Unfootbally ours?

In his column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer Rigoberto Tiglao stated exactly what I wanted to say for many years. It partly takes on Filipino US-centrism that shut us from two-thirds of the rest of the planet. Our fanaticism to all things American and to all dreams American has made us indifferent to other global affairs which have far greater import. Among these affairs is the World Cup, the global celebration of the game that for decades has played a great part in the unification of the world even during the difficult times of the two World Wars – football.

Football (or association football, to distinguish it from the more violent American counterpart) is the national game of many nations, and even in many countries in Asia (except the Philippines), it has been a fixed part of the curriculum in physical education. Here in the Philippines, that role is given to basketball, which is among the most enduring of all American influences.

At first I find it hard to understand why it is difficult for our nation to embrace football, until I discovered that a major part of this impossibility is attributed to the reluctance of big media companies to promote the sport due to commercial reasons themselves. The following are some of Tiglao’s takes regarding that matter:

The popularity of basketball is a case study of how capitalism molds a cultural phenomenon and, in the Philippines, its unbridled power.

First, it was US-style, profit-driven television that boosted basketball and practically killed football in the country starting in the 1960s. The 48-minute game was divided into four quarters, with a 15-minute, half-time break and 12 one-minute time outs. It was almost designed for TV advertising—for inserting soap, beer and soft drink song-and-dance commercials. Football took so long, and running at least 90 minutes, with only one half-time break, and no time-out, TV advertising in that game was difficult. (FIFA, the world soccer federation, learned to commercially use television for the World Cup only in the 1990s.) Philippine capitalism strived for every second of basketball fans’ attention to be on their product and so they organized professional basketball and named the teams after the corporate entity and their flagship products: Crispa, Toyota, San Miguel, Ginebra, Purefoods, Sta. Lucia Realtors, Talk ’N Text. (In the US, teams were organized by cities, creating some sense of community. But Beermen?)

Second, the Araneta Coliseum (“The Biggest Covered Coliseum in the World”) was built in 1959, a deft business move by the Aranetas to move the center of commercial activity from downtown Manila to the family’s estate in the then suburban Quezon City. Following the if-you-build-it-they-will-come logic, the Coliseum fast became the site of more and more professional basketball tournaments and, with television coverage, made it more popular than ever. (With the huge crowds at every basketball game, the Aranetas built the first mall in the country, Ali Mall, and its success undoubtedly inspired Henry Sy to change his business model from huge department stores to malls that have now created one of the most mall-dotted metropolises in the world. So thank basketball for our mall culture.)

 Well said.