The World Cup in the square, on everyone's channel. The match plays in twenty-seven languages and one signal

The World Cup started on the other side of the ocean and here, in the square in Marseille, the match is showing on a screen the city switched on for free, inside a signal that is the same from Lisbon to Riga. The European public broadcaster transmits major events in the clear for everyone: it is a rule of the branch, unremarkable, which is why no one mentions it while settling onto the still-warm tarmac with a beer.

The thing taken for granted is precisely the rarest. National team matches, finals, the ceremonies that concern everyone stay outside the fence of subscriptions: they cannot be bought up exclusively and hidden behind a payment, because an event that half the continent wants to watch is treated as a common good, not a product. That is why the screen in the square is legal and free, and the woman on the eighth floor who has no pay-TV is watching the exact same signal as the man sitting next to me, who could afford it perfectly well.

It is not a perfect arrangement, obviously: the common channel argues every year over rights costs, the leagues push to move more matches behind subscriptions, and the list of “everyone’s” events is defended with difficulty season after season. The rule holds, but it has to be held, and there are already those who would like to pare it back.

Tonight it holds, and you only have to look around to understand what that means. Eight hundred people, one square, one screen, no tickets. Somewhere else the same match sits behind a payment, and the square is empty because everyone watches alone, those who can. Here they watch together because all of them can. It is only football. It is also the simplest way the continent has found to remember it is one.