The streets of San Antonio ran blue and orange last night, not with the tears of Spurs fans but with the beer-soaked joy of New Yorkers who had crossed an ocean to witness the Knicks’ improbable finals victory. The irony is as thick as the Texas humidity: the very nation that once lectured us on the virtues of royal heritage and cricket now finds its economic salvation in the American dollar. UK sports tourism revenue has hit a record high, boosted by the influx of basketball pilgrims.
We are, it seems, the Greeks to their Romans, the colonised selling them tickets to their own spectacle. The Financial Times reports a 40 percent surge in hotel bookings, with ‘Knicks packages’ sold at premium rates. But what does this say about us?
That we have become a theme park for the world’s leisure class? That our identity is now a commodity to be traded in the global marketplace of entertainment? The Victorians would be appalled; the Romans would nod knowingly.
Decline is not always a fall; sometimes it is a transaction.
