An initial downvote -- fair enough. For there are political and other tones to my comment. But, since the OP introduces the topic of sport, in the first place, some of the things I see in American football that lead to my comment -- and that cause my concern for the U.S.:

- Players destroying their bodies (and, we increasingly know, minds) for the sake of the sport.

- A willful blindness to the above, served at top levels by rampant commercialism and profit, for decades. Even the cognitive effects, probably for a couple of decades if not longer.

- A fan base that spends an inordinate amount of time in such allegiance and paying fealty. Granted, there's a lot of socialization around this. But there's also a lot of... well, several words come to mind, but I'll sum it up with "aggression", often I find of a rather mindless and inconsiderate sort, at least from a minority but a minority having an outsized impact.

- Most recently, when the "show" is co-opted to express another viewpoint: The protests. So much allegiance to the show and disinterest in paying attention to what the players, the participants who actually make the show possible, are rightly trying to point out -- something that belongs to many of their own backgrounds and experiences.

Blind allegiance. Stop and think about the context.

P.S. I know European football has a lot of violence -- those stories about fan violence and absurdity. But I don't feel qualified to speak to it, really. I also don't perceive the players as being quite so chewed up by the game, although I vaguely recall some stories of arthritis and significantly limited mobility. And headers are becoming increasingly suspect in brain trauma.