BY ADAM WALKER · OCTOBER 17, 2020

Nothing can bring people together like sport. While doing exercise like cycling or playing a sport is an important part of being healthy, the social element also plays a huge role.

Every four years, competitions like the Olympics and the World Cup see fans from every corner of the globe gather together to celebrate their shared love of sport and cheer for their nation.

While hundreds of thousands attend in person, hundreds of millions watch these competitions from home on their TVs and computers.

But while sport can bring us together, the way we play, watch, and manage sports varies greatly across the continents. Most notably between North America and Europe.

Profit vs Sporting Success

The biggest difference between sports in North America (particularly the US and Canada) and Europe is that American leagues are structured to maximize profit, while the European leagues are structured to maximize sporting success.

In Europe, clubs that attempt to focus on being profitable typically see declines in their on-pitch performance. Over the medium to long term, this creates a drag on their finances too. We can see that with Manchester United, who currently sit near the bottom of the Premier League table despite being the most successful club in English football. This is why football leagues in Europe operate in a pyramid structure with promotion and relegation between them.

In America, such a system doesn’t exist. Teams in major leagues remain there regardless of whether they lost all their games in the previous season. This gives teams protection against the financial pressures of relegation and allows them to spend a couple of years rebuilding to return to sporting success.
This primary objective can be seen throughout the sports as it affects many other areas too.

Betting

In Europe, betting on sports is an incredibly popular activity and most countries allow in-person and online wagering across the continent. This has been the case for decades and remained fairly consistent over time. For example, betting shops were legalized in the United Kingdom in 1961 and thousands remain open today.

In the US, things are quite different. Until 2018, sports betting was limited to just a few states, and licenses were very restrictive. That has changed since, and it is now possible to wager on most professional sports at Foxbet in more than a dozen states. It is expected that more states will allow online betting in the coming years, which will mean the two continents are more closely aligned.

Playoffs

For the most part, European leagues operate on a round-robin basis with the winner being the club that’s scored the most points over a season. This is true in football, rugby, motorsport, and most other professional competitions.

Conversely, almost all US leagues operate through a playoff system. This helps to create a focal point at the end of the year that results in a “grand final” game like the NFL’s Super Bowl or MLB’s World Series.

Playoffs ensure that the winners of the league are playing in the final game and the outcome relies solely on their on-pitch performance. On the other hand, the English Premier League can be won by a team when a rival is defeated by a third team before the end of the season. We saw this in 2019/20 when Liverpool were crowned champions after their rivals, Manchester City, were beaten 2-1 by Chelsea.

Final games can attract huge numbers of viewers. For example, the Super Bowl regularly attracts around 100 million people. This means large sums can be demanded from sponsors who can have their brands seen by around one-third of the country’s population.

Relocation

In Europe, the concept of moving a team from one town or city to another is almost unheard of. There would be uproar if a Premier League club announced plans to move to a different part of the country, move into a different stadium, and change its name, leaving everything behind.

Sports teams in Europe are often more than a century old, with fandom often being passed down through multiple generations. Clubs are ingrained into the local communities, providing a way for people to come together under a shared interest.

However, in the US, commercial interests and profit maximization often result in teams moving to other cities. In the NFL (and predecessor leagues), there have been around 20 incidents of a team moving, with the Oakland Raiders moving a total of four times.

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