Disney's World Cup: ESPN and the Un-Americanisation of Global Football. Issue 1 (1st October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lewis, Jon
• Is Part Of: Film studies. Volume 13:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 94
• Page End: 112
• Publication Date: 2015-10-01
• Subjects: American soccer fandom -- Disney -- ESPN -- cultural politics of soccer -- cultural politics of televised sports -- FIFA bust; Motion pictures -- History -- Periodicals; Motion pictures -- Periodicals; 791.43
• DOI: 10.7227/FS.13.0007
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1469-0314

Abstract

Abstract : This article examines the cultural politics of American soccer fandom, with specific attention paid to the ways in which the sport is positioned and platformed by the major sports networks, including, especially, cable television's biggest player in the United States, ESPN. The network's failure to exploit soccer as a marketable commodity can be traced to a persistent American futility at the sport on the international level, but it evinces as well a larger American cultural problematic, one in which ethnocentrism and isolationism is disguised, as it often is, as American exceptionalism.