Last week I went to watch the Toronto Raptors lose against the Sacramento Kings in the NBA. Despite finding televised basketball quite tedious, I actually enjoyed my first live experience of the sport.

I was a novice, continually asking my season ticket-holding mate what was going on and, much to his amusement, announcing that I was given a box of cereal on purchasing some Crunch ‘n Munch. (How many people is that “snack” supposed to cater for? I found myself offering it to strangers.)

I wasn’t overly bothered about the 98-91 defeat following a fourth-quarter collapse – I’m used to the sports teams I follow losing – because I got a free scarf, and the Raptors have a mascot who likes to eat cheerleaders or, when he appeared last Wednesday evening, nudge and irritate security staff.

There was one thing that I thought was completely unnecessary though: the insistence of playing music during the game. Maybe it’s because I have been scarred from the bothersome music that often infiltrates football.

Yes, ‘Three Lions’ by Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds was a belter, and so was New Order’s ‘World in Motion’ (with that John Barnes rap), but the woeful attempts at soccer sing-alongs are more common. UK Saturday night favourites Ant and Dec’s ‘We’re on the Ball’ which saw England off to the 2002 Japan and South Korea World Cup was brain-frying, ‘Don’t Come Home Too Soon’ by Del Amitri has to be the most negative and drab sports song recorded but was accurate as the Scottish national team made an early exit from France ‘98 (opening lyrics: “So long, go on, and do your best”), and, you may have missed this one in North America, Jane Ledsom and the Shouty Boys with ‘30 Down to Zero’ – recorded in an attempt to stir a miraculous survival from their club after Luton Town were deducted thirty points at the start of the season – is truly, truly awful.

Worst of all, however, is music during the game.

Music before, after, and at half time is fine; entrance music for the players is alright too. When working at non-league side Hallam FC in Sheffield, England, I ensured the playlist was of the highest quality: pre-match music included ‘Fat Children’ by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker (chorus: “Fat children took my life/Fat children took my life/Fat children took my life/Ahhhhh-ahhhhh-ahhhhhhhhhh”) and the players – some of whom were rather portly and still lived with their mothers – walked onto the pitch to the Champions’ League theme tune.

I didn’t succumb to the cardinal sin of playing audio during the game. For me, the badge of classlessness for lower league English sides – as well as many clubs in the upper levels of the league system it has diseased – is, in order to compensate for a rather muted fan base, to celebrate a goal by blasting out ‘Tubthumping’ by Chumbawumba on the PA system. It’s an insult to the fan’s vocals. The song, meanwhile, is a guilty pleasure of mine.

So, never in my life do I want to be at a live sporting event and leave the venue with my ears ringing, not due to crowd noise, but due to Katy Perry’s vomit-inducing song ‘Firework’ leaving my ears plagued.

Football, stick to your guns. Basketball, take note. Please leave the Katy Perry album alone: I, and I suspect many others, much prefer the noises of the crowd and action. Take the sounds of Hallam FC vs Teversal as an example: the incessant moans of the flat-capped and strawberry-nosed old man about a non-local and therefore incompetent referee, and the strangled cries of a mother as the opposition’s left-back kicks her bleached-haired right-winger son into the air once more. That’s much better.