t teams (implying a group of athletes), they’re franchises (like a branch of Subway or McDonalds – a business opportunity).

A business imperative is built into the very fabric of US sport.


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