The English bourgeoisie expropriated popular sport to legitimize its rule

Evidence

In England, organized sport had been a mass phenomenon, a spontaneous and public creation. And then, just as with land and labor, the rising bourgeoisie had expropriated it for their own purposes. Undisciplined, vulgar, and lacking self-confidence, they had sensed that their reliance on naked force in their personae as expropriators, exploiters, and imperialists would ultimately destroy them if they could not establish to their own satisfaction their right to rule: “They wanted a culture, a way of life of their own.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1254

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Attacks on footballer wages vent class resentment at a market effect. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1551