Coach Lasso and the embodiment of American exceptionalism: NBC Sports promotion of English Premier League football as the foreign sport

ABSTRACT

This study considers the campaign of American broadcast network NBC to cultivate a US-based audience for the English Premier League (EPL) after purchasing broadcast rights in 2013. This involved the creation and introduction of a fictional character, American football coach Ted Lasso, who initially came to England to manage a soccer team and later to provide broadcast commentary. A series of videos chronicling the coach’s antics, soccer and cultural illiteracy, immense inexperience, and limited perspective, which debuted shortly before the network’s inaugural coverage began, garnered considerable attention. A thematic analysis indicated that the campaign portrayed Ted Lasso as an unknowing fool and cavalier clown accompanied by a knowledgeable sidekick, anchored his perspective on American football exclusively, and projected soccer as a foreign, feminine and youth sport. NBC Sports’ promotional campaign effectively combined comedic elements like farce and parody to critique and confront American exceptionalism and US historical indifference to soccer.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Delgado, ‘Major League Soccer’; Markovits andHellerman, ‘Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism’; and Van Reenen,‘The Promise of Soccer in American’.

2. Brown, ‘Fleet Feet’; Delgado, ‘Major League Soccer’; and Novak and Billings, ‘The Fervent, the Ambivalent, and the Great Gap Between’.

3. Delgado, ‘Major League Soccer’.

4. Ibid; Markovits and Green, ‘FIFA, the Video Game’; and Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism’.

5. Gerke, ‘Supporters, Not Consumers. Grassroots Supporters’ Culture and Sports Entertainment in the US’; Henderson, ‘Two Balls is Too Many’; Kassing, ‘I Just Couldn’t Believe I was There’; Stocz and Frederick, ‘Is the Disease Spreading?’; and Wagner and Shobe, ‘Identity, Scale and Soccer Supporter Groups’.

6. Markovits and Green, ‘FIFA, the Video Game’.

7. Richelieu, Lopez, and Desbordes, ‘The Internationalisation of Sports Team Brand:’.

8. Kassing and Nyaupane, ‘I Just Couldn’t Believe I was There’.

9. thebrooklynbrothers.com/nbc.html

10. Ibid

11. Prince-Wright, ‘NBC Sports Agrees to Six-year Extension as Exclusive Home of Premier League in the US’.

12. Bauman, ‘Verbal Art as Performance’, 292.

13. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, 51.

14. Ibid, 54.

15. Ibid, 53.

16. Van Gorp, ‘The Constructionist Approach to Framing’.

17. Ibid, 62.

18. Ibid, 65.

19. Ibid.

20. Brown, ‘Exceptionalist America: American Sports Fans’; and Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism’.

21. Van Bottenburg, ‘Thrown for a Loss?’

22. Delgado, ‘Major League Soccer’; Markovits andHellerman, ‘Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism’; and Van Reenen,‘The Promise of Soccer in American’.

23. Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism’.

24. Buffington, ‘Us and Them: US Ambivalence Toward the World Cup and American Nationalism’, 141.

25. Ibid, 141.

26. Ibid, 142.

27. Ibid, 146.

28. Ibid, 147.

29. Novak and Billings, ‘The Fervent, the Ambivalent, and the Great Gap Between’.

30. Markovits and Green, ‘FIFA, the Video Game’, 718.

31. Billings, Burch, and Zimmerman, ‘Fragments of Us, Fragments of Them’; Burch, Billings, and Zimmerman, ‘Comparing American Soccer Dialogues’; and Markovits and Green, ‘FIFA, the Video Game’, 718.

32. Burch, Billings, and Zimmerman, ‘Comparing American Soccer Dialogues’.

33. Gerke, ‘Supporters, Not Consumers. Grassroots Supporters’ Culture and Sports Entertainment in the US’; Henderson, ‘Two Balls is Too Many’; Kassing, ‘I Just Couldn’t Believe I was There’; Stocz and Frederick, ‘Is the Disease Spreading?’; and Wagner and Shobe, ‘Identity, Scale and Soccer Supporter Groups’.

34. Gerke, ‘Supporters, Not Consumers. Grassroots Supporters’ Culture and Sports Entertainment in the US’, 936.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Stocz and Frederick. ‘Is the Disease Spreading?’ 5.

38. Kassing, ‘Messi Hanging Laundry at the Bernabéu’; Kassing, ‘Confronting the Female Athlete Paradox with Humour and Irony’; and Kassing and Solheim, ‘The Silly, Strange, and Absurd Nature of Sport’.

39. Kassing and Solheim, ‘The Silly, Strange, and Absurd Nature of Sport’.

40. Zwarun and Farrar, ‘Doing What They Say, Saying What They Mean’.

41. Kassing, ‘Confronting the Female Athlete Paradox with Humour and Irony’; and Kassing, ‘Messi Hanging Laundry at the Bernabéu’.

42. Meyer, ‘Humour Functions in Communication’.

43. Ibid.

44. Kassing, ‘Confronting the Female Athlete Paradox with Humour and Irony’.

45. Ibid, 1104.

46. Ibid, 1105.

47. Meyer, ‘Humour Functions in Communication’.

48. Carmack, ‘Everythang’s Gonna Be All White’.

49. Clark, ‘I’m Scunthorpe ‘til I die’’; and Kassing, ‘Messi Hanging Laundry at the Bernabéu’.

50. Clark, ‘I’m Scunthorpe ‘til I die’’.

51. Kassing, ‘Messi Hanging Laundry at the Bernabéu’.

52. Farred, ‘Cool as the Other Side of the Pillow’, 112.

53. Sandomir, ‘Premier League Coverage Pays Off for NBC’.

54. Braun, Clarke, and Weate ‘Using Thematic Analysis in Sport and Exercise Research’.

55. Glaser and Strauss, ‘The Discovery of Grounded Theory’.

56. Brown, ‘Fleet Feet: The USSF and the Peculiarities of Soccer Fandom in America’; Delgado, ‘Major League Soccer’; Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism’; Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Women’s Soccer in the United States’; and Van Reenen, ‘The Promise of Soccer in American’.

57. Brown, ‘Fleet Feet: The USSF and the Peculiarities of Soccer Fandom in America’.

58. Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Women’s Soccer in the United States’.

59. Brown, ‘Fleet Feet: The USSF and the Peculiarities of Soccer Fandom in America’.

60. Ewan, ‘John Terry and the Predicament of Englishness’; Buffington, ‘Us and Them: US Ambivalence Toward the World Cup and American Nationalism’; and Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Women’s Soccer in the United States’.

61. Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Women’s Soccer in the United States’.

62. Ibid.

63. Van Gorp, ‘The Constructionist Approach to Framing’, 62.

64. Ewan, ‘John Terry and the Predicament of Englishness’.

65. Markovits and Hellerman, ‘Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism’; and Van Reenen, ‘The Promise of Soccer in American’.

66. Delgado, ‘Major League Soccer: Return of the Foreign Sport’; Novak and Billings, ‘The Fervent, the Ambivalent, and the Great Gap Between: American Print-Media Coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup’.

67. Carmack, ‘Everythang’s Gonna Be All White: The Fightin’ Whities’ Use of Parody and Incongruity for Social Change’; Kassing, ‘Messi Hanging Laundry at the Bernabéu’; and Kassing, ‘Confronting the Female Athlete Paradox with Humour and Irony’.

68. thebrooklynbrothers.com/nbc.html