English football can remake American sports

Plus: What a TikTok ban in the US could mean [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a scumptious scrum of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Must-Reads - [Deepwater Horizon](: the sequel - Europe! [Here Xi comes](. - Beijing’s [ploys]( in the South China Sea. - Work [a la Française](. - [Looking smart]( when talking about rates. - How much [bank for your bucks](? - UK CEO pay is so [off-topic](. Walk of the Town: Football Edition An exploratory visit to the home of the Gunners. Photograph by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg If you haven’t yet surmised from the title of this regular feature, I like to walk. And so this week, I made the nearly one-hour trek from my flat near Clerkenwell to Emirates Stadium in North London. It’s part of this expatriate American’s quest to [pick an English football team](. My colleague Michael Johnson met me at the home of Arsenal to create this video. It’s not a bad walk but I’m not ready to make up my mind. [TikTok: Help Howard Choose a Premier League Team]( In my column last week, I asked for reader advice. And I got a lot of it via email. The most popular team recommendations were Arsenal (10%), Tottenham (8%), Chelsea (6.3%) and Fulham (6.3%) among the Premier League squads. But there were also votes for smaller clubs: Queens Park Rangers (5.5%), Charlton (4.5%) and Leyton Orient (3.6%). The breadth of suggestions isn’t surprising because Britain’s sporting tribes are a diverse bunch. But neither were these vehement ballots: Never Chelsea (6.3%), Never Arsenal (3.6%) and Never Liverpool (3.6%). I also received a lot of very thoughtful advice about where one’s heart and head should be when the choice is made. Many came from American fans of English football. This week, two Bloomberg heavyweights have [weighed in]( on how UK football can remake US football: Editor-in-chief John Mickletwait (Leicester City) and Senior Executive Editor Simon Kennedy (Nottingham Forest). Their thesis is simple: the English sport is not for wimps (aka “the soppy socialist world of American team sports”). If a UK club falls short of the parameters of its league, they are relegated to a lower level. But if they exceed the measures of their league, they are promoted (the tippy-top upper class being the Premier League). It’s a terrifying incentive to put your best foot forward. “Sponsors and some of the best players will surely leave teams that have been booted down a level,” John and Simon write, “and for supporters, there is added heartache if a rival goes in the opposite direction.” (BTW: the authors’ teams despise each other). And no club is exempt from relegation, no matter how lofty the history. “Of the 20 current Premier League teams, just six have never been relegated from it.” They propose that relegation be practiced by the giant sports monopolies in the US. “Why should a Boston Red Sox fan be denied the pleasure of watching the New York Yankees being tossed out of the major league?” As an aging New York Mets fan, I’m happy to see both of those teams relegated. Forever. The Algorithm That Made a Difference A TikTok ban in the US is more than likely to end up decided by American courts. That’s even after President Joe Biden signs it into law — which is more than likely given the foreign aid tied to Israel and Ukraine that’s tied to the kind of all-embracing bill that defies vetoes. Not that the US president is inclined to do it. Sinophobia is a theme of the election season we’re now in — and the social media platform’s China-based owner, ByteDance Ltd., is popularly portrayed as a stalking horse for the nefarious ambitions of Beijing. Those data-downloading aspirations could be met in less confrontational ways than via the app in every teenage pocket, as Dave Lee [wrote last week](. China, he said, “could have saved itself a lot of time and effort by buying Americans’ data from the many shady brokers happy to sell it to them.” Washington’s political instincts got a jolt of momentum, Dave said, “after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, when support for Gaza seemed to outweigh support for Israel” on TikTok. But what would a US without TikTok look like? India threw out the app in June 2020, soon after border clashes with China. And Indians seem to be getting along fine, argue US advocates of a ban (significantly, Meta Platform Inc. and Alphabet Inc., whose Instagram and YouTube, respectively, compete directly with TikTok). Mihir Sharma, however, says that [an important glimmer of democracy]( has been lost in the world’s most populous nation. Says Mihir: “TikTok remains a better-crafted platform than Reels or Shorts. Its algorithm pushed the unusual onto Indians’ feeds in a way its replacements have not. That secret sauce has proven impossible to replicate.” Even if it may have downplayed subjects — like the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre — that triggered Beijing, the app, says Mihir, “was a refreshingly egalitarian milieu. Random young people from rural India could become stars on the platform, which promoted the amateur, the unprepared, the eccentric. The app had a democratizing, flattening effect: Creators could break through India’s stultifying social hierarchy.” Many of those fresh voices were based in India’s vast countryside and were virtually (in every sense of the word) underrepresented in the country’s traditional media. “TikTok was a vital window into small-town authenticity,” he says. “And the glimpses we got, most of the time, were more about laughter and good-natured pranks than meme-driven hatred.” What’s replaced TikTok in India? Not a homegrown app, though some did try. Instead, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts now dominate the market. But they have the shortcomings of their parent corporations: repurposed content from TV and movies plus a tendency to bolster celebrity content. And the usual vitriol that comes with deficient content moderation. You say America’s used to all that. True. But as Mihir concludes, “It may seem a small thing to lose the ability to make trainspotters, border collies and sea shanty singers come-from-nowhere stars. But the costs of banning TikTok might be bigger than US leaders think. Perhaps we in India don’t miss TikTok — but how would we know?” Meanwhile, as Dave says in [his latest column](, if TikTok is auctioned off, buyer beware! “Successful social media acquisitions require keeping both talent and technology in place. With TikTok, neither is likely to happen. China will most likely block any transfer of TikTok’s celebrated algorithm, and it’s unclear what would happen with the company’s top US-based engineering talent in the event of a sale. The buyer risks getting little more than a brand name. Valuable, yes, but a shadow of what TikTok is now.” Telltale Charts “‘Uninvestible’ has become the standard way to describe companies facing sizable US litigation — especially personal-injury claims. That pretty much summed up the stock market’s view of medical-devices maker Royal Philips NV following a 2021 recall of appliances designed to alleviate sleep apnea. But Italy’s billionaire Agnelli family saw an investment opportunity amid the fear. Now comes the reward.” — Chris Hughes in “[Billionaire Agnellis Bought US Legal Risk and Won](.” “Changing the fortunes of a bank the size of HSBC Holdings Plc is like trying to turn an oil tanker. In Noel Quinn’s nearly five years as chief executive officer it must at times have felt more like trying to dislodge the Ever Given from the banks of the Suez Canal. … Right now, HSBC is on the crest of a wave of profits and cash returns. Quinn’s retirement news came with another $3 billion buyback announced on Tuesday, 50% more than was expected. That sent HSBC stock to its highest price since August 2018, well before Quinn’s tenure began. They always say you should get out at the top: With the geopolitical and growth challenges ahead for HSBC, Quinn might be doing just that.” — Paul J. Davies in “[Noel Quinn Quits as Chief While HSBC Is Ahead](.” Further Reading Twitter has nothing on [Paramount](. — Chris Hughes A twist in the [Peloton](tale. — Andrea Felsted Japan’s [dirty little secret]( is coal. — David Fickling Need a table for two? [How about never?]( — Howard Chua-Eoan Singapore’s coming [down cycle](. — Andy Mukherjee This is no time for [German-style austerity](. — Lionel Laurent AI can’t reject [your no good, very bad ideas](. — Parmy Olson Drawdown I’ll be flying a long distance for work next week. Until then, enjoy this. ”I’m on standby. My wife’s on the midnight plane. My check-in luggage is on the 8:25 AM flight. My carry-on is taking the 9:15. I’m not sure where we’re all ending up, but it’s a bargain.” Illustration by Howard Chua-Eoan/Bloomberg Notes: Please send frequent-flyer hacks and feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. Want to sponsor this newsletter? [Get in touch here](. You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. If a friend forwarded you this message, [sign up here]( to get it in your inbox. 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