If you have ever been to an NFL game, you likely saw, and probably even participated in a tailgate. Hanging out in the parking lot before kickoff, playing catch, eating BBQ, drinking beer — all the fun social activities one undergoes while wearing your team’s colors and being surrounded by fellow fans.
Some have perfected the art of tailgating; others may stick to the basics. Regardless of city and fan base, though, they all have one thing in common: They are participating in a tradition that is quintessentially American.
It also is uniquely American.
There are many aspects of U.S. culture that have, especially since the end of World War II, been exported across the globe. The West needed to unite against the supreme threat that was the specter of [enter the ominous sound of lightning striking] communism, and the capitalist system depended on more than financial means to function: It needed cultural capital as well, with sports being a part of that portfolio — one that continues to deliver goods and ideas to this day.
Even so, tailgating has rarely made its way across the seven seas and into countries outside of North America. You go to a soccer game in Europe, or a cricket match in Australia, or a baseball game in Japan, and you rarely if ever see people huddling up in the parking lot.
Those last two words are precisely the key here. Let’s use the UEFA Champions League — a competition that has some similarities to the NFL in terms of scale — as an example.
When you look at satellite images of the NFL’s 31 stadiums and compare them to stadiums in the Champions League, you can already see a clear difference. Whereas the former have a tendency to look like enormous cups placed on concrete saucers, the latter are mostly situated in a more “lively” habitat: they are embedded in their surrounding cities, and not seemingly popped up outside them.
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(The reasons for that are manifold and deserving of their own deep dive, but for now let’s just say that they can often be traced back to a difference in origins and historic structure between pro football franchises and soccer teams as well as geographical restrictions.)
Obviously, there are exceptions on both sides of the Atlantic; Seattle and Chicago, for example, have downtown arenas less removed from their communities than others. The difference is still clearly visible, however, and a key factor why tailgating exists in one place but not the other. In order to tailgate, well, you need a place to tailgate
Place itself, however, is only one part of the story. The roots of the tailgate run deeper, and can be traced back to the United States’ relationship with the automobile.
Ever since it became a relatively affordable method of transportation and the U.S. decided to invest in the industry and accompanying infrastructure from the 1950s on, the car has been synonymous with the American Way of Life and brought a level of individual freedom previously unknown to a large portion of the population. While that helped shape the country as it is today, this came to the detriment of other more public forms of transportation.
Of course, that does not mean there is no public transport available to get to NFL games. There are train and/or bus services connecting New York with its MetLife Stadium, Boston with Gillette Stadium in the bustling metropolis that is Foxborough, Massachusetts, downtown Kansas City with Arrowhead Stadium (and the adjacent Kauffman Stadium), Metro Atlanta with the Benz — you name it. Still, more often than not, the car simply is the more feasible option for fans.
The problem is one of convenience. And that did not happen by accident.
Years of neglect and budget restrictions, legislative hurdles and unfavorable building codes, a lack of political will and some on-point lobbying as well as intensive costs have led to an infrastructure centered around the car. This in combination with the sheer distances between where people live and where their sports teams play has led to a reality in which the car is the preferred method of transportation for millions of sports fans around the country.
The tailgate, in the meantime, is largely dependent on a status quo that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the world. And, as a consequence, so does the existence of the tailgate itself.
And that’s why tailgating is likely to remain a uniquely American experience.
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