I love sports. All sports, actually. Throughout high school, I spent a lot of time at soccer, volleyball and field hockey games. My first internship in college was as a sports reporter. For the record, I’m a good American, so my favorite sport is baseball. Nothing combines the two American threads of individualism and communitarianism like baseball. After that is American football and then basketball. My husband played lacrosse in college, and I went to Syracuse University, so I have to love lacrosse. And I’ve been going to Weber State volleyball games, which are so much fun, and you should all go.

I spent years — and I mean years — trying to figure out soccer. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been at a Real Salt Lake game asking myself “What is happening?!” I just didn’t know what to watch for and couldn’t figure it out. Soccer just looked like a bunch of accidents to me — no plays, no plan. Just a bunch of people running around, kicking the ball and sometimes (maybe) they would score. Then a friend kindly told me to “watch for the triangles.” So I did and, wow, soccer came alive for me that day.

I figured it out just in time for the World Cup, which I’ve been watching for years because, as someone who loves sports, you watch all the big events. But this year, I can actually see the soccer. I watched the United States make a play and I understood what they were trying to do. At the time of my writing this, all the teams I was following are out, but I’m still watching.

The thing that struck me while watching the World Cup was the advertisements that ran along the side of the field. If you don’t know, they’re playing the World Cup in Qatar, which is in the Middle East. Honestly, if you asked me to place it on a map, I probably couldn’t, so I’m only guessing that it’s a very different place from where I am. I imagine the people there speak a different language and have a different culture, and I bet I’d have a hard time figuring things out if I visited. But one of the advertisements was for Coca-Cola. I saw that and thought to myself, “Hey, I drink Diet Coke on the regular and maybe everyone else watching this does too.” Another advertisement was for Budweiser, which you may know was allowed to sponsor the World Cup but not sell its product because Qatar apparently doesn’t like alcohol.

World Cup viewership is the highest it’s ever been. According to FIFA, it averaged 12 million viewers per game. The match between Japan and Costa Rica, which my team lost, drew 36 million viewers, while the televised match between Argentina and Mexico was the most-watched Spanish-language group stage match in U.S. history. According to Fox, 16.3 million viewers watched the U.S. match against the Netherlands. I could cite data ad nauseam to prove to you that millions of humans are watching the same soccer game at the same time, and maybe we’re all drinking Diet Coke.

This is why sports matter so much. And at the risk of being totally banned from parties this holiday season, this is also the reason why capitalism matters so much. They’re how we forge shared identities across the world. Millions of people from every walk of life, from every corner of the globe, watched soccer at the same time I did. Sports don’t care what religion you are — they just want to play. Capitalism doesn’t mind who you voted for in November — it just wants to sell you its product.

This is not to say there aren’t problems in sports and capitalism. I embrace regulations to ensure football is safe for young people to play, as well as regulations to make sure the market doesn’t disproportionately hurt workers. This is to say, this past month I shared a global identity with people I will never meet — and that matters. Sports travel well; everyone plays soccer, and give it 20 years or triangles and you could understand it well enough to watch it. Capitalism travels well; everyone drinks Diet Coke. And the more we have these points of commonality, the more we can love our fellow humans. Except Red Sox fans. Never them.

Leah Murray is a Brady Distinguished Presidential Professor of Political Science and the academic director of the Olene S. Walker Institute of Politics & Public Service at Weber State University.

Newsletter