Before the 2026 World Cup, the seminar attracted the attention of many young readers, creating an interesting contrasting perspective between emotional European football and the typical pragmatic thinking of the United States.
The program focused on discussing the football commercialization model in the US before the 2026 World Cup, the link between sports and literature, and the role of reading culture in the digital age.
From observations in the book "America from A - Z", speakers analyze how Americans once viewed football as a side sport but are gradually turning it into a billion-dollar entertainment industry before the 2026 World Cup. Not only changing the way it is organized, Americans also contribute to redefining the experience of enjoying football with economic thinking and media technology.
One of the key contents of the seminar is to analyze how the United States approaches and turns football into a profitable entertainment industry, even though this is not a traditional strength sport of this country.
Author Hieu Minh, who has many years of observation and research of American society, said that the operating philosophy of Americans is based on efficiency and time optimization. According to him, Americans not only focus on the 90 minutes on the field, but also build a complete service ecosystem around the match.
Agreeing with this view, journalist Truong Anh Ngoc analyzed the progress of US economic thinking penetrating European football. Since the 1994 World Cup, US investors have recognized the commercialization potential of this sport.
Journalist Truong Anh Ngoc: "We are seeing how terrible American culture is dominating the world's mass entertainment. All are money grinders. Since the 1994 World Cup, they have seen a huge future benefit from this sport that they are not strong in. We know that social networks belong to Americans, each of our views on football stories told by the American media machine will become money flowing into American pockets.
Author Hieu Minh further explained: "The US has a philosophy - time is money. Time must be effective. Americans want to say that the match needs to be attractive both on and off the field. Going to the field is a family trip, and in the middle of the match, you have to watch grand performances. Many times the result is not important".
Besides the economic aspect, the seminar also spent time discussing the value of knowledge that books bring in explaining football phenomena. In which, the seminar introduced some excerpts from works by great authors such as: Press Selection by Pier Paolo Pasolini, "Dios es Redondo" by Juan Villoro, "Football in the Sun and Shadow" by Eduardo Galeano.
Speakers commented that literature provides fundamental data on history, geopolitics and national identity to decode different competition styles.
The seminar also raised the issue of changes in the public's information reception habits today. In the digital age, social media algorithms prioritizing short videos are shrinking viewers' experiences. Instead of watching a full 90-minute match to understand the tactics and perseverance of the players, viewers tend to only watch flash highlights of goals.
In addition, the speakers also emphasized the importance of organizing thematic seminars at bookshop spaces. This is considered a practical method to connect knowledge on book pages with practical issues of public life.
And as a good method, turning bookstores into multi-dimensional dialogue spaces, helping the public, especially young people, have more information filters in the face of short-term entertainment trends, providing a knowledge reference system, which is considered vital for traditional bookstores that are still silently giving away values in the era of social networks taking power.
