When the top two teams in the Premier League go at each other this weekend, America can’t lose. Arsenal and Liverpool, like AC Milan, Roma, Marseille, Lyon, Chelsea and (for now) Manchester United, are both US-owned. In 1994, when the nation last hosted the World Cup, it didn’t even have a domestic league. When it next does so in 2026, it should have a major proprietorial role in at least three European ones. The planet’s favourite game is being steered to a considerable extent from American boardrooms.
Perhaps your test of cultural influence is higher-minded than that. Well, consider that US universities continue to dominate world rankings. Or that America accounts for 45 per cent of art sales by value, according to UBS, which is more than Britain and China, the next two markets, combined. To attend the Venice Biennale now is to enter a new Jazz Age in which experts from all over the world vie to advise American patrons on how to spend the spoils of their economic boom.
Even this doesn’t quite capture America’s ongoing grip on the global imagination, which shows up most in the culture wars. Although some of the root philosophical ideas are French, the movement known as “woke” was a gift from the US to other advanced democracies. (With, dismayingly, no receipt included.)