The main reason the stadiums will feel dystopian is because they'll be without Freddy Adu, who is no longer playing football, having retired several years ago.
He could mention that for example, the Washington Commanders(formerly Redskins, yikes), used to play within DC at RFK stadium. Where Freddy Adu made his professional debut with DC United.
My team’s stadium isn’t like that although the name would certainly fool you. Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte was built in 1995 and incorporated into the city similar to those European examples.
As an American, the even more dystopian part of American stadiums is that they are basically used as hostage situations. You mentioned it a bit, but billionaire owners of American sports franchises will use relocation as a threat to get new venues. Basically, if you (the community) don't pay hundreds of millions (if not over a billion) dollars towards a new venue, we will move the team that has been here for decades to a location that will. I'm from west of Chicago in Illinois, and there are multiple examples going on RIGHT NOW just here. The Bears are threatening to move to Arlington heights (30 miles northwest of Chicago) if the city/state don't pay significant portions of 5 billion stadium/infrastructure project. Soldier field was extensively renovated (for the worse) in the early 2000s. The White Sox are also looking to get about half of a $2 billion stadium paid for at the same time, but they may leave for Nashville or another unknown city if they don't get what they want. Keep in mind that they stadium the White Sox play in is slightly more than 30 years old and has undergone significant renovations since. In the late 1980s, the owner threatened to move the Sox to Tampa, Florida if the current stadium was not built. Basically legal extortion, YAY!
issue isnt the hostage situation, its the supporters not sticking up for the team and the rules from the sport leagues. i mean if man united wanted to move to liverpool for a new stadium over night it goes from sold out to empty. yall just accept it. not to mention in many cases if a citys would like to fund a new stadium for a team in many countrys in europe that would mean a unfair advantages and not be possible by law or sporting league dissicion. the issue isnt what owners want its the NFL itself (who gives them to much power) not to mention the relgation promotion which allowes them to stay in the top league forever
@@robertv7996 I would say it fits the poster's description because your taxes are being held to ransom by a skinflint billionaire who doesn't want to cough up the money just seems spectacularly crass. No-one should experience that. Not the fans or the residents of the area that couldn't give two shits about the team in the first place. But then fan emotional manipulation in American sports is just ugly.
A 30 year old stadium is a dinosaur by NFL standards. Lambeau Field makes a tenth of the revenue that So-Fi or even Levi's Stadium makes. Europeans don't look at their stadiums as profit centers and job creators. You can't add 200 luxury boxes to Soldier Field to make it competitive with Allegiant or So-Fi or Levi's or Met Life. The Big Three (I'm not counting MLS or the NHL since they don't qualify) sports in the US balance their books (before revenue sharing) on their stadium income. But these stadiums also benefit their cities. Look at how St. Louis declined after the Rams left. Camden Yards revitalized and gentrified Baltimore's downtown when it was built.
When Wimbledon FC moved to Milton Keynes and renamed themselves to the MK Dons in 2004, the Wimbledon fans created a new amateur club, and rose through the football ranks, while the MK Dons lost their support and fell down the football league pyramid and now AFC Wimbledon is higher than the MK Dons in the football league lmao Edit: Oops he mentioned it in the video
As an American who just went to a few premier league games, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to take public transportation and not have to sit in 2+ hours of traffic instead! Very jealous
Help spread this gospel back to America....... Meanwhile, Insensitive American Hedge Fund Owners of EPL/EFL teams are trying actively to RUIN this vibe and convenience that you experienced.
Luckily, every stadium I've been to in the US has been easily accessible by public transport, but im sure there are some out there that are a nightmare to access.
man getting from paddington to tottenham last may was simpler and easier than getting to any stadium in Denver where i live. actually was in shock man lmfaoooo
Right. One can easily walk from Lumen Field past thousands of homeless vets, strung out crackheads, and Venezuelan gangsters to the central business district.
That's deceptive tbh. If you go to a Packers game you'll notice that people rent out their lawns as parking, which is just as wasteful as a concrete parking lot. A much better example would be something like Wrigley or Soldier field in Chicago
As an American, I’d argue that the culture of college football is more similar to club football, while NFL culture more closely resembles international football. There are well over 10 million Americans per NFL team, so they feel like they belong to the “region” more than the “city”. Meanwhile, there are about 2.5 million Americans per major college football team, so it’s not just alumni association with a university that gives it its local feel. I couldn’t imagine Michigan tearing down the Big House (1927; 107,601 capacity), Ohio State demolishing the Shoe (1922; 102,780 capacity), or Texas A&M moving from Kyle Field (1927; 102,733 capacity). Michigan Stadium, in particular, is a beautiful ground that I assume would not offend European sensibilities.
I profoundly disagree. The culture of college football doesn't seem to be found anywhere else. I mean Japan has some high school sports too but that's still very different in the same way American high/jr high is different.
@ I wasn’t saying they are the same. But if you want to draw comparisons, as this video does, it is more appropriate in terms of sports culture to compare club football to college football than to the NFL.
Nice try, but no. and I speak from experience , As a student, I lived iNSIDE Ohio Stadium as part of the Stadium Scholarship Dormitory there...and since then 40 years of My adult life has been spent living in England with many years as an Ipswich Town Season Ticket holder. The vibe between Ohio State and Ipswich is so profoundly different I can't even begin to properly give an analogy for it.
@sirius.siri3Not quite true everywhere. Why spend 10 dollars on a beer when I could buy a whole case and drink it in the parking lot for the same price?
If you got pissed up in your car in Europe, the police would have something to say about that, not to mention the public as a whole. What's the fucking point of driving to somewhere, getting shit faced, and then not being able to drive home? 🤦
@sirius.siri3not really, even MetLife has the American Dream within walking distance that is chocked full of all sorts of pubs and stuff. Really it’s more like the appeal of camping for Sporting events.
With tailgating, it started with college teams so alumni could get together and mingle. In the US, public flagship universities were typically founded and built away from the major cities, so driving a few hours to get an entire weekend in in one day and back home for bed was typical. Basically like having a little picnic instead of trying to find a place to eat during a massively busy time before fast food was so prevalent.
at least with college it makes sense because there are parks and green spaces dedicated for it. instead of being in a hot parking lot in early september.
Worth noting that college football stadia are usually much more pedestrian and transit friendly than those of the nfl, even if many large state colleges are far from major population centers. Sure, fans who don’t live in town or aren’t current students will still need cars to get into town for the big game, but it’s also true that most college football stadia are seemlessly integrated into their campuses. Idk I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that even tho tailgating comes from college football tradition, I think college football stadia are, on average, much more urbanist than their professional counterparts
Arguably the most car dependant nation on the planet where driving out of town to large shops/restaurants is completely normal, not sure why anyone would expect anything different
@@timboslice150 I can’t stand the “Americas just too big to be built like a normal country” argument. It’s patently false. The vast vast majority of Americans live in urban and metropolitan areas. States like California and New York are, at the state level, denser than countries like Spain or Germany. That is a statistical fact. Obviously at a more micro local level, you start to see a real difference in density between the US and Europe, but when it comes to population clusters, we are no “bigger” than Europe. The vast vast majority of Americans live in the Northeastern Megalopolis, Southern California Metro, Texas Triangle, Great Lakes Conurbation, the Bay Area, the Florida Conurbation, the Piedmont Area, and the Pacific Northwest metro cluster. All of these regions have comparable densities to Europe. Is it true the Alaska and Montana are really big and really undeveloped? Certainly. But that’s no excuse for the fact that most people live close to each other, and we still don’t have a proper transit system or walkable streets.
@@pjkerrigan20 Sure all of what you said is true, but all of Europe was built basically before America was even discovered. Every city in America is designed with car in mind and its hard to find a city in Europe built after cars were invented. The “Americas just too big to be built like a normal country” is more like "Americas just too young to be built like a normal country. Especially in the west. Not saying the fact they have a terrible public transit system isnt their fault, cause it is, but its less of an issue not to have one.
@autkev7112 Everything you just said applies to modern China as well and yet they have extensive high-speed trains. Everything was built from scratch over the last century.
My American mind can't comprehend that Tottenham and Crystal Palace are 14 miles away (25 driving) and that's enough to be considered *too far apart to be rivals.* Like, I genuinely can't fathom that. My Florida Gators' two biggest rivals (Florida State and Georgia) are 154 and 351 miles away and they're also our two closest annual opponents. Lol that's actually crazy
Come move to Perth, Australia. It easier and cheaper to fly to Asia than it is to Adelaide, out next closest national capital city 🤣. Our poor AFL (Aussie Rules) teams have to fly 5h for games every 2 weeks.
and then you have to factor in pricing. Want to fly to Bali tomorrow on short notice? $97 with numerous low cost carriers at various times. Adelaide? $180 and you have to fly Jetstar. It's a joke that it's so much easier to fly overseas then it is domestic here.
its mainly to do with that European Cities grew organically over hunderds and possibly thousands of years based on humans where US cities were planned by a group of architects and built for cars over the course of a couple decades.
Not entirely true. American cities,especially on the east coast were already big and had streetcars and dense city centers before cars became affordable. They were bulldozed for the car, not build for the car.
That isn’t entirely true however. Look at Australia, follows the same trends or car dependency and pre planning for its cities yet its major stadiums are all much better integrated than their American counterparts.
@17Trees33 older U.S. cities along the Atlantic coast were planned before the cars. Land is just very expensive in the major cities, so NFL teams couldn’t viably build stadiums in NYC and Boston and DC proper.
@@chadchadderton while Australia is big and spread out, much of the land is not habitable, so most people live in the major cities. The same applies to Canada. Both nations are more urbanized than the U.S., in the sense that a higher percentage of the population lives in a few major metropolitan areas.
Really has more to do with laws requiring a certain amount of parking spots at a specific venue or any building. It may be a car thing but a lot of old stadiums look like Europe
@@mof5490I personally like cars and always have. One thing I hate though is traffic, air & noise pollution, having to commute long distances on the wheel, accidents and not being able to walk or bike to the city center.
I live 30 minutes from the Metlife and I have NO IDEA how we are gonna handle that kind of traffic. It’s going to be an awful experience for all who visit.
@@lordfizzz 80,000 is the capacity of the stadium regardless of what’s going on there. That’s the same amount that f people that go to nfl games there every weekend.
A big reason you didn't really cover on why the parking lots are so big is because the owners make TONS of money on the fans parking in those lots, so they are (almost) encouraged to make the stadiums more inaccessible and reliant on car transportation because they stand to make even more money. This even manifests in owners intentionally tanking public transportation projects to their stadiums, like in the case of SoFi Stadium, because the project would eat into their bottom line, even if it would be a net benefit for the fans as a whole
This is a very good point. Parking is so freaking expensive at these places. You're right, big miss not covering that aspect. If you ever want to know why Americans do something, just follow the money.
Yet people still attend these things and likely pay an annual salary just to experience the corporate entertainment life for one game.. That boggles my mind.
@@apropercuppa8612 its because a lot of Americans make a lot more money than most Europeans. Its not a financial burden to frequently go to these games when Americans make, on average, around $20,000 more per year than Brits. I paid close to $1000/yr for 2 supporters section season tickets to my local MLS side, which would be an outrageous sum for the quality of soccer compared to the EPL, where the prices outside the big 6 are roughly equal, but it didn't feel as big of a purchase because I made around the average US salary at the time.
Even Americans who don't like to drive hate many of these US stadiums. Major League Soccer stadiums tend to be right in the middle of their cities because their younger fanbases tend to drive less. Here in Seattle, Lumen Field (home of the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders FC) is in the middle of tons of bars, restaurants and apartment buildings, with easy access via not only car, but also bus, train, on foot from many downtown hotels, and even via ferry! The Sounders' longtime goalkeeper takes the ferry to the stadium and walks from the ferry terminal to the stadium (among the fans) on most matchdays.
No great surprise to see Seattle/Portland being the most European-esque city (/cities) in the USA. It appears that way by many metrics, not just this one.
You're very clueless. Here in the U.S. we have a culture of tailgating before our football games. This is anywhere between 10000-20000 people or more barbecuing, grilling & smoking meats in the parking lot. This goes on all day during game day. That's why the stadiums need all that space.
Also most cities in the us only have one team in each major sport so it’s not weird for the one team to be located anywhere in the metro area where it’s convenient. The 49ers moved to Santa Clara because they already owned the land next to their practice facility that was being used for parking for the great America theme park. In Europe the teams tend to be associated with a certain neighborhood because there are multiple teams in a metro area.
An example from this side of the Atlantic of a team building itself a new home next to its training facility on land it already owned was in fact briefly mentioned in the video: Barnet FC's Hive Stadium.
The city of Cleveland is currently in a tug-of-war with the owners of the Browns (American Football) to keep the team in the city and not, as proposed, shipped out to a suburb called Brook Park. The current stadium is right on lake Erie, adjacent to downtown and has light rail service on game days. It looks like they'll probably be moved but I don't think anyone in Cleveland thinks it's a good idea (besides the actual owners of the team) to go from a prime area in the city to a dystopian parking lot across from the airport, many miles from the city center.
The owner is a southern-fried disaster. Deshawn Watson's contract was a harbinger of this really stupid new stadium talk. The present stadium is not good. Even Cleveland-diehard sportswriter Terry Pluto said that the Ravens (old Browns) was better. It shows a lack of imagination. They should have done a horseshoe, with end zone an almost exact replica of the Dawg Pound bleachers at Cleveland Municipal.
Part of the reason for the differences are the big differences in sports structure in the USA and Europe. The NFL has 32 teams across the entire country and there is no promotion/relegation to and from lower divisions. New York City, with a metro population of over 20 million has two NFL teams. London, with a metro population just under 15 million has 17 professional football (soccer) teams with as many as 8 (in the 1989-90) season being in the top flight at the same time. There are currently 7 teams participating in this season's Premier League in London and an additional 2 in the 2nd tier EFL Championship.
Chicago has done a great job of keeping sports venues easily accessible, the only except would be Rate Field which does look more "traditionally American" in it's placement and car-centric environment.
@@samelmudir that’s not why the Bears want to tear down Soldier field. It is tiny by NFL standards but the problem is lake side property is obviously much more expensive than suburban property.
the word “tailgating” is used in both contexts in America. you can tailgate the person in front of you while driving as well as while parked at a college gameday
6:58 As a European Giants fan, it did confuse me why other fans mock the Giants and Jets by calling them the New Jersey Giants/Jets - when other teams' stadiums are much more further away from their namesake.
Am an American jets fan. It’s just one of those things. Stadiums that are miles away from the city they represent is normal (like you mentioned), but it’s not normal for the stadium to literally be in another state. It’s basically just a technicality that gets used to make fun of the giants/jets.
@ I'm just glad this isn't happening with the sixers. Camden NJ may as well be greater Philadelphia but there's just something about crossing state lines that feels so much more wrong.
The Detroit Lions of the NFL played in Pontiac (the Silverdome; where Trevor Francis played briefly for the Express) from 1975 to 2001. When the team was bad, they were called (by some) the Pontiac Pussycats.
@@kakol20908 it’s just petty banter. People love to joke that the Buffalo Bills are the only “real NY team”. In reality, Giants and Jets are New York sports teams, as in representing the city of NY. No one in NYC or Long Island cares about the Bills, local NYC media does not cover the Bills
The better comparison between European Football stadiums is with American College Football. Don't think that's a step-down, not at all. The biggest stadiums in the USA are all college football (the University of Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Texas A&M and many more, dwarf almost all NFL stadiums). My university is the University of Oregon, and it's short walk from campus thru a small woods and over the Willamette River to a very nice, beautiful stadium, Autzen Stadium.
College stadiums dont dwarf NFL stadiums, they just use benches primary for seating/standing instead of seats so they fill more people, NFL stadiums can easily fit more people just by swapping on which you sit. Europe also uses invidual seats since its UEFA mandate for its competition, only exception is Germany which clubs have part of stadium with benches but they have to switch when they play in europe and they lose bunch of possible attedance, for example Westfalenstadion goes from 82000 to 66000 when they convert their 28000 bench seating/standing to invidual seats.
The Big House, The Beav, and The Shoe are are each over 105k that are filled to capacity and with great game day experiences. There are no issues here.
@@RSeaker Never been to these stadia, I'm a west coast guy and went to Oregon, but I think they're all on campus, and have the same "feel" a European Soccer stadium has, of which HITC7 mentions.
Fenway Park is one of America's best and most authentic stadiums in my opinion. My dad and I used to go once a year and it has this intimate and authentic feel that I haven't ever gotten visiting Foxborough or any other stadiums for that matter. My trip to Anfield had the same feeling. Say what you will about John Henry but he has good taste.
If you haven’t already, you should try to visit Wrigley on a nice summer day. In my opinion, it’s the only ballpark experience better than Fenway. The neighborhood is a lotta fun, similar to the area around fenway, but the ballpark was really gracefully renovated a few years ago, so it’s like a more polished Fenway experience. I guess there’s an argument to be made that more polish would worsen the Fenway experience, but trust me Wrigley is a real treat.
@georgehenan853 I haven't visited any D1 stadiums, I'm not a huge (american) football fan to be honest but those stadiums do seem to be electric and it seems a fair few have some age which I'm always fascinated by. One day.
The New England Patriots are actually an example of trying to maintain consistency between name and location. They were the Boston Patriots in the 1960s, but they could never find a suitable stadium within Boston, so when they moved to Foxborough they changed their geographic descriptor from Boston to New England, which is a regional name that applies to 5 entire states. They could move to Hartford, CT (they almost did) or Burlington, VT or Portland, ME and still be in New England.
Having grown up in CT I remember the whole debate of them moving to Hartford. Most in CT except for maybe the governor knew the threat of Hartford was just to get something from MA.
I grew up 5 minutes away from Gillette stadium. Whenever our football team scored a touchdown I could hear the cannons going off. Although the loudest I've ever heard the stadium was a Rammstein concert.
So-called greatest country on Earth has a less developed transit system than the poorest EU country All the while Lausanne, a city of less than 150 000 people, has 2 metro lines spanning 28 stations
@@Ben-po8kfhere we go again with the classic “America is too big for good transportation excuse. Not sure if you’re aware, but this excuse has been overused by Americans for decades despite the fact that it’s literally not true. China, India and even Russia are all huge countries with better nationwide transportation infrastructure than the US. There is no excuse other than the fact that Americans and Canadians have dug themselves so deep into car-dependency and are now in a position where they cannot fix it. I keep seeing Americans use this whack excuse. I swear if I see another American say this I will lose it
@@Ben-po8kfbro we have heard enough of that nonsense from Americans, your country isn’t too big for transport. You know it’s bad when freaking India has better train services than you
I like these guys videos but it’s always annoying to me listening him to talk about the US. Like his serious approach to “the European mind could never comprehend this” comment as if it isn’t literally a joke was so cringe lol
@@LordZontar the only internet s*** I have on my phone is TH-cam. And sometimes I login to twitter on the browser. This guy is active on both (and fair enough he gets paid to be an internet dwelling lib) and I’ve seen more than enough on both platforms especially twitter to see he’s a radical heavily indoctrinated dumb lefty. I laugh at both radical sides but the left is more silly and funny and stupid I have to admit.
we could have built it in a much better place to be honest, i live in stoke and i have to drive to get to the stadium because of the A500 and A34, i get not wanting to build it in Hanley but putting it right in a industrial park and next to the giant incenerator plant which you can see from the stadium, its uglyyyy
So what I think Europeans don’t understand is this parking lots host tailgating parties before the game it’s a tradition in football everyone brings their trucks and RV’s and cook BBQ play music and games and blast music for a couple of hours before the game you couldn’t do that in Europe
The new Cincinnati Stadium wouldn't look out of place in England with all the residential brick housing around it. Hell, a good chunk of MLS stadiums are downtown or near the city centre.
As a European who spent a year in good old St. Louis a while back, i completely agree. The creator of this channel is some sm ug spoi led brat wannabe comm ie with an agenda. While there are plenty of bad things and bad examples in North American pro sports culture, there is plenty of good as well. Like this thread mentioned, MLS so far has been a small but linear success story with almost all teams playing in a purpose-built "soccer" specific 25,000 stadium, and the majority even plays on real grass, most are accessible within the cities. Some exceptions of course, or like NYCFC still in the process of building one, but overall they follow this pattern. MLS also has seen very very little in terms of teams being relocated, a handful (?) has folded, but their team names have not been touched. And let's not forget the abundance of great Ballparks the US has, many of whom are located very much in the city centre. Some have absolutely stunning views ( Pittsburgh 😍, St. Louis 😍 , San Francisco 😍 & many more ) from the inside not a single European stadium can provide, because skyline and skyscrapers are super duper rare over here. He also didn't mention ballparks like Fenway Park, Wrigley Field or Dodger Stadium. Absolutely on the same level as El Bernabéu, Camp Nou, San Siro, Anfield, Westfalenstadion! Why do i keep harping on about Baseball? Because it is the traditional American game dating back to the very early beginning of the 20th Century. The first World Series was played in 1901 (?) - Baseball is the original traditional American team sport - not Football! Football might have overtaken Baseball since the 1990s (?), but the faux comparison is extremely disingenious. The first UEFA Champions League predecessor was only played in 1956, the first Premier League in the early 1990s!!! And i haven't even mentioned old stadiums like the Polo Grounds in NYC or others. Last but not least, check out St. Louis - stadiums for all 5 major sports ( although they currently only have 3 out of 5 sports represented ) are centrally located and within walking distance of the City Hall and its main sight - the Gateway Arch. Some other cities like Detroit or other Midwestern cities are similar. I could also go on about the Forum in LA or MSG, or how the recent trend of new arenas and super stadiums is even in the US a trend that only really got started in the 1990s but only really in the last 15 (?) years has really started to reach absurd levels. Sorry for the ra nt. Thanks for reading. 😁 From Germany with ❤
10 days paid leave is not at all common in the US. Its only available to people with nice office jobs. The mass majority of people in America don’t get paid leave at all.
I will say this… huge difference between college football stadiums and NFL. College football has some of the best and most beautiful stadiums in the world. Amazing atmospheres too.
It's funny how Europeans don't understand that we got so much land that is untouch by civilization. Could fill those 20 countries and more so having a big parking lot is not that big of deal
Stop saying the word “the” before the names of American stadiums. Us Americans don’t to that because it sounds weird. The Polo Grounds is the only exception.
I can comprehend the reasons as a Euro because I've seen how the US works. You HAVE to drive. There are no walkable cities/towns really. Meaning they need to the car parking. So the space needed is huge. If you live in the suburbs in the US - you may need to drive 20 minutes to get to your closest shop. You can't walk cos it's not paved and there are no crossings, not to mention the public transport is guff.
28:11 - This is Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, MD. The Raiders never played there as a home stadium. You might have been looking for the Oakland Coliseum, where they actually were until after the 1981 season.
I am an American whose family had season tickets to the New York Giants for generations, but who has completely abandoned American football. This video covers a big piece of what turned me off. Meanwhile, I spent 3 weeks in London last spring and my AirBnB was on Loftus Road. I walked to a QPR match from my flat, saw club staff coming and going around the neighborhood all the time, and it made them feel like "my" club. I follow every match now. (What Marti has accomplished on the pitch in that time hasn't hurt either.) I hope English football is always played by hundreds of clubs representing sections of cities and little towns in 100+ year-old stadiums.
My family had Jets season tickets for many years, but we gave up not long after Metlife was built. Having to drive to the Meadowlands from Long Island was brutal, but we put up with it because of the gameday experience and the friends we made. Everything changed with the new stadium, and we just couldn't take it anymore.
Bloomberg had a plan to build a stadium on the west side of Manhattan which would have been a great move with access to the city's amenaties and public transportation but nimbyism killed that plan. I too hated driving to the Meadowlands and would have preferred enjoying what Manhattan offered before taking the F train back to Queens.
Just to add for those who dont know: the thing about teams just up and moving from city to city isnt some normalized occurance here. Everybody hates it, even the people of the city thats getting a new team.
I’m a Jets fan and don’t get me started on the stadium. Too late. About 20 or so years ago there was a project proposed in New York. It was called the West Side Stadium. It would relocate the NY Jets to the west side of Manhattan near Hudson yards. There was a MASSIVE ad campaign against it by cablevision citing that it would increase traffic and just be a terrible failure. As it turns out Cablevision is partnered with Madison Square Garden, the only stadium on Manhattan island. The project was swiftly shut down and instead high rise apartments where approximately 50k people live now. Somehow in the eyes of the people of New York City 50k people living in one area was less detrimental to congestion than people flocking from all over the world 8 Sundays a year. Now it costs $9 to drive into Manhattan, but remember folks, say “no” to a west side stadium!
It's amazing how the same city that has had a 50,000+ seat Yankee Stadium on the Harlem River in the heart of South Bronx, right next to Harlem, for 81 home games + playoffs per year for well over a century is considered a landmark of New York City, but literally the same thing in Midtown, but shaped like a square is where they draw the line.
I'm a diehard Jet fan but was glad that stadium project was shot down even if the main motivation for doing so was Dolan (Knicks, Rangers, MSG) fearing he'd lose events at MSG to an enormous domed stadium in his backyard. The simple fact is those rail yards were owned by the MTA, and as a quasi-government agency was ready to gift that land for pennies on the dollar to a private concern (Jets) without so much as a bidding process. An agency that continually struggles to run itself efficiently was going to gift a valuable asset to a billionaire, then continually raise its fares at every opportunity. Yet another reason our city (NYC) is not what it once was, catering to the world's elite and not its own citizens, the latter of course being the ones who pay more and more for declining services. Yet another example of how Woody Johnson (Jet owner) is simply not interested in being a quality owner. And really, why should he be when the league has a stranglehold over politicians that greenlight projects ultimately funded by taxpayers in exchange for "other" types of support. He took over the team around 2000 with an eye on the whole Y2K8 - referring to the year the Jets' lease at Giants Stadium was to end - and finally securing for the Jets their own home field. Alas, he did nothing other than agree to be gifted the West Side railyards, then crawled back to the Giants when it didn't pan out. The Giants were more than happy to partner with the Jets as they had already experienced cost overruns. The resultant edifice is a sterile, steel monolith in the swamps of Jersey that represents a collaboration between the teams with all the charm of smoldering garbage. It's matched perfectly the teams' play for almost the entirety of their time there. I'd love for the Jets to exercise the escape clause in the lease and build something of their own out in Queens or Nassau County, perhaps at Belmont Park. But we both know that's wishful thinking unless Johnson is extended another gift.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium. There are more than 20,000 parking spots available within a 20-minute walk of the stadium. Also most people would park their cars at the Marta station parking lots and take the train to the stadium downtown
Yeah this video was a big miss. In the United States pro football stadiums aren’t our cathedrals, College Football Stadiums are. There are 8 college stadiums that fit more than 100,000 people and have been standing for well over 100 years. MetLife is an absolute shit hole. I’d recommend looking up Neyland stadium. Very picturesque and sits right next to a river.
He did mention college stadiums. And it very much depends where you are located when it comes to college football. No doubt NFL makes far more money either way and is the global product. So its comparison to Premier League makes more sense. Also, the NFL stadiums are the ones that will be hosting the World Cup, not a single college stadium will.
@ the main point of the video though is “why are American stadiums so dystopian”. The majority of American stadiums that are revered by fans are college football stadiums not NFL stadiums, and college football stadiums aren’t dystopian. If the topic of the video was “why are NFL stadiums so dystopian” I would let it slide.
@@coltonmajor2262or maybe because nfl is the highest level and the most popular sport league in NA and because of that can be seen as the creme of the top of usa sport Its the same if you ask people about pro sport stadium from german or england they will answer premier league and budesliga 1 stadiums and not the lower league
I too prefer Europe’s model of stadium development and siting to what is used in the U.S. However, I’m not sure what is so tough to comprehend here when you consider that the United States is a continent-spanning country with significantly lower population density than Western Europe except for the Northeast corridor. This makes commuter rail significantly more expensive to build and operate, necessitating the use of passenger automobiles as the primary mode of transportation. Additionally, the more prevalent use of in-city stadiums in Europe is an artifact of their much greater age. They were constructed at a time when land was cheaper, more abundant, and less recognized for other alternative uses by investors. From a pure investment perspective it makes scant sense to put up an 80,000 seat stadium that gets at most 20 uses a year instead of a development with year-round use cases. Additionally, there are also specific political, security, and quality of life concerns from nearby residents that make placing large NFL stadiums in cities "unappealing". For those who point out counter-examples of baseball stadiums, it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Baseball stadiums near city centers are historical legacies of being older, smaller, less modern, more frequently used, and more culturally connected to the neighborhoods to which they are attached driven in part by baseball’s more nostalgic appeal to tradition and old times. That is everything that the modern NFL is not. Viewed under these lenses it should not come as a surprise that large NFL stadiums are less accessible by public transit and further away from urban centers than European football stadiums are from their city centers. This is more a vestige of different geographic, urban planning, and density differences than inherently different ideas about the best stadium experiences.
Things feel a little dystopian compared to European stadiums based on a few factors. #1 being how North American Sports operate differently than European sports. Your clubs were mostly likely formed in specific neighborhoods, hence stadiums being kept in a specific area of that city/town. Our sports don't operate like this anymore, with a few notable exceptions (Yankees in the Bronx, Mets in Queens, etc.). The teams are meant to cover a large geographic area because of fan interest, but mostly due to territorial rights in TV distribution. While the San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara, the fans come from all over the Bay Area and Northern California. Having the stadium in Santa Clara opposed to San Francisco isn't a big deal because a large majority of the fans travel large distances anyways. It's not the right way to do things but just the reality of the situation.
I don’t care what anyone in Chicago claims, the stadium where the original Soldier Field is now is not very old. It’s a new stadium built on top of the old.
@ True in a way but additions haven’t been as jarring or without consideration for the history. Solider field feels like a totally different stadium while Lambeau feels like a natural extension.
You missed the larger and more abundant college football stadiums that are built on college campuses or in neighborhoods. Also, aren't you Europeans over due for another of your famous world wars???
American football is a physically demanding game, so there is only 17 games in a season so owners make tickets prices about $100 and resellers make them even more expensive. Football games aren’t for the people in the city they are for suburbanites with disposable income and a big car. There is only 1 fan owned club in the nfl so the owners just decide build stadiums where land is cheap in the suburbs. The nfl is not an accurate view of American fan culture, college and high school football is.
We have thousands of high school football teams, hundreds of college football teams, but only 32 pro football teams. None of them are franchises that can be moved and have no owner. Elite D1 football schools have about as much popularity as either the MLB or NBA (more than NHL or MLS), while the U.S. only has 154 pro teams in 5 different sports anyway. Compare that to the number of pro teams in Europe who are usually owned by somebody. Yet what do most foreigners always talk about?
Fun fact, the flyovers are done because the pilots need the practice hours anyway and being over a specific place at a specific time in a specific altitude is an obviously a useful skill for an air force to have.
USAF gets free recruiting advertisement by having the flyover shown on TV. Not to mention lots of people going to the game are potentially a future volunteer
@@williamlloyd3769 there are multiple layers of cooperation there. Also the cool factor is pretty undeniable (unless you're a comfortable western peacenik)
NFL teams typically play at home 8 times a year and the games last for 3+ hours. MLB stadiums and NBA arenas are typically more accessible because they play far more frequently and team owners want to reduce barriers to attendance. Travel time is less of a concern when it is infrequent (mostly on Sundays) and part of a day long event. Pub culture makes more sense for frequent matches that are < 2 hours. College football is far more analogous to European club soccer but the European mind cannot comprehend college sports.
@gabriellabankova5539 either. It's up to Alfie to make the rules to keep it as interesting as possible. Making it worldwide allows him to give some more interesting players, probably someone most have never heard of before thrown in
Alfie, you’re actually wrong, here’s the things, most of the supporters don’t actually live in the city center, most supporters who can actually afford to go the games nowadays live outside the city. I can tell you the majority of Washington Commanders fan don’t live in DC, they live Maryland or Virginia. The majority of Dolphins fans don’t live in the City of Miami itself but the surrounding areas. Miami actually built their new baseball stadium in the city and no one goes, Marlins’ attendance had declined.
yeah, I think he might have missed it, or have been aware of it, but wanted to draw the comparison, because in Europe this kind of arrangement would be seen as strange
True. Most people in urban areas in the us don’t live in the actual city centers, they live in suburbs as far away from the city centers as the stadiums themselves are.
This is 100% true, in Buffalo there are 10's of Thousands of fans who travel from all over upstate NY and Canada to go to the bills games. So it makes more sense to have the stadium outside the city in a normally empty location with little traffic so we dont have 10's of thousands of cars trying to navigate downtown Buffalo. I usually can get out of the stadium and onto the highway in like 15 minutes after a game, rather than waiting for hours at other stadiums.
Same thing I said to him, his opinion is dead wrong. Here in Philly 80% of the season ticket holders are from the suburbs. We just had a big stink here in Philly because the Sixers want a new area downtown instead of were it is now in south Philly with easy access for cars. The fans who attend gave it a big no. Also he failed to due to his politics to bring up the whole crime factor in American cities being a big reason.
UK expat here living in Windsor Ontario Canada, just south (yes south) of Detroit, MI. In order to spur growth of the city the NFL Lions, MLB Tigers, NHL Red Wings, and NBA Pistons (the latter two sharing a stadium) were all relocated downtown Detroit. A streetcar (aka tram) was introduced downtown as well as the city sought to attract more family friendly attractions to a once nearly abandoned city centre. It’s uncommon in the US but has been a key part in the rebirth of downtown Detroit. Though the opportunity for this was largely due to the fact that the city centre was in such a state that the vast swaths of land required were available following “white flight”, and the invention of the car which allowed for people to live in the suburbs which in turn (along with other factors) left the downtown for dead. The city centre has become vibrant again thanks to this. And yes, you can still find spots to barbecue meat in the back of a truck, though most prefer to visit pubs and bars prior to matches. Thanks for another great video!
This is actually somewhere that Europeans should get off their high horse imo (as a Brit who dislikes much about America especially rn). Yes the Metlife looks terrible, but it's not the be all and end all of American stadiums - many of which are fascinating. Wrigley Park is so embedded in the city landscape that there's literally seats on the roofs of houses across the street that you can buy tickets for, Coors Field has a forest in it and there's so many MLB grounds where exploring the stadium is as much part of the experience as the game itself. College football (🏈) stadiums are often the epicentre of campuses, surrounded by departmental buildings and in view of dozens or hundreds of classrooms each with unique pre and post-match traditions and even though Arrowhead and the like may look soulless out of season, on a gameday they're absolutely electric - it genuinely looks like the Kaaba in Mecca. And is being herded by police into packed, sweaty boozers segragated from the opposition fans really much less dystopian than sharing a barbecue and a drink outdoors with your family and the away fans? I'm not sure. Not to mention many newer European grounds are as concreted as the US examples Alfie mentions (Coventry, Reading, Stoke, Shrewsbury, Wigan and Le Mans from personal experience). Having experienced a range of both, I think its fine for different continents to have different match traditions and practices, and for their stadia to reflect that - why not embrace it rather than put the other down?
I would recommend any Europeans visiting America to go to MLB games. The grounds are phenomial and have great fan culture. I am a Yankees fan and have been to many games. The vibe with all the bars and restaurants next to the stadium is what I imagine the UK pub culture being similar to. You guys might not like baseball but it is the best fan experience in American sports. It is fairly common for baseball fans to try and visit all 30 MLB stadiums as all are incredibly unique. Whereas if you have been to one NFL stadium you have pretty much been to them all.
For real he has a lot of good videos about interesting topics but then he just goes and gives biased talks about how much better it is where he’s from and how much worse it is in America. Maybe he should come to the United States and take in our sporting events and have his own personal lived experiences then give his takes.
It's ironic that you show the Rose Bowl when mentioning the fact that college football stadiums tend to be adjacent to or even integrated into their respective campuses. The Rose Bowl is one of the rare exceptions. UCLA plays there, but it's all the way out in Pasadena, which is nowhere near the UCLA campus. That's about 30 miles and over an hour away by car! (By the way, if any of you non-Americans are confused about why the end zones are painted for Michigan and Alabama in that particular shot, that's because it's for a postseason bowl game.)
Part of the difference between baseball and football stadiums and the logistics of where they go have to include how much they're used, and how much it costs to go. An NFL team has 8 or 9 home games in the regular season. An MLB team has 81 home games in a season. The MLB games are typically much more affordable to attend. In between are the arena sports, where the size of the arena means it's practical to put it downtown with the convention center and whatnot, but the ticket prices are still pretty high for the most part. The NBA and NHL teams get 41 home games each regular season. It's just not as hard to convince people to make a trek to a stadium on a Saturday or Sunday and make an all-day event out of it, compared to a Tuesday night baseball game.
I am a New Jerseyan whose wife is from Birmingham. MetLife stadium is an absolute eyesore. I hate that oversized air conditioner. I am jealous of my wife getting to grow up near a stunner like Villa Park.
I wouldn’t be too jealous depending on how close she actually lived to villa park it’s not the best of areas but then again compared to Newark I’d rather live in Aston
You're all over the place here Alfie but I liked it! Atlanta, GA, home of Mercedes Benz stadium, is known as "The city in the forest". The National Forest Service has deemed Atlanta (about 6.5M people) “the most heavily forested urban area in the country”. About 48% is covered in trees. Atlanta United specifically has a big sustainability initiative and engages with Trees Atlanta to plant trees around the city. There is a project going on around the stadium currently that should better reflect greenspace ideals in the city.
Also feels like your picking and choosing stadiums there are many American stadiums with enormous car parks yes but you can’t ignore stadiums like Fenway Park and Bank of America stadiums being an easy 20 minute walk from downtown
The American mind cannot comprehend Alfie just now realizing America's car centric infrastructure being ridiculous, and American sports being heavily corporatized and representing very large metro areas which cross state lines, and not just a state or a single city.
RFK stadium was in Washington DC, Candlestick Park was in San francisco, presumably for financial reasons when the new stadiums were built they moved away from their city centre base
It's also worth noting that the league structure for the NFL is part of what allows stadiums to be located as far away from large urban areas as they are. The NFL season is only 17 games long plus a few playoff games if you're lucky, which makes the distance much more tolerable for fans, only having to make that daunting trip a few times a year if you can afford it. MLB (baseball) by contrast plays a brutal 162 game schedule over 6 months, which is why their stadiums resemble the European model more closely. Taking a 2 hour drive to watch baseball 162 times in 6 months would be an insane thing to ask even the most die hard fans to do.
It was with good reason (as was implementing segregated seating between fanbases). It's also slowly being reversed - they're trialling allowing drinking at your seat in the women's leagues soon
Soldier Field is not surrounded by housing. Lake shore drive to its west. Lake Michigan to its east. Museums and parks to its north and south. Public transport is a good 15-20 min walk to the stadium. There is a lack of parking as well. Its probably the least accessible stadium in the country.
Honestly I love your content but I can’t help that as an American (who enjoys various American sports as well) I feel constantly attacked. Most of the attacks are funny but about half of them are terribly misinformed or ignorant.
I feel like so many people miss this with American city layouts (Americans included), where suburbs are still identifiably part of the city despite being under a different government or name. As bad as the Niners' move to Santa Clara was (Very Bad), it still kept games within the broader Bay Area and in a faster growing area, so not completely unfounded
You really cherry picked your examples. only 9 of 32 NFL are outside the city they are named(when they are named for the city). 14 are directly in the city center. Its only those same 9 stadiums that are not accessible to mass transport. You showed US Bank stadium, but failed show that it has a light rail station integrated onto its main plaza. But here's the main thing, over half of the NFL Cities refused to participate in the FIFA world Cup, because FIFA's demand were excessive.
I've watched a lot of vids from Europeans and I get the impression that they don't really understand our metropolitan areas or the sheer expansive nature of our country and how cities have developed.
Tailgates are a perfect example of American individualism vs itself. We don’t have bars and restaurants near our stadiums because of the need to sustain a culture built around individual car ownership over public transport, so we simply bring the equipment to make our own bars and restaurants to the stadium and have a good time anyway. Then a Bills fan breaks a plastic table by falling through it and we all have a good laugh watching it the next day.
It’s like the best of both worlds. I like having a yard and living in a somewhat low density environment but on the weekends, I can hang out with people on the one day I want to be social lol
@@adcole09 tailgating as a practice is also a lovely way to ensure that our streets and highways get a sudden rush of thousands of drunk drivers, usually well after dark. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had fun at tailgates. I even once ate thanksgiving dinner at a tailgate. But god what a ridiculous practice
@@StaySqueezy12 this is the exact attitude that has led to suburban sprawl engulfing rural areas across the country, building sprawling towns that cost multiple times more money and physical resources to maintain than denser areas. I’ve spent the majority of my life living in sprawling American suburbs, and it strikes me that most people who “like” that experience are the victims of Stockholm Syndrome
28:18 is the Baltimore Ravens stadium this photo is from the 90’s. Love you Alfie this would just be like me showing a picture of The Stadium of Light when talking about Swansea
@hitcsevens Oh lord going to write a book here. Love the video but as an American stadium fan I have (several) thoughts; 1. One thing you are missing here is that the NFL didn’t come to prominence until the 1950s. Prior to that most NFL ground shared at the local baseball grounds. In 1954 of the 12 teams, 9 1/2 ground shared (Green Bay split between its current Lambeau and Milwaukees baseball stadium. This is important because by the time they got their own stadiums land was hard to come by. 2. At that point urban planners wanted stadium complexes and you mentioned due to car culture and this lead to people moving them out of city and to suburbanites driving in. Philadelphia in particular set the example here with all of its major stadiums in the South Philly neighborhood. MetLife/Giants stadium is an example of this with a racetrack and Brendan Byrne Arena(since vacated). You also miss that many times these stadiums in small area come because these smaller cities have money to spend and want to attract people to their area. NJ offered a sweetheart to the Giants to get then across the river something a bankrupt 1970s (dystopian in its own right) NYC could not. Additionally others picked central locations to attract people from multiple communities as football doesn’t suffer the team glut footy does. This was Patriots model as the stadium was placed to be less than a hour from not only Boston but also Providence (Rhode Islands capital) and Hartford (Connecticuts capital) 3.-Another thing to add context here is simple volume of matches. Hull played 23 home championship matches plus a few FA cups games. NFL teams play on average 8 home games, at most 13. This is the secret of the NFL and college football, scarcity. Every game is an event like a concert and therefore that leads to larger capacity and being ok with the tailgate environment. This is also why costs are so exorbitant. You only 8 chances to see your team over 4 months a year. Baseball in contrast plays 81 home matches and are much something you do. This is why their grounds are much more similar to footy grounds with central locations because it’s a more regular event. 4. You did miss few NY specific things here. The Yankee stadium you showed when you mentioned the Giants ground sharing was the new one not the original(although you showed the original later). Additionally to add the tie to baseball the Football Giants got their name from the San Francisco (nee New York) Giants at the time. 5.- Really confused about your admiration of the “Spaceship” at Solider field. People hated it because the stadium was essentially gutted in 2002 and what replaced it looked so out of place compared to the classic ground. It had a terrible modern look slapped on a classical building, was small by NFL standards, and didn’t have the amenities others did. A better example would Lambeau field in Green Bay. The Packers are the closest things to European style ownership and have stayed in the same ground since the 50s building it out much like Anfield or Old Trafford. 6.- MetLife is my closest stadium and while some of what you say is true you do miss on the lack of pubs and restaurants albeit in somewhat horrible fashion. One of the recent trends to build entertainment centers next to football stadiums. MetLife has the massive American Dream mall with several restaurants and pubs within walking distance to the ground (this is somewhat soulless though). Patriots place mall in Foxborough functions in a similar manner. Additionally MetLife has a train stop on NJ transit which you can take into Manhattan with a transfer and several NYC buses as well. All that said great job on this one.
great point on #1 - I wonder if many of these Euro city center stadiums were actually on the outskirts of the city 100-150 years ago when they started playing there? I live in a small Southern US city that sprang up around a country club, established 125 years ago, that bears the name of a neighboring city because back then my town WAS the countryside.
I can confirm. I used to live 10 min away on foot from Camp Nou and had to walk around it every day to go to work. It is a normal part of the city, surrounded by bars, shops, schools... there is even a hospital literally at the other side of the road. And so, everyone gets there using the underground (metro we call it here). I remember walking back home from work just before a Barcelona - Chelsea match in 2018 and the underground stairs were crowded with drunk people with blue shirts. In fact, right now during Camp Nou's renovation, Barcelona plays at the Barcelona Olympic Stadium, which is literally metro stations from Camp Nou (same line). And people complain that it's too far...
HITC Sevens urbanist TH-cam arc, call it Not Just Football
The exact comment I came looking for
Or StadiumBeautiful ☺️
I forgot a lot of these urbanism concepts might be foreign to some viewers
Call it shit
AlfieSomething
FootballNerd
HITC Transit
The main reason the stadiums will feel dystopian is because they'll be without Freddy Adu, who is no longer playing football, having retired several years ago.
Wow so funny
without further adu, this comment should be pinned.
I was disappointed he didn’t shoehorn Freddy into the video when he mentioned FedEx Field. As we all know, Freddy is currently based out of Maryland
He could mention that for example, the Washington Commanders(formerly Redskins, yikes), used to play within DC at RFK stadium. Where Freddy Adu made his professional debut with DC United.
My team’s stadium isn’t like that although the name would certainly fool you. Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte was built in 1995 and incorporated into the city similar to those European examples.
As an American, the even more dystopian part of American stadiums is that they are basically used as hostage situations. You mentioned it a bit, but billionaire owners of American sports franchises will use relocation as a threat to get new venues. Basically, if you (the community) don't pay hundreds of millions (if not over a billion) dollars towards a new venue, we will move the team that has been here for decades to a location that will.
I'm from west of Chicago in Illinois, and there are multiple examples going on RIGHT NOW just here. The Bears are threatening to move to Arlington heights (30 miles northwest of Chicago) if the city/state don't pay significant portions of 5 billion stadium/infrastructure project. Soldier field was extensively renovated (for the worse) in the early 2000s. The White Sox are also looking to get about half of a $2 billion stadium paid for at the same time, but they may leave for Nashville or another unknown city if they don't get what they want. Keep in mind that they stadium the White Sox play in is slightly more than 30 years old and has undergone significant renovations since. In the late 1980s, the owner threatened to move the Sox to Tampa, Florida if the current stadium was not built.
Basically legal extortion, YAY!
issue isnt the hostage situation, its the supporters not sticking up for the team and the rules from the sport leagues. i mean if man united wanted to move to liverpool for a new stadium over night it goes from sold out to empty. yall just accept it. not to mention in many cases if a citys would like to fund a new stadium for a team in many countrys in europe that would mean a unfair advantages and not be possible by law or sporting league dissicion. the issue isnt what owners want its the NFL itself (who gives them to much power) not to mention the relgation promotion which allowes them to stay in the top league forever
@@robertv7996 I would say it fits the poster's description because your taxes are being held to ransom by a skinflint billionaire who doesn't want to cough up the money just seems spectacularly crass. No-one should experience that. Not the fans or the residents of the area that couldn't give two shits about the team in the first place. But then fan emotional manipulation in American sports is just ugly.
I remember that John Oliver had an episode where he talked about this and I couldn’t comprehend how that was a thing
A 30 year old stadium is a dinosaur by NFL standards. Lambeau Field makes a tenth of the revenue that So-Fi or even Levi's Stadium makes. Europeans don't look at their stadiums as profit centers and job creators. You can't add 200 luxury boxes to Soldier Field to make it competitive with Allegiant or So-Fi or Levi's or Met Life. The Big Three (I'm not counting MLS or the NHL since they don't qualify) sports in the US balance their books (before revenue sharing) on their stadium income. But these stadiums also benefit their cities. Look at how St. Louis declined after the Rams left. Camden Yards revitalized and gentrified Baltimore's downtown when it was built.
When Wimbledon FC moved to Milton Keynes and renamed themselves to the MK Dons in 2004, the Wimbledon fans created a new amateur club, and rose through the football ranks, while the MK Dons lost their support and fell down the football league pyramid and now AFC Wimbledon is higher than the MK Dons in the football league lmao
Edit: Oops he mentioned it in the video
As an American who just went to a few premier league games, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to take public transportation and not have to sit in 2+ hours of traffic instead! Very jealous
Help spread this gospel back to America....... Meanwhile, Insensitive American Hedge Fund Owners of EPL/EFL teams are trying actively to RUIN this vibe and convenience that you experienced.
Luckily, every stadium I've been to in the US has been easily accessible by public transport, but im sure there are some out there that are a nightmare to access.
I mean our public transport is the America of Europe so how you can worse than ours is very impressive
@DeeEditor1 went to yankee Stadium last summer, and I gotta say that the transport links to there were quite terrible
man getting from paddington to tottenham last may was simpler and easier than getting to any stadium in Denver where i live. actually was in shock man lmfaoooo
If they could, they would have drive-in stadiums
Please don't give them dumb ideas, they might just do it.
And imagine the braindead noise of 50k cars honking after a goal.
@@iQKyyR3K hahaha i see "cars" =)
funnily enough, most lower-level Australian football or cricket stadiums have parking bays to watch from
The local minor league baseball team here used to have a drive in area in right field 😂
this sounds like an amazing idea
To be fair, not all of the stadia that will host WC26 matches are located in suburban wastelands.
Some of them are located in urban wastelands.
Right. One can easily walk from Lumen Field past thousands of homeless vets, strung out crackheads, and Venezuelan gangsters to the central business district.
@@Fred_Lougeeparroting right wing talking points under a video about stadiums are we ?
@@MJisAGlorifiedDemarDerozen Ever been to Seattle?
@@Fred_Lougee Im non-American and Seattle was way fucking nicer than Dallas and Miami
Not able to understand modern problems are we?
I love how Lambeau Field is the almost complete opposite of this. It's so built into the neighborhood, almost like most PL stadiums
especially since it’s not in a large city and owned by the fans (to my knowledge) despite still having one of the largest fan bases in the nfl
@@ppolow yep the Green Bay Packers are the only community owned franchise in the NFL
That's deceptive tbh. If you go to a Packers game you'll notice that people rent out their lawns as parking, which is just as wasteful as a concrete parking lot. A much better example would be something like Wrigley or Soldier field in Chicago
I am so ready for Alfie's urbanist arc
Green-pilled is the new orange-pilled
Every pretentious European goes through it.
not just bikes is already orange. so is the netherlands.
Environmentalism is just one among many reasons to be an Urbanist.
@Serena_Lunar
Let's fuckin' gooooo
@@del-see-oh*correct European you mean
As an American, I’d argue that the culture of college football is more similar to club football, while NFL culture more closely resembles international football. There are well over 10 million Americans per NFL team, so they feel like they belong to the “region” more than the “city”. Meanwhile, there are about 2.5 million Americans per major college football team, so it’s not just alumni association with a university that gives it its local feel.
I couldn’t imagine Michigan tearing down the Big House (1927; 107,601 capacity), Ohio State demolishing the Shoe (1922; 102,780 capacity), or Texas A&M moving from Kyle Field (1927; 102,733 capacity). Michigan Stadium, in particular, is a beautiful ground that I assume would not offend European sensibilities.
I profoundly disagree. The culture of college football doesn't seem to be found anywhere else. I mean Japan has some high school sports too but that's still very different in the same way American high/jr high is different.
@ I wasn’t saying they are the same. But if you want to draw comparisons, as this video does, it is more appropriate in terms of sports culture to compare club football to college football than to the NFL.
It doesn't at all 😂😂😂😂
from a culture of people who openly hoot, cheer, scream and cry in cinemas! at the sight of super heroes!
I 'd argue you lot are have serious issues
Nice try, but no. and I speak from experience , As a student, I lived iNSIDE Ohio Stadium as part of the Stadium Scholarship Dormitory there...and since then 40 years of My adult life has been spent living in England with many years as an Ipswich Town Season Ticket holder. The vibe between Ohio State and Ipswich is so profoundly different I can't even begin to properly give an analogy for it.
Alfie talking about terrible U.S. transportation while my train got canceled that I take to work ): Love the videos always Alfie.
Mate, do you actually want to get to work?
Olympics would have been in Boston in 24 but our trains were so bad people protested so we didn’t host
The problems you have in the UK are not even close to the ones in US.
In the USA, the parking lot tailgate party is an important part of the stadium experience.
naturally, because there's no pubs near by
@sirius.siri3Not quite true everywhere. Why spend 10 dollars on a beer when I could buy a whole case and drink it in the parking lot for the same price?
@sirius.siri3 Not true lmfao
If you got pissed up in your car in Europe, the police would have something to say about that, not to mention the public as a whole. What's the fucking point of driving to somewhere, getting shit faced, and then not being able to drive home? 🤦
@sirius.siri3not really, even MetLife has the American Dream within walking distance that is chocked full of all sorts of pubs and stuff. Really it’s more like the appeal of camping for Sporting events.
With tailgating, it started with college teams so alumni could get together and mingle. In the US, public flagship universities were typically founded and built away from the major cities, so driving a few hours to get an entire weekend in in one day and back home for bed was typical. Basically like having a little picnic instead of trying to find a place to eat during a massively busy time before fast food was so prevalent.
See James Howard Kuntzler. Parking lots are the only place Americans have to hang out
@@Toro_Da_Corsa Dont be ridiculous. We have parks bigger than European countries…and gas stations lmao
at least with college it makes sense because there are parks and green spaces dedicated for it. instead of being in a hot parking lot in early september.
Worth noting that college football stadia are usually much more pedestrian and transit friendly than those of the nfl, even if many large state colleges are far from major population centers. Sure, fans who don’t live in town or aren’t current students will still need cars to get into town for the big game, but it’s also true that most college football stadia are seemlessly integrated into their campuses. Idk I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that even tho tailgating comes from college football tradition, I think college football stadia are, on average, much more urbanist than their professional counterparts
@@del-see-oh not for long! Exploratory resource extraction to happen in natal parks and public lands soon!
Arguably the most car dependant nation on the planet where driving out of town to large shops/restaurants is completely normal, not sure why anyone would expect anything different
Not that difficult to understand. It's a big country. Not every restaurant you want to go to is going to be within walking distance
@@timboslice150 I can’t stand the “Americas just too big to be built like a normal country” argument. It’s patently false. The vast vast majority of Americans live in urban and metropolitan areas. States like California and New York are, at the state level, denser than countries like Spain or Germany. That is a statistical fact. Obviously at a more micro local level, you start to see a real difference in density between the US and Europe, but when it comes to population clusters, we are no “bigger” than Europe. The vast vast majority of Americans live in the Northeastern Megalopolis, Southern California Metro, Texas Triangle, Great Lakes Conurbation, the Bay Area, the Florida Conurbation, the Piedmont Area, and the Pacific Northwest metro cluster. All of these regions have comparable densities to Europe. Is it true the Alaska and Montana are really big and really undeveloped? Certainly. But that’s no excuse for the fact that most people live close to each other, and we still don’t have a proper transit system or walkable streets.
Same issue here in New Zealand unfortunately
@@pjkerrigan20 Sure all of what you said is true, but all of Europe was built basically before America was even discovered. Every city in America is designed with car in mind and its hard to find a city in Europe built after cars were invented. The “Americas just too big to be built like a normal country” is more like "Americas just too young to be built like a normal country. Especially in the west. Not saying the fact they have a terrible public transit system isnt their fault, cause it is, but its less of an issue not to have one.
@autkev7112 Everything you just said applies to modern China as well and yet they have extensive high-speed trains. Everything was built from scratch over the last century.
My American mind can't comprehend that Tottenham and Crystal Palace are 14 miles away (25 driving) and that's enough to be considered *too far apart to be rivals.* Like, I genuinely can't fathom that. My Florida Gators' two biggest rivals (Florida State and Georgia) are 154 and 351 miles away and they're also our two closest annual opponents. Lol that's actually crazy
London does have 17 professional football clubs to be fair
Yeah, we have rival *high school* teams that are farther apart than that.
Come move to Perth, Australia. It easier and cheaper to fly to Asia than it is to Adelaide, out next closest national capital city 🤣. Our poor AFL (Aussie Rules) teams have to fly 5h for games every 2 weeks.
and then you have to factor in pricing. Want to fly to Bali tomorrow on short notice? $97 with numerous low cost carriers at various times. Adelaide? $180 and you have to fly Jetstar. It's a joke that it's so much easier to fly overseas then it is domestic here.
To be fair, you could probably fit the whole of the UK in florida 3 or 4 times.
That’s why I like wrigley in Chicago . They even have seats on top of buildings just outside of the buildings that you can watch the game from
Wrigley and Fenway are old time classics, may they last forever. My favorite newer classic is Camden Yards.
its mainly to do with that European Cities grew organically over hunderds and possibly thousands of years based on humans where US cities were planned by a group of architects and built for cars over the course of a couple decades.
I was just posting basically the same thing at exactly the same time as you lol
Not entirely true. American cities,especially on the east coast were already big and had streetcars and dense city centers before cars became affordable. They were bulldozed for the car, not build for the car.
That isn’t entirely true however. Look at Australia, follows the same trends or car dependency and pre planning for its cities yet its major stadiums are all much better integrated than their American counterparts.
@17Trees33 older U.S. cities along the Atlantic coast were planned before the cars. Land is just very expensive in the major cities, so NFL teams couldn’t viably build stadiums in NYC and Boston and DC proper.
@@chadchadderton while Australia is big and spread out, much of the land is not habitable, so most people live in the major cities. The same applies to Canada. Both nations are more urbanized than the U.S., in the sense that a higher percentage of the population lives in a few major metropolitan areas.
If I had to guess:
Short answer: the car lobby (and by extension, the oil lobby)
Really has more to do with laws requiring a certain amount of parking spots at a specific venue or any building. It may be a car thing but a lot of old stadiums look like Europe
@@scodo45And who do you think pushed for those laws?
It’s mostly because people in the us don’t want to live in dense urban centers. And there is a far greater availability of land farther out.
Seeing people hate on cars is hilarious.
@@mof5490I personally like cars and always have. One thing I hate though is traffic, air & noise pollution, having to commute long distances on the wheel, accidents and not being able to walk or bike to the city center.
I live 30 minutes from the Metlife and I have NO IDEA how we are gonna handle that kind of traffic. It’s going to be an awful experience for all who visit.
They handle it fine for 12 nfl games a year plus concerts and other events
@@georgehenan853the Giants and Jets on their best best best best seasons aren't drawing even close to a world cup audience lmao
@@lordfizzz 80,000 is the capacity of the stadium regardless of what’s going on there. That’s the same amount that f people that go to nfl games there every weekend.
@@lordfizzzhave you seen New York
@@AJ-nf3bn I've lived here my whole life
A big reason you didn't really cover on why the parking lots are so big is because the owners make TONS of money on the fans parking in those lots, so they are (almost) encouraged to make the stadiums more inaccessible and reliant on car transportation because they stand to make even more money. This even manifests in owners intentionally tanking public transportation projects to their stadiums, like in the case of SoFi Stadium, because the project would eat into their bottom line, even if it would be a net benefit for the fans as a whole
Yikes. This sounds properly awful
This is a very good point. Parking is so freaking expensive at these places. You're right, big miss not covering that aspect. If you ever want to know why Americans do something, just follow the money.
great point. concerts here are the same way.
Yet people still attend these things and likely pay an annual salary just to experience the corporate entertainment life for one game.. That boggles my mind.
@@apropercuppa8612 its because a lot of Americans make a lot more money than most Europeans. Its not a financial burden to frequently go to these games when Americans make, on average, around $20,000 more per year than Brits. I paid close to $1000/yr for 2 supporters section season tickets to my local MLS side, which would be an outrageous sum for the quality of soccer compared to the EPL, where the prices outside the big 6 are roughly equal, but it didn't feel as big of a purchase because I made around the average US salary at the time.
Your commitment to releasing videos on my lunch break Alfie is truly outstanding
Even Americans who don't like to drive hate many of these US stadiums. Major League Soccer stadiums tend to be right in the middle of their cities because their younger fanbases tend to drive less.
Here in Seattle, Lumen Field (home of the Seattle Seahawks and Sounders FC) is in the middle of tons of bars, restaurants and apartment buildings, with easy access via not only car, but also bus, train, on foot from many downtown hotels, and even via ferry! The Sounders' longtime goalkeeper takes the ferry to the stadium and walks from the ferry terminal to the stadium (among the fans) on most matchdays.
Americans don’t like to drive?what?you never leave Seattle do you?
@@frankf684 I know parsing English sentences can be difficult because you have to consider things like whether or not there's a comma, but still...
No great surprise to see Seattle/Portland being the most European-esque city (/cities) in the USA. It appears that way by many metrics, not just this one.
You're very clueless. Here in the U.S. we have a culture of tailgating before our football games. This is anywhere between 10000-20000 people or more barbecuing, grilling & smoking meats in the parking lot. This goes on all day during game day. That's why the stadiums need all that space.
@@KindredBrujah It's not. D.C., or Boston are.
Also most cities in the us only have one team in each major sport so it’s not weird for the one team to be located anywhere in the metro area where it’s convenient. The 49ers moved to Santa Clara because they already owned the land next to their practice facility that was being used for parking for the great America theme park. In Europe the teams tend to be associated with a certain neighborhood because there are multiple teams in a metro area.
Yeah. Neighborhoods don’t have teams like in England. Usually a state or big city has a team
Exactly. Like when he mentioned New England being located in Foxboro, I was like, um ok…. Foxboro Mass is IN New England so yeah that tracks hahaha
An example from this side of the Atlantic of a team building itself a new home next to its training facility on land it already owned was in fact briefly mentioned in the video: Barnet FC's Hive Stadium.
sure. But it is definitely weird from an European perspective, and something traveling Europeans wouldn't necessarily expect
The city of Cleveland is currently in a tug-of-war with the owners of the Browns (American Football) to keep the team in the city and not, as proposed, shipped out to a suburb called Brook Park. The current stadium is right on lake Erie, adjacent to downtown and has light rail service on game days. It looks like they'll probably be moved but I don't think anyone in Cleveland thinks it's a good idea (besides the actual owners of the team) to go from a prime area in the city to a dystopian parking lot across from the airport, many miles from the city center.
th-cam.com/video/xcwJt4bcnXs/w-d-xo.html
The owner is a southern-fried disaster. Deshawn Watson's contract was a harbinger of this really stupid new stadium talk. The present stadium is not good. Even Cleveland-diehard sportswriter Terry Pluto said that the Ravens (old Browns) was better. It shows a lack of imagination. They should have done a horseshoe, with end zone an almost exact replica of the Dawg Pound bleachers at Cleveland Municipal.
Part of the reason for the differences are the big differences in sports structure in the USA and Europe. The NFL has 32 teams across the entire country and there is no promotion/relegation to and from lower divisions. New York City, with a metro population of over 20 million has two NFL teams. London, with a metro population just under 15 million has 17 professional football (soccer) teams with as many as 8 (in the 1989-90) season being in the top flight at the same time. There are currently 7 teams participating in this season's Premier League in London and an additional 2 in the 2nd tier EFL Championship.
Chicago has done a great job of keeping sports venues easily accessible, the only except would be Rate Field which does look more "traditionally American" in it's placement and car-centric environment.
Tell that to the Bears when they are trying to tear down Soldier field for basically 30 years now
@@fanpackers4people that drive from the suburbs complain about the drive there. They won’t take public transport with the poors
@@samelmudir that’s not why the Bears want to tear down Soldier field. It is tiny by NFL standards but the problem is lake side property is obviously much more expensive than suburban property.
Even though it’s surrounded by parking lots, it still is connected to the L and Metra trains.
There is literally a redline stop named for the Sox ballpark. It’s infinitely more transit friendly than Soldier Field.
US football stadiums are for eight to nine home games a year; European stadiums are usually for double that many home games!
the word “tailgating” is used in both contexts in America. you can tailgate the person in front of you while driving as well as while parked at a college gameday
But can you tailgate the person cooking in front of you?
6:58 As a European Giants fan, it did confuse me why other fans mock the Giants and Jets by calling them the New Jersey Giants/Jets - when other teams' stadiums are much more further away from their namesake.
Am an American jets fan.
It’s just one of those things. Stadiums that are miles away from the city they represent is normal (like you mentioned), but it’s not normal for the stadium to literally be in another state.
It’s basically just a technicality that gets used to make fun of the giants/jets.
@ I'm just glad this isn't happening with the sixers. Camden NJ may as well be greater Philadelphia but there's just something about crossing state lines that feels so much more wrong.
The Detroit Lions of the NFL played in Pontiac (the Silverdome; where Trevor Francis played briefly for the Express) from 1975 to 2001. When the team was bad, they were called (by some) the Pontiac Pussycats.
@@kakol20908 it’s just petty banter. People love to joke that the Buffalo Bills are the only “real NY team”. In reality, Giants and Jets are New York sports teams, as in representing the city of NY. No one in NYC or Long Island cares about the Bills, local NYC media does not cover the Bills
It’s a weird state identity thing. Especially NJ’s inferiority complex
The better comparison between European Football stadiums is with American College Football. Don't think that's a step-down, not at all. The biggest stadiums in the USA are all college football (the University of Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Texas A&M and many more, dwarf almost all NFL stadiums).
My university is the University of Oregon, and it's short walk from campus thru a small woods and over the Willamette River to a very nice, beautiful stadium, Autzen Stadium.
College stadiums dont dwarf NFL stadiums, they just use benches primary for seating/standing instead of seats so they fill more people, NFL stadiums can easily fit more people just by swapping on which you sit. Europe also uses invidual seats since its UEFA mandate for its competition, only exception is Germany which clubs have part of stadium with benches but they have to switch when they play in europe and they lose bunch of possible attedance, for example Westfalenstadion goes from 82000 to 66000 when they convert their 28000 bench seating/standing to invidual seats.
The Big House, The Beav, and The Shoe are are each over 105k that are filled to capacity and with great game day experiences. There are no issues here.
@@RSeaker Never been to these stadia, I'm a west coast guy and went to Oregon, but I think they're all on campus, and have the same "feel" a European Soccer stadium has, of which HITC7 mentions.
Toronto Argonauts have been a professional team since 1873.
In Seattle, Lumen Field is in the downtown area and very accessible via public transportation. But it is certainly an exception
Fenway Park is one of America's best and most authentic stadiums in my opinion. My dad and I used to go once a year and it has this intimate and authentic feel that I haven't ever gotten visiting Foxborough or any other stadiums for that matter. My trip to Anfield had the same feeling. Say what you will about John Henry but he has good taste.
If you haven’t already, you should try to visit Wrigley on a nice summer day. In my opinion, it’s the only ballpark experience better than Fenway. The neighborhood is a lotta fun, similar to the area around fenway, but the ballpark was really gracefully renovated a few years ago, so it’s like a more polished Fenway experience. I guess there’s an argument to be made that more polish would worsen the Fenway experience, but trust me Wrigley is a real treat.
What about college football stadiums?
@georgehenan853 I haven't visited any D1 stadiums, I'm not a huge (american) football fan to be honest but those stadiums do seem to be electric and it seems a fair few have some age which I'm always fascinated by. One day.
@pjkerrigan20 the young version of me dreamed of seeing all the MLB stadiums and Wrigley was top of my list. What a place
The New England Patriots are actually an example of trying to maintain consistency between name and location. They were the Boston Patriots in the 1960s, but they could never find a suitable stadium within Boston, so when they moved to Foxborough they changed their geographic descriptor from Boston to New England, which is a regional name that applies to 5 entire states. They could move to Hartford, CT (they almost did) or Burlington, VT or Portland, ME and still be in New England.
They're halfway between Boston and Providence. Why NOT "New England Patriots" to mollify the Rhode Islander fans?
Having grown up in CT I remember the whole debate of them moving to Hartford. Most in CT except for maybe the governor knew the threat of Hartford was just to get something from MA.
I grew up 5 minutes away from Gillette stadium. Whenever our football team scored a touchdown I could hear the cannons going off. Although the loudest I've ever heard the stadium was a Rammstein concert.
Should be 'Why are America so dystopian?'.
Also, overdependency on cars are just horrific...
It’s a big country. Shit train systems or no train stations in most cases. Cars is the only way to travel for most people
Most Americans are too obese to use public transport
So-called greatest country on Earth has a less developed transit system than the poorest EU country
All the while Lausanne, a city of less than 150 000 people, has 2 metro lines spanning 28 stations
@@Ben-po8kfhere we go again with the classic “America is too big for good transportation excuse. Not sure if you’re aware, but this excuse has been overused by Americans for decades despite the fact that it’s literally not true. China, India and even Russia are all huge countries with better nationwide transportation infrastructure than the US. There is no excuse other than the fact that Americans and Canadians have dug themselves so deep into car-dependency and are now in a position where they cannot fix it.
I keep seeing Americans use this whack excuse. I swear if I see another American say this I will lose it
@@Ben-po8kfbro we have heard enough of that nonsense from Americans, your country isn’t too big for transport. You know it’s bad when freaking India has better train services than you
As a Canadian, it's always fun watching Europeans try and understand american culture.
I like these guys videos but it’s always annoying to me listening him to talk about the US. Like his serious approach to “the European mind could never comprehend this” comment as if it isn’t literally a joke was so cringe lol
@@StaySqueezy12he’s a internet dwelling liberal
@@MarDuBronx well he's not a liberal because he's not an American
@@MarDuBronx -- says the internet-dwelling conservative. How droll.
@@LordZontar the only internet s*** I have on my phone is TH-cam. And sometimes I login to twitter on the browser. This guy is active on both (and fair enough he gets paid to be an internet dwelling lib) and I’ve seen more than enough on both platforms especially twitter to see he’s a radical heavily indoctrinated dumb lefty. I laugh at both radical sides but the left is more silly and funny and stupid I have to admit.
14:16 Stoke catching strays again 😢 but to be fair the location of the stadium is horrendous
I have no idea what we were thinking.
When we built it we forgot to add a road to get to it from one way lol
we could have built it in a much better place to be honest, i live in stoke and i have to drive to get to the stadium because of the A500 and A34, i get not wanting to build it in Hanley but putting it right in a industrial park and next to the giant incenerator plant which you can see from the stadium, its uglyyyy
So what I think Europeans don’t understand is this parking lots host tailgating parties before the game it’s a tradition in football everyone brings their trucks and RV’s and cook BBQ play music and games and blast music for a couple of hours before the game you couldn’t do that in Europe
Not all. The MLS stadiums popping up all over the country have character and beautiful modern accoutrements.
The new Cincinnati Stadium wouldn't look out of place in England with all the residential brick housing around it. Hell, a good chunk of MLS stadiums are downtown or near the city centre.
That dosent fit his narrative
@@nollienick1121 it's talking specifically about the World Cup stadiums. He mentions other venues aren't like this. Stop whining
@@maciejbala477 I didn’t make a 35 min video on something I know nothing about.
As a European who spent a year in good old St. Louis a while back, i completely agree.
The creator of this channel is some sm ug spoi led brat wannabe comm ie with an agenda.
While there are plenty of bad things and bad examples in North American pro sports culture, there is plenty of good as well.
Like this thread mentioned, MLS so far has been a small but linear success story with almost all teams playing in a purpose-built "soccer" specific 25,000 stadium, and the majority even plays on real grass, most are accessible within the cities.
Some exceptions of course, or like NYCFC still in the process of building one, but overall they follow this pattern.
MLS also has seen very very little in terms of teams being relocated, a handful (?) has folded, but their team names have not been touched.
And let's not forget the abundance of great Ballparks the US has, many of whom are located very much in the city centre.
Some have absolutely stunning views ( Pittsburgh 😍, St. Louis 😍 , San Francisco 😍 & many more ) from the inside not a single European stadium can provide, because skyline and skyscrapers are super duper rare over here.
He also didn't mention ballparks like Fenway Park, Wrigley Field or Dodger Stadium.
Absolutely on the same level as El Bernabéu, Camp Nou, San Siro, Anfield, Westfalenstadion!
Why do i keep harping on about Baseball?
Because it is the traditional American game dating back to the very early beginning of the 20th Century.
The first World Series was played in 1901 (?) - Baseball is the original traditional American team sport - not Football!
Football might have overtaken Baseball since the 1990s (?), but the faux comparison is extremely disingenious.
The first UEFA Champions League predecessor was only played in 1956, the first Premier League in the early 1990s!!!
And i haven't even mentioned old stadiums like the Polo Grounds in NYC or others.
Last but not least, check out St. Louis - stadiums for all 5 major sports ( although they currently only have 3 out of 5 sports represented ) are centrally located and within walking distance of the City Hall and its main sight - the Gateway Arch.
Some other cities like Detroit or other Midwestern cities are similar.
I could also go on about the Forum in LA or MSG, or how the recent trend of new arenas and super stadiums is even in the US a trend that only really got started in the 1990s but only really in the last 15 (?) years has really started to reach absurd levels.
Sorry for the ra nt.
Thanks for reading. 😁
From Germany with ❤
10 days paid leave is not at all common in the US. Its only available to people with nice office jobs. The mass majority of people in America don’t get paid leave at all.
does he not realize that an hour drive here in the US is considered short?
Do you not realize that a 10 minute walk is better than an hours drive, even in America?
Do you not realise that's the point? A European hour isn't metric you know? They are both 60 minutes.
They only understand Extra large food.
Do you not realise that is exactly THE problem
@@iQKyyR3Knot at all, you europeans wouldnt survive a week in the florida humidity or arizona heat
Zoom out of Metlife even further and you'll see the concrete and car parts are surrounded by swamp lands (RIP IZOD Center)
I will say this… huge difference between college football stadiums and NFL. College football has some of the best and most beautiful stadiums in the world. Amazing atmospheres too.
It's funny how Europeans don't understand that we got so much land that is untouch by civilization. Could fill those 20 countries and more so having a big parking lot is not that big of deal
Nah mate I'm British but having a B2 flyover at a sports stadium would be epic are you kidding?
you'd have to borrow ours ;)
Just so you know Washington D.C. is not actually a state, but rather a "District of Columbia", of which it is the only one.
Stop saying the word “the” before the names of American stadiums. Us Americans don’t to that because it sounds weird. The Polo Grounds is the only exception.
I learned something new today lol
When he called it "The Shea Stadium" I was like WTF?!? 🤣🤣🤣
I can comprehend the reasons as a Euro because I've seen how the US works. You HAVE to drive. There are no walkable cities/towns really. Meaning they need to the car parking. So the space needed is huge.
If you live in the suburbs in the US - you may need to drive 20 minutes to get to your closest shop. You can't walk cos it's not paved and there are no crossings, not to mention the public transport is guff.
28:11 - This is Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, MD. The Raiders never played there as a home stadium. You might have been looking for the Oakland Coliseum, where they actually were until after the 1981 season.
Good catch. I was wondering...(I'm from the Bay)
I dont think he understands that NFL teams represent whole areas, like san Francisco representing the bay area.
He’s always going about europes history but overlooks USAs
I am an American whose family had season tickets to the New York Giants for generations, but who has completely abandoned American football. This video covers a big piece of what turned me off. Meanwhile, I spent 3 weeks in London last spring and my AirBnB was on Loftus Road. I walked to a QPR match from my flat, saw club staff coming and going around the neighborhood all the time, and it made them feel like "my" club. I follow every match now. (What Marti has accomplished on the pitch in that time hasn't hurt either.) I hope English football is always played by hundreds of clubs representing sections of cities and little towns in 100+ year-old stadiums.
My family had Jets season tickets for many years, but we gave up not long after Metlife was built. Having to drive to the Meadowlands from Long Island was brutal, but we put up with it because of the gameday experience and the friends we made. Everything changed with the new stadium, and we just couldn't take it anymore.
Bloomberg had a plan to build a stadium on the west side of Manhattan which would have been a great move with access to the city's amenaties and public transportation but nimbyism killed that plan. I too hated driving to the Meadowlands and would have preferred enjoying what Manhattan offered before taking the F train back to Queens.
Just to add for those who dont know: the thing about teams just up and moving from city to city isnt some normalized occurance here. Everybody hates it, even the people of the city thats getting a new team.
I’m a Jets fan and don’t get me started on the stadium. Too late. About 20 or so years ago there was a project proposed in New York. It was called the West Side Stadium. It would relocate the NY Jets to the west side of Manhattan near Hudson yards. There was a MASSIVE ad campaign against it by cablevision citing that it would increase traffic and just be a terrible failure. As it turns out Cablevision is partnered with Madison Square Garden, the only stadium on Manhattan island. The project was swiftly shut down and instead high rise apartments where approximately 50k people live now. Somehow in the eyes of the people of New York City 50k people living in one area was less detrimental to congestion than people flocking from all over the world 8 Sundays a year. Now it costs $9 to drive into Manhattan, but remember folks, say “no” to a west side stadium!
It's amazing how the same city that has had a 50,000+ seat Yankee Stadium on the Harlem River in the heart of South Bronx, right next to Harlem, for 81 home games + playoffs per year for well over a century is considered a landmark of New York City, but literally the same thing in Midtown, but shaped like a square is where they draw the line.
I'm a diehard Jet fan but was glad that stadium project was shot down even if the main motivation for doing so was Dolan (Knicks, Rangers, MSG) fearing he'd lose events at MSG to an enormous domed stadium in his backyard. The simple fact is those rail yards were owned by the MTA, and as a quasi-government agency was ready to gift that land for pennies on the dollar to a private concern (Jets) without so much as a bidding process. An agency that continually struggles to run itself efficiently was going to gift a valuable asset to a billionaire, then continually raise its fares at every opportunity. Yet another reason our city (NYC) is not what it once was, catering to the world's elite and not its own citizens, the latter of course being the ones who pay more and more for declining services.
Yet another example of how Woody Johnson (Jet owner) is simply not interested in being a quality owner. And really, why should he be when the league has a stranglehold over politicians that greenlight projects ultimately funded by taxpayers in exchange for "other" types of support. He took over the team around 2000 with an eye on the whole Y2K8 - referring to the year the Jets' lease at Giants Stadium was to end - and finally securing for the Jets their own home field. Alas, he did nothing other than agree to be gifted the West Side railyards, then crawled back to the Giants when it didn't pan out. The Giants were more than happy to partner with the Jets as they had already experienced cost overruns. The resultant edifice is a sterile, steel monolith in the swamps of Jersey that represents a collaboration between the teams with all the charm of smoldering garbage. It's matched perfectly the teams' play for almost the entirety of their time there. I'd love for the Jets to exercise the escape clause in the lease and build something of their own out in Queens or Nassau County, perhaps at Belmont Park. But we both know that's wishful thinking unless Johnson is extended another gift.
@@gabetalks9275 Baseball is king here. No two ways about it.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium. There are more than 20,000 parking spots available within a 20-minute walk of the stadium. Also most people would park their cars at the Marta station parking lots and take the train to the stadium downtown
Yeah this video was a big miss. In the United States pro football stadiums aren’t our cathedrals, College Football Stadiums are. There are 8 college stadiums that fit more than 100,000 people and have been standing for well over 100 years. MetLife is an absolute shit hole. I’d recommend looking up Neyland stadium. Very picturesque and sits right next to a river.
good point. most pro stadiums are more like where your team goes to work than a place you revere fondly.
He did mention college stadiums. And it very much depends where you are located when it comes to college football. No doubt NFL makes far more money either way and is the global product. So its comparison to Premier League makes more sense. Also, the NFL stadiums are the ones that will be hosting the World Cup, not a single college stadium will.
@ the main point of the video though is “why are American stadiums so dystopian”. The majority of American stadiums that are revered by fans are college football stadiums not NFL stadiums, and college football stadiums aren’t dystopian. If the topic of the video was “why are NFL stadiums so dystopian” I would let it slide.
@@coltonmajor2262or maybe because nfl is the highest level and the most popular sport league in NA and because of that can be seen as the creme of the top of usa sport
Its the same if you ask people about pro sport stadium from german or england they will answer premier league and budesliga 1 stadiums and not the lower league
I too prefer Europe’s model of stadium development and siting to what is used in the U.S. However, I’m not sure what is so tough to comprehend here when you consider that the United States is a continent-spanning country with significantly lower population density than Western Europe except for the Northeast corridor. This makes commuter rail significantly more expensive to build and operate, necessitating the use of passenger automobiles as the primary mode of transportation. Additionally, the more prevalent use of in-city stadiums in Europe is an artifact of their much greater age. They were constructed at a time when land was cheaper, more abundant, and less recognized for other alternative uses by investors. From a pure investment perspective it makes scant sense to put up an 80,000 seat stadium that gets at most 20 uses a year instead of a development with year-round use cases. Additionally, there are also specific political, security, and quality of life concerns from nearby residents that make placing large NFL stadiums in cities "unappealing". For those who point out counter-examples of baseball stadiums, it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Baseball stadiums near city centers are historical legacies of being older, smaller, less modern, more frequently used, and more culturally connected to the neighborhoods to which they are attached driven in part by baseball’s more nostalgic appeal to tradition and old times. That is everything that the modern NFL is not. Viewed under these lenses it should not come as a surprise that large NFL stadiums are less accessible by public transit and further away from urban centers than European football stadiums are from their city centers. This is more a vestige of different geographic, urban planning, and density differences than inherently different ideas about the best stadium experiences.
Things feel a little dystopian compared to European stadiums based on a few factors. #1 being how North American Sports operate differently than European sports. Your clubs were mostly likely formed in specific neighborhoods, hence stadiums being kept in a specific area of that city/town. Our sports don't operate like this anymore, with a few notable exceptions (Yankees in the Bronx, Mets in Queens, etc.). The teams are meant to cover a large geographic area because of fan interest, but mostly due to territorial rights in TV distribution. While the San Francisco 49ers play in Santa Clara, the fans come from all over the Bay Area and Northern California. Having the stadium in Santa Clara opposed to San Francisco isn't a big deal because a large majority of the fans travel large distances anyways. It's not the right way to do things but just the reality of the situation.
This man has no clue how fun tailgating is.
I don’t care what anyone in Chicago claims, the stadium where the original Soldier Field is now is not very old. It’s a new stadium built on top of the old.
@@msk1170 yeah it wasn’t a good example. Lambeau would have been better.
@@mets137781by that logic, lambeau field is not the original lambeau field lol
@ True in a way but additions haven’t been as jarring or without consideration for the history. Solider field feels like a totally different stadium while Lambeau feels like a natural extension.
You missed the larger and more abundant college football stadiums that are built on college campuses or in neighborhoods. Also, aren't you Europeans over due for another of your famous world wars???
American football is a physically demanding game, so there is only 17 games in a season so owners make tickets prices about $100 and resellers make them even more expensive. Football games aren’t for the people in the city they are for suburbanites with disposable income and a big car. There is only 1 fan owned club in the nfl so the owners just decide build stadiums where land is cheap in the suburbs. The nfl is not an accurate view of American fan culture, college and high school football is.
Plus that one fan owned club was grandfathered in with that structure and it's now forbidden for other teams to use that model
We have thousands of high school football teams, hundreds of college football teams, but only 32 pro football teams. None of them are franchises that can be moved and have no owner. Elite D1 football schools have about as much popularity as either the MLB or NBA (more than NHL or MLS), while the U.S. only has 154 pro teams in 5 different sports anyway. Compare that to the number of pro teams in Europe who are usually owned by somebody. Yet what do most foreigners always talk about?
@@Savalatte it's difficult to compare different models. And this video specifically is about the World Cup stadiums.
Fun fact, the flyovers are done because the pilots need the practice hours anyway and being over a specific place at a specific time in a specific altitude is an obviously a useful skill for an air force to have.
USAF gets free recruiting advertisement by having the flyover shown on TV. Not to mention lots of people going to the game are potentially a future volunteer
@williamlloyd3769 the US Military actually pays the NFL
@@williamlloyd3769 there are multiple layers of cooperation there.
Also the cool factor is pretty undeniable (unless you're a comfortable western peacenik)
NFL teams typically play at home 8 times a year and the games last for 3+ hours. MLB stadiums and NBA arenas are typically more accessible because they play far more frequently and team owners want to reduce barriers to attendance. Travel time is less of a concern when it is infrequent (mostly on Sundays) and part of a day long event. Pub culture makes more sense for frequent matches that are < 2 hours.
College football is far more analogous to European club soccer but the European mind cannot comprehend college sports.
Day 15 of asking for a video of the 7 greatest lower league players of all time.
In England or world-wide?
@gabriellabankova5539 either. It's up to Alfie to make the rules to keep it as interesting as possible. Making it worldwide allows him to give some more interesting players, probably someone most have never heard of before thrown in
Mick Gooding. Or Phil Parkinson. Or Michael Gilkes. Yo'u're welcome.
@@NudgerThe Robin Friday
What about doing it your effing self ?? Move it
Why is literally every square inch of the UK besides London so dystopian
Taking things well I see
@Santiago-eh2ts everyone knows it's a trash bin. Basically third world country at this point
Alfie, you’re actually wrong, here’s the things, most of the supporters don’t actually live in the city center, most supporters who can actually afford to go the games nowadays live outside the city. I can tell you the majority of Washington Commanders fan don’t live in DC, they live Maryland or Virginia. The majority of Dolphins fans don’t live in the City of Miami itself but the surrounding areas. Miami actually built their new baseball stadium in the city and no one goes, Marlins’ attendance had declined.
yeah, I think he might have missed it, or have been aware of it, but wanted to draw the comparison, because in Europe this kind of arrangement would be seen as strange
Commanders have a Maryland stadium
True. Most people in urban areas in the us don’t live in the actual city centers, they live in suburbs as far away from the city centers as the stadiums themselves are.
This is 100% true, in Buffalo there are 10's of Thousands of fans who travel from all over upstate NY and Canada to go to the bills games. So it makes more sense to have the stadium outside the city in a normally empty location with little traffic so we dont have 10's of thousands of cars trying to navigate downtown Buffalo. I usually can get out of the stadium and onto the highway in like 15 minutes after a game, rather than waiting for hours at other stadiums.
Same thing I said to him, his opinion is dead wrong. Here in Philly 80% of the season ticket holders are from the suburbs. We just had a big stink here in Philly because the Sixers want a new area downtown instead of were it is now in south Philly with easy access for cars. The fans who attend gave it a big no. Also he failed to due to his politics to bring up the whole crime factor in American cities being a big reason.
You never tailgated at a Football Game and it shows…
Way more elite than bars
UK expat here living in Windsor Ontario Canada, just south (yes south) of Detroit, MI. In order to spur growth of the city the NFL Lions, MLB Tigers, NHL Red Wings, and NBA Pistons (the latter two sharing a stadium) were all relocated downtown Detroit. A streetcar (aka tram) was introduced downtown as well as the city sought to attract more family friendly attractions to a once nearly abandoned city centre. It’s uncommon in the US but has been a key part in the rebirth of downtown Detroit. Though the opportunity for this was largely due to the fact that the city centre was in such a state that the vast swaths of land required were available following “white flight”, and the invention of the car which allowed for people to live in the suburbs which in turn (along with other factors) left the downtown for dead. The city centre has become vibrant again thanks to this. And yes, you can still find spots to barbecue meat in the back of a truck, though most prefer to visit pubs and bars prior to matches. Thanks for another great video!
You must be south of the river, then.
@@woodside4lifeI am, Windsor is south of Detroit, much to the surprise of many.
@@stephenhargreaves9757 yep, an odd geographic fact: the bend of the river makes Canada south of the United States.
This is actually somewhere that Europeans should get off their high horse imo (as a Brit who dislikes much about America especially rn). Yes the Metlife looks terrible, but it's not the be all and end all of American stadiums - many of which are fascinating. Wrigley Park is so embedded in the city landscape that there's literally seats on the roofs of houses across the street that you can buy tickets for, Coors Field has a forest in it and there's so many MLB grounds where exploring the stadium is as much part of the experience as the game itself. College football (🏈) stadiums are often the epicentre of campuses, surrounded by departmental buildings and in view of dozens or hundreds of classrooms each with unique pre and post-match traditions and even though Arrowhead and the like may look soulless out of season, on a gameday they're absolutely electric - it genuinely looks like the Kaaba in Mecca. And is being herded by police into packed, sweaty boozers segragated from the opposition fans really much less dystopian than sharing a barbecue and a drink outdoors with your family and the away fans? I'm not sure. Not to mention many newer European grounds are as concreted as the US examples Alfie mentions (Coventry, Reading, Stoke, Shrewsbury, Wigan and Le Mans from personal experience). Having experienced a range of both, I think its fine for different continents to have different match traditions and practices, and for their stadia to reflect that - why not embrace it rather than put the other down?
I would recommend any Europeans visiting America to go to MLB games. The grounds are phenomial and have great fan culture. I am a Yankees fan and have been to many games. The vibe with all the bars and restaurants next to the stadium is what I imagine the UK pub culture being similar to. You guys might not like baseball but it is the best fan experience in American sports. It is fairly common for baseball fans to try and visit all 30 MLB stadiums as all are incredibly unique. Whereas if you have been to one NFL stadium you have pretty much been to them all.
For real he has a lot of good videos about interesting topics but then he just goes and gives biased talks about how much better it is where he’s from and how much worse it is in America. Maybe he should come to the United States and take in our sporting events and have his own personal lived experiences then give his takes.
Wow. A normal good take from a European. Nice to see.
I agree. Why the fuck does this matter to anyone but the USA.
@@josephsimmons7351 the only thing about it that would put me off is baseball being extremely boring 😂
@@maciejbala477 bro we are soccer fans we have no right to call baseball boring lol
It's ironic that you show the Rose Bowl when mentioning the fact that college football stadiums tend to be adjacent to or even integrated into their respective campuses. The Rose Bowl is one of the rare exceptions. UCLA plays there, but it's all the way out in Pasadena, which is nowhere near the UCLA campus. That's about 30 miles and over an hour away by car! (By the way, if any of you non-Americans are confused about why the end zones are painted for Michigan and Alabama in that particular shot, that's because it's for a postseason bowl game.)
Part of the difference between baseball and football stadiums and the logistics of where they go have to include how much they're used, and how much it costs to go. An NFL team has 8 or 9 home games in the regular season. An MLB team has 81 home games in a season. The MLB games are typically much more affordable to attend. In between are the arena sports, where the size of the arena means it's practical to put it downtown with the convention center and whatnot, but the ticket prices are still pretty high for the most part. The NBA and NHL teams get 41 home games each regular season.
It's just not as hard to convince people to make a trek to a stadium on a Saturday or Sunday and make an all-day event out of it, compared to a Tuesday night baseball game.
I am a New Jerseyan whose wife is from Birmingham. MetLife stadium is an absolute eyesore. I hate that oversized air conditioner. I am jealous of my wife getting to grow up near a stunner like Villa Park.
I wouldn’t be too jealous depending on how close she actually lived to villa park it’s not the best of areas but then again compared to Newark I’d rather live in Aston
Greatest stadium in all of football!
@@ScarletKnight-mq5cz yeah MetLife they tried for Allianz arena and came with that…. It’s a shame since they did well on the other stadiums
Yeah, but she had to live in Birmingham so.......
You're all over the place here Alfie but I liked it! Atlanta, GA, home of Mercedes Benz stadium, is known as "The city in the forest". The National Forest Service has deemed Atlanta (about 6.5M people) “the most heavily forested urban area in the country”. About 48% is covered in trees. Atlanta United specifically has a big sustainability initiative and engages with Trees Atlanta to plant trees around the city. There is a project going on around the stadium currently that should better reflect greenspace ideals in the city.
Also feels like your picking and choosing stadiums there are many American stadiums with enormous car parks yes but you can’t ignore stadiums like Fenway Park and Bank of America stadiums being an easy 20 minute walk from downtown
The American mind cannot comprehend Alfie just now realizing America's car centric infrastructure being ridiculous, and American sports being heavily corporatized and representing very large metro areas which cross state lines, and not just a state or a single city.
RFK stadium was in Washington DC, Candlestick Park was in San francisco, presumably for financial reasons when the new stadiums were built they moved away from their city centre base
im english and a massive football fan and a b2 flying over the stadium is cool as fuck what you about geez
Very lucky to live in Baltimore and have both of our stadiums downtown and walking distance from my apartment. This is absolutely not the norm
It's also worth noting that the league structure for the NFL is part of what allows stadiums to be located as far away from large urban areas as they are. The NFL season is only 17 games long plus a few playoff games if you're lucky, which makes the distance much more tolerable for fans, only having to make that daunting trip a few times a year if you can afford it. MLB (baseball) by contrast plays a brutal 162 game schedule over 6 months, which is why their stadiums resemble the European model more closely. Taking a 2 hour drive to watch baseball 162 times in 6 months would be an insane thing to ask even the most die hard fans to do.
What’s dystopian is not being able to drink at your seat while at a game .
You can drink at your seat in most leagues, just not England. You can drink at Rugby ganes in UK.
It was with good reason (as was implementing segregated seating between fanbases). It's also slowly being reversed - they're trialling allowing drinking at your seat in the women's leagues soon
The video hits home for me as an American as I watch your videos religously during my 30 minute 15 mile drive to work in the morning😂
I'm sure this comments section will be peaceful and not hostile at all 🙃
😂 yeah I've already seen glimpses of this
Soldier Field is not surrounded by housing. Lake shore drive to its west. Lake Michigan to its east. Museums and parks to its north and south. Public transport is a good 15-20 min walk to the stadium. There is a lack of parking as well. Its probably the least accessible stadium in the country.
Flyovers go hard asf bro idk what kind of crack you’re on to think otherwise
Your next video should be on why Hull's pitch is so shit
Honestly I love your content but I can’t help that as an American (who enjoys various American sports as well) I feel constantly attacked. Most of the attacks are funny but about half of them are terribly misinformed or ignorant.
Just like any euro take. Just miss and miss.
@@nollienick1121 I'm sure you have very cultured and intelligent takes on Europe, then
@ nope. I don’t make takes on things that I don’t know
The term ‘soft’ comes to mind
TBF.... Not called the Boston Patriots. New England is the region that Massachusetts is in.
I feel like so many people miss this with American city layouts (Americans included), where suburbs are still identifiably part of the city despite being under a different government or name. As bad as the Niners' move to Santa Clara was (Very Bad), it still kept games within the broader Bay Area and in a faster growing area, so not completely unfounded
Try the stadiums in Cincinnati Ohio, the stadiums are integrated into the city
Important to note solider field is being torn down and the Bears are getting moved out to the suburbs
Alfie, never change. Urbanist Alfie wasn't on my bingo card, but I'm glad to check it off.
Signed, your biggest fan in the great state of Indiana.
The Atlanta Braves were founded in 1871 so are older than Stamford Bridge. NFL teams are younger but many baseball teams are well over 100 years old
The Cardinals were founded in 1898
@ that’s the oldest nfl team. Most are much younger
I can’t take the A.I. generated voice
Just his annoying pompous voice
You really cherry picked your examples. only 9 of 32 NFL are outside the city they are named(when they are named for the city). 14 are directly in the city center. Its only those same 9 stadiums that are not accessible to mass transport. You showed US Bank stadium, but failed show that it has a light rail station integrated onto its main plaza. But here's the main thing, over half of the NFL Cities refused to participate in the FIFA world Cup, because FIFA's demand were excessive.
I've watched a lot of vids from Europeans and I get the impression that they don't really understand our metropolitan areas or the sheer expansive nature of our country and how cities have developed.
They're not dystopian at all. Tailgate oarties are the best
Tailgates are a perfect example of American individualism vs itself. We don’t have bars and restaurants near our stadiums because of the need to sustain a culture built around individual car ownership over public transport, so we simply bring the equipment to make our own bars and restaurants to the stadium and have a good time anyway. Then a Bills fan breaks a plastic table by falling through it and we all have a good laugh watching it the next day.
I don’t think bills fans are laughing right now
@ Unfortunately none of us are. Plastic table stocks are in shambles.
It’s like the best of both worlds. I like having a yard and living in a somewhat low density environment but on the weekends, I can hang out with people on the one day I want to be social lol
@@adcole09 tailgating as a practice is also a lovely way to ensure that our streets and highways get a sudden rush of thousands of drunk drivers, usually well after dark. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had fun at tailgates. I even once ate thanksgiving dinner at a tailgate. But god what a ridiculous practice
@@StaySqueezy12 this is the exact attitude that has led to suburban sprawl engulfing rural areas across the country, building sprawling towns that cost multiple times more money and physical resources to maintain than denser areas. I’ve spent the majority of my life living in sprawling American suburbs, and it strikes me that most people who “like” that experience are the victims of Stockholm Syndrome
28:18 is the Baltimore Ravens stadium this photo is from the 90’s.
Love you Alfie this would just be like me showing a picture of The Stadium of Light when talking about Swansea
@hitcsevens Oh lord going to write a book here. Love the video but as an American stadium fan I have (several) thoughts;
1. One thing you are missing here is that the NFL didn’t come to prominence until the 1950s. Prior to that most NFL ground shared at the local baseball grounds. In 1954 of the 12 teams, 9 1/2 ground shared (Green Bay split between its current Lambeau and Milwaukees baseball stadium. This is important because by the time they got their own stadiums land was hard to come by.
2. At that point urban planners wanted stadium complexes and you mentioned due to car culture and this lead to people moving them out of city and to suburbanites driving in. Philadelphia in particular set the example here with all of its major stadiums in the South Philly neighborhood. MetLife/Giants stadium is an example of this with a racetrack and Brendan Byrne Arena(since vacated).
You also miss that many times these stadiums in small area come because these smaller cities have money to spend and want to attract people to their area. NJ offered a sweetheart to the Giants to get then across the river something a bankrupt 1970s (dystopian in its own right) NYC could not.
Additionally others picked central locations to attract people from multiple communities as football doesn’t suffer the team glut footy does. This was Patriots model as the stadium was placed to be less than a hour from not only Boston but also Providence (Rhode Islands capital) and Hartford (Connecticuts capital)
3.-Another thing to add context here is simple volume of matches. Hull played 23 home championship matches plus a few FA cups games. NFL teams play on average 8 home games, at most 13. This is the secret of the NFL and college football, scarcity. Every game is an event like a concert and therefore that leads to larger capacity and being ok with the tailgate environment. This is also why costs are so exorbitant. You only 8 chances to see your team over 4 months a year.
Baseball in contrast plays 81 home matches and are much something you do. This is why their grounds are much more similar to footy grounds with central locations because it’s a more regular event.
4. You did miss few NY specific things here. The Yankee stadium you showed when you mentioned the Giants ground sharing was the new one not the original(although you showed the original later). Additionally to add the tie to baseball the Football Giants got their name from the San Francisco (nee New York) Giants at the time.
5.- Really confused about your admiration of the “Spaceship” at Solider field. People hated it because the stadium was essentially gutted in 2002 and what replaced it looked so out of place compared to the classic ground. It had a terrible modern look slapped on a classical building, was small by NFL standards, and didn’t have the amenities others did. A better example would Lambeau field in Green Bay. The Packers are the closest things to European style ownership and have stayed in the same ground since the 50s building it out much like Anfield or Old Trafford.
6.- MetLife is my closest stadium and while some of what you say is true you do miss on the lack of pubs and restaurants albeit in somewhat horrible fashion. One of the recent trends to build entertainment centers next to football stadiums. MetLife has the massive American Dream mall with several restaurants and pubs within walking distance to the ground (this is somewhat soulless though). Patriots place mall in Foxborough functions in a similar manner.
Additionally MetLife has a train stop on NJ transit which you can take into Manhattan with a transfer and several NYC buses as well.
All that said great job on this one.
great point on #1 - I wonder if many of these Euro city center stadiums were actually on the outskirts of the city 100-150 years ago when they started playing there? I live in a small Southern US city that sprang up around a country club, established 125 years ago, that bears the name of a neighboring city because back then my town WAS the countryside.
I can confirm. I used to live 10 min away on foot from Camp Nou and had to walk around it every day to go to work. It is a normal part of the city, surrounded by bars, shops, schools... there is even a hospital literally at the other side of the road. And so, everyone gets there using the underground (metro we call it here). I remember walking back home from work just before a Barcelona - Chelsea match in 2018 and the underground stairs were crowded with drunk people with blue shirts. In fact, right now during Camp Nou's renovation, Barcelona plays at the Barcelona Olympic Stadium, which is literally metro stations from Camp Nou (same line). And people complain that it's too far...
April fools video idea: "footballers i'd let my wife have an affair with"
If my wife had an affair with Paolo Maldini I’d apologise to her
I raise one better "Footballers I'd cheat on my wife with"