BY AHMAD KANAFANI ’26 AND ALEJANDRO SANCHEZ ’26
Ahmad Kanafani ’26: Over my past year at Harvard, I have been shocked at how low attendance is at sports games. Coming from Egypt, I’m used to fully packed stadiums, flares, pyro shows, and people on their feet for 90 minutes. I assume that the sports fan culture in the U.S. is completely different.
Alejandro Sanchez ’26: Coming from L.A., I find that fan culture in the United States is misunderstood because most people are accustomed to supporting several teams across several sports, many of which are not local teams. Our support manifests slightly differently because most are unfamiliar with being able to attend all the home games of their teams.
Kanafani: For me the biggest difference when comparing fan culture in the United States with Europe and North Africa is the experience. Back home, the focus is on the game itself: the passion, the emotions. However, in the United States, the entertainment comes mostly from outside of the game: halftime performances, stadiums, infrastructure, and music artists. I can only imagine the backlash from the fans if an A-list celebrity performed at halftime at the Champions League final.
Sanchez: It’s not uncommon to have a halftime show, cheerleaders during timeouts or breaks, and performances from artists, because American sports culture has focused on being a community for everyone, no matter their love of the sport. Not every person at a U.S. sporting event may have the same level of devotion to a team as the person next to them, but each person is there to support a team regardless.
Kanafani: I do believe that the lack of pyramidal structure in American Sports plays a part. In European Football, all the top leagues have different tiers where teams are promoted or relegated and constantly compete for their places in the hierarchy. This means every game matters. In contrast, the American system of Sports adopts a horizontal or closed structure, which means there is absolutely no pressure on you. If you are a lower-level team in American Sports, what would push you to your limits every game when there is absolutely no pressure on you to get relegated? A team like the Texans would have been relegated by now in any other sports structure.
Sanchez: American sports’ lack of relegation promotes rebuilding years in which a team can focus on developing young players. Furthermore, the English Premier League, which is often regarded as the most competitive league across sports, has only had seven winners since its formation in 1992. Contrarily, the NFL has had 15 different Super Bowl Champions in the same period. This is why many fans support various teams across multiple sports, so that any year one of their teams may be a title contender.
Kanafani: I do think one of the big positives with American fan culture is college sports in actual sports schools like Ohio State, Penn State, and Alabama. People are tied to these colleges and love and support them. That is one resemblance I can think of. These colleges do remind me of outside U.S. fan culture but not with the same intensity.
Sanchez: These schools appear to have the same level of support from their fans as teams in Europe or elsewhere because they have tens of thousands of students who live in close proximity to their school stadium, allowing all of their fans to show up for games. If you look at the attendance at U.S. games during big rivalries or tournaments, the support rivals that of fans abroad. The only hindrance is that most fans are unable to make it to every game week in and week out because of their lack of proximity. Every team in the U.S. has a massive following, but we only get to see that level of support during big games that draw out fans from across the country,
Kanafani: In the U.S., fans get excited and happy when their team scores, and also upset when they lose —but not at the same level as fans in other parts of the world. I believe that in part has to do with culture. In Europe, South America, and Africa, each team has a distinct area with fans growing up and loving this team. It is a matter of life and death. In London, in a specific neighborhood called Islington, you will only find Arsenal fans. There is no way you will find someone supporting another team. In the United States, let us take New York as an example. With so many teams in different sports, people cannot grow up as die-hard supporters. In Egypt, work productivity goes down when a team loses and people are not themselves for weeks.
Sanchez: The proximity and required emotion abroad is something to be admired, but that can only happen because soccer is primarily the only sport that is watched. Here in the U.S., within a city, you can have a plethora of teams that are all battling for support from its residents. The state of New York alone has 11 different major league sport teams. It is unrealistic to expect residents to make it out to every game for every team, especially given that some of these teams are rivals.
Kanafani: When Harvard State announced a blackout for the Harvard-Brown game, many people thought it was “cringe”. But internationally, showing your support for a team is not, and will never be cringe. North African Ultras travel thousands of miles behind their team because sports are part of the culture everywhere else. In June, Al Ahly fans—Egypt’s biggest club—traveled more than 6000 miles to watch their team win the African Championship.
Sanchez: Here at Harvard, we see an exacerbated model of U.S. sports, in which there is very low attendance for most sporting events until major games take place. But I don’t think Harvard can—or should—accurately represent either college or American sporting culture in its entirety.
Kanafani: There is no wrong or right sports model, but sports have and will always be part of my culture. As an Egyptian, fan culture in some parts of the U.S., and at Harvard especially, makes me long for the sporting culture back home.
Ahmad Kanafani ’26 (akanafani@college.harvard.edu) and Alejandro Sanchez ’26 (alejandrosanchez@college.harvard.edu) write Sports for the Independent.