Hello trans historian here who has written about sports and currently lives in Europe but is from America

The reason why American sports and European sports have such wildly different cultures is the history of how the leagues were formed.

European professional sports come from the British. The Brits pro sports leagues were just the amateur leagues which eventually allowed professionalism. This meant that since the beginning the crowds have always been super hardcore into it and less family oriented and mostly adult working class men. It was the same people on the teams who was watching it.

In America professional sports originated with the creation of professional leagues separated the wildly popular amateur college sports system. These leagues like the NFL and MLB were able to have more dictation over security and over what kinda people they wanted at games.

So all these baseball and football teams in America very very very early on did promotions for families and for people to bring their wife and kids. Make it a family friendly event. That’s because before the 70s basically all the money was tied up in seat sales at games and they wanted more money. Instead of the working class did, you got two more tickets with his kid and wife.

Europeans were unable to follow this because teams were financially hostage to their fans and couldn’t risk changes that would make them leave. So instead they did the opposite where they did everything for the fans which created a culture that only allowed straight cis men. (This also led to clubs excusing hooliganism and white nationalist elements in their fanbases)

You see now since Americans and Arab gulf countries have bought all these teams, they’re trying to make the teams more 'family friendly " to sell more tickets and there’s been some backlash

It’s crazy that American sports are so much more welcoming to women and queer people because they know they can more money that way