Take sports and music. English people tend to say "And England are 1 nil up!". Whereas Americans would say "And the US has scored". English people would say something like "Muse are playing a show tonight", while Americans would say "Muse is playing a show tonight". I am American but watch a lot of soccer and I like the idea of "are, have" etc. because when you are talking about a sports team, it is referring to a group of people not a thing. Easy to think of it as pronouns. English people tend to view teams, groups, and bands as a collective group of people, "they", while Americans tend to think of them as a single entity, "it".