Why are the European and American sports worlds so different? Path dependence in European and American sports history

Abstract

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, European and American sports formations and cultures developed along quite different lines. First, different sports became popular in the United States than in Europe. Baseball, basketball, ice hockey and ‘American football’ were the most prominent in the United States, set against ‘global’ football (‘association’ or ‘soccer’), tennis, cycling and gymnastics as the most popular sports in Europe. Second, these sports were developed, organized and practised in different contexts: that of schools, colleges and universities in the United States, and that of voluntary clubs and associations in Europe. Third, American sports commercialized and professionalized earlier and much more thoroughly than European sports. Fourth, as a business, professional sports in the United States were organized in closed leagues of competing franchises, while both amateur and professional sports in Europe formed part of open competitions based on the principle of promotion and relegation. Fifth, America’s closed professional leagues remained national in scope and meaning for a long time, and were established under profit-oriented managerial control without any international regulatory body. This often led to the formation of competing leagues in the same branch of sport. In contrast, Europe’s open sport competitions had an international or even global appeal and were governed by international non-profit federations. And sixth, compared with Europe, the American government hardly influenced the development of the sporting formations and cultures. Sports in the United States were market-driven and developed independently of the state, while governments in Europe increasingly intervened in the world of sports, especially after the Second World War.