The real deal: How to experience authenticity in times of globalization and cosmopolitanization

Why did NFL Europe fail where the National Football League’s International Series has succeeded? Existing explanations emphasize organizational and economic factors. This paper offers a sociological explanation by conceptualizing authenticity as an embodied experience that emerges when socially constituted expectations align with perceived reality. Under conditions of mediatization and cosmopolitanization, the mechanisms that facilitate authenticity become increasingly important because audiences encounter cultural products with extensive prior knowledge while remaining geographically distant. Drawing on material from an ongoing multi-sited ethnography of American football, I show that the International Series succeeds because it allows audiences to experience NFL games as “authentic” despite their geographical displacement. The findings suggest that the globalization of cultural products depends on successfully calibrating continuity and adaptation rather than on faithful reproduction or complete localization.