The Spectacle State
Britain has become remarkably good at producing moments of togetherness. It has become much worse at sustaining the institutions that make belonging possible. This summer, Wimbledon and England’s men’s World Cup campaign reminded us of sport’s unusual power to generate belonging. At Centre Court, it arrived through ritual: the ballot, the traditions, the choreography of one of the world’s oldest sporting institutions. Across England’s World Cup run, the same scene played out repeatedly: pubs filling, communities gathering, millions sharing the same anticipation, joy and heartbreak. Neither experience is more authentic than the other. Sport matters because it creates something increasingly scarce: a shared public experience. The problem begins when governments mistake these moments for civic life itself.
This tension is increasingly visible in the way governments present major sporting events. When the UK and Ireland were confirmed as hosts of UEFA Euro 2028, the UK government framed the tournament as part of its mission of “patriotic renewal” – an attempt to foster a more cohesive country through an inclusive national story. The state committed £557 million of public investment, with ministers projecting £3.2 billion in wider socio-economic benefits. Major sporting events can create genuine economic and social value. The difficulty arises when governments treat them as substitutes for the civic institutions that sustain belonging. That shift in language matters. It suggests belonging is summoned through national spectacle, rather than cultivated through the institutions of everyday life.
Nowhere is this clearer than in football. Football has long been one of Britain’s most visible civic institutions, rooted in local identity, collective ritual and participation. Stadium reforms after Hillsborough rightly transformed safety standards, but they also removed standing areas in the top two tiers of British football, once among the cheapest and most communal spaces in grounds. Access has become harder in every way. The Premier League’s away-ticket cap has remained at £30 since 2016, yet thirteen of twenty clubs increased home ticket prices for the 2025-26 season, by up to 14%. Even for supporters who never enter a stadium, watching from home often requires multiple subscriptions, potentially costing upwards of £50 a month. The relationship between supporters and clubs has changed too. Elite football is ever more shaped by global capital, often detached from local communities. Manchester City is owned by Abu Dhabi-backed City Football Group, while clubs across the Premier League increasingly operate as global entertainment businesses. Atmosphere, once created by people in the stands, is now packaged as a global entertainment product. Football still creates belonging. But the places where that belonging happens are becoming harder to access.
For many people, the final bridge is the pub: somewhere sport can be shared without a ticket or an expensive subscription. This bridge is weakening. The average pint has climbed above £5.34, nearly double its cost a decade ago, while Britain is losing two pubs daily. Closures are faster in deprived areas and peripheral towns, where pubs remain one of the last shared spaces. The loss is not simply economic; it is social. These are ‘third spaces’ where communities form without needing to buy an experience or belong to an organisation. The use of these spaces also depend on behaviours formed much earlier: the habits of belonging developed in childhood.
Those foundations are laid gradually: in playgrounds, schools, local clubs and youth spaces where children first learn to cooperate, make friends and belong somewhere beyond themselves. Access to those opportunities is increasingly unequal. Children from the most deprived backgrounds remain significantly less likely to be active than their peers, while grassroots football continues to face pressure over facilities despite more than £1 billion of Football Foundation investment. As children grow older, the civic infrastructure around them becomes thinner: more than two-thirds of council-funded youth centres in England have closed since 2010 (1,243 lost with 581 remaining), while youth service funding has fallen by 76%. Secondary schools have also seen opportunities for participation shrink, with more than 4,000 hours of PE disappearing from timetables in a single year. These are not isolated policy failures. Together they amount to the slow erosion of the institutions that make belonging possible. Remove enough links from that chain and belonging survives only as an occasional spectacle rather than an everyday habit. A child who never joins a team, kicks a ball on a local pitch or finds friendship through sport loses more than a game; they lose one of the places where belonging is learned.
None of this is an argument against celebrating sport. Governments should support major events. They create memories and moments of genuine collective joy. The problem comes when celebration replaces responsibility: when tournaments become evidence of national renewal while the everyday institutions that make community possible continue to weaken. Sport can unite a nation. It cannot build the foundations of a cohesive one.
This is the paradox of the spectacle state: as everyday sources of belonging weaken, the pressure increasingly falls on extraordinary moments to recreate them. Politicians should spend less energy presenting tournaments as proof of national cohesion and more time rebuilding the institutions that make cohesion permanent. If ministers want to tell a story of a nation coming together, the honest version of that story begins long before the first serve or the final whistle. It begins in playgrounds, on pitches, in the youth clubs and community spaces where belonging is built every day rather than simply celebrated. A tournament can create a moment. Civic life creates community.