The men's World Cup theme tune, performed at its opening ceremony on June 11th, exemplifies the contest's claim to foster global unity. However, nearly half the world is expected to tune in over the coming weeks, and a viewer might come away with two conclusions: entertainment culture is more globalised than ever, and America remains the soft-power superpower at the centre of it all. Both assumptions would be wrong.
Mega-events like the World Cup still seize global attention, but the bigger picture is that entertainment is fragmenting. From music to television to social media and gaming, audiences are tuning out of American content and embracing alternatives from closer to home.
An emerging paradox is that even as the world becomes more connected, people are embracing more local forms of fun. Even as billions tune in to a single show in North America, the American-led monoculture is fading.
The local turn is the opposite of what many predicted. Global entertainment platforms like Spotify, Netflix, YouTube, and the Apple and Google mobile-app stores give people everywhere access to the same music, video and games. However, below the top tier, entertainment is fragmenting.
Sport has always been a reluctant globaliser, because people prefer to watch their local team. America's National Football League earns 98% of its media-rights revenue at home, while the English Premier League is the only football league in Europe that makes more in media rights abroad than at home.
New Yorkers are far less excited about the football than they are about the Knicks. Other kinds of culture have long been more globalised, often thanks to America; think of music from Motown or TV from Tinseltown. But now this seems to be reversing.
Music charts are becoming more locally dominated: in Brazil, 96 of the 100 most-streamed artists last week were Brazilian. Meanwhile, video-streaming services like Netflix and Amazon are producing more shows abroad, to woo subscribers in fresh markets.
North America's share of new streaming commissions has halved in the past six years, from 70% to 36%. New media are no more global. YouTube offers content from every country, but its users gravitate towards clips from close to home.
Gaming on PCs and consoles remains dominated by a few worldwide franchises, but on mobile, regional variations are sharper. Across the five biggest gaming markets, no app features in every country's top ten. While Americans play 'Fortnite', Asians have shifted to titles such as 'Free Fire'.
AI will enable ever more niche production. The audience has also changed, with a growing global middle class making it worthwhile for Netflix to make big-budget shows tailored to Mexican subscribers, or for the developers of 'Free Fire' to devise Bollywood themes for Indian gamers.
Audiences' discovery of new content is increasingly being led by algorithms rather than human tastemakers. Sometimes those algorithms send everyone to the same global hits, but they also divide them into niches.
Regulators should note that the turn towards local options has been brought about by technology, and not by content rules of the sort imposed by Canada, where radio stations have to play unhealthy amounts of Justin Bieber to meet local quotas.
Something will be lost if people's cultural habits turn too far inward. A Britain that served only British food and 'Carry On' films would be bleaker than purgatory. Yet it is something to celebrate that audiences now have so much more choice.
Regulators should note that the turn towards local options has been brought about by technology, and not by content rules of the sort imposed by Canada, where radio stations have to play unhealthy amounts of Justin Bieber to meet local quotas.
