In the 77th minute of today’s Liverpool-Sunderland match, thousands of fans got up to leave the stadium to protest the recent increase of ticket prices to £77. It just so happened to coincide with a defensive meltdown, and Liverpool’s 2-0 lead was erased to a 2-2 draw. Liverpool slipped from eighth place to ninth, while Sunderland remained steady at nineteenth—out of twenty. It was very illustrative of the gulf between American and British sports culture. No US fan likes a ticket price increase, but during the week Liverpool FC media were livid about them, using terms like “betrayal”. US fans often leave games en masse but usually because the score is too lopsided and there’s no realistic hope of victory for their team.
I’d like to be able to think it through but there are so many differences (beyond the game) that I could only fail at making sense of it.
Randall McElroy III 