Feeling a bit lazy, I decided to see what the world of sports entertainment was offering on a Tuesday before Thanksgiving. In a better age, the answer would have been nothing unless you lived in a city with an NBA or NHL team. They would play their games before the weekend and then take off for the holiday. In this age, the people who run the sports leagues think Christmas is the perfect time to make their mostly black employees perform for them and the rest of us.
A few minutes looking at the sports sites and it was clear it was going to be college basketball or nothing at all, always a good option. It has been so long since I have consumed college basketball, it was a bit confusing. The game that jumped out at me was Midway University versus Bellarmine. Midway is not located on a Pacific island, as the name would suggest. It is in Kentucky and originally called the Kentucky Female Orphan School. Now they play men’s basketball.
One of the things you quickly notice when scanning the college basketball schedule is that we have far too many colleges. Not to pick on the good folks at the Kentucky Female Orphan School, but what is the point? When it was actually a female orphan school, it made some sense. Taking care of female orphans is a good thing, but now it is a university handing out worthless credentials. We could easily shutter half of our colleges, and no one would notice.
That aside, the other thing that caught my eye is the array or weird platforms on which these games are now broadcast. The shift away from traditional television to the internet has led to a proliferation of sites. There was a tournament broadcast on something called FloSports, which sounds like a name created by the con men who run the sports nutrition rackets. It turns out that they specialize in low interest niche sports and the small-timers in major sports.
They charge $30 per month for their service, which seems like a big number for the content they are offering. Perhaps if you love F1 racing and you live in the United States, that is a bargain. They are sponsoring college basketball tournaments on the assumption that the fans of the teams involved will spend the money to watch a few games of their favorite team. It is a clever racket, but it also a form of kidnapping in that they are holding the content hostage.
This is something happening with all sports. The NFL is now posting games on Amazon Prime, thus forcing fans to subscribe to it for games, in addition to whatever they use for other television content. There is a network called Peacock that now has select college football games. If you are a fan of Notre Dame, you now must subscribe to the Peacock thing to see their games. It will not be long before much of the sports content is behind an array of paywalls.
This is a sign of decline. As these pay-per-view schemes proliferate, the ways around them proliferate just as fast. Getting the content from FloSports, for example, is simple if you know where to look. There are lots of overseas operators who are indifferent to the financial dreams of our entertainment schemers. With a VPN you can watch just about any sporting event on earth without paying a dime. In fact, you can get any content you like this way, even new release movies.
What you see forming up is what happened to the music rackets. By the 1980’s, the music industry was dependent on two bottlenecks. One was album sales where you paid for ten songs, even though you wanted just one song. The other was commercial radio where you could listen to that one song, but also hours of ads and live reads from drug-addled disc jockeys. The music rackets charged the crap out of the radio stations for use of their content.
Then the mp3 arrived and that was the end of the music rackets. Suddenly you could get that one song without buying an album. Not only that, but the song was also free, and you could easily make copies for your friends. The music industry fought this, but eventually they lost the fight. Now recorded music is just a marketing expense to promote live shows and sell other product. Bands now make more money selling t-shirts and caps than they make from recorded music.
This is what is happening to sports. People are willing to watch a game made twice as long by the insertion of advertising. They will pay a small fee to watch games with the same ads, but if they have choices. They will pay a higher fee for ad free content and lots of choices. They will not pay high fees for what amounts to a three-hour ad campaign with some sports content sprinkled into it. They will find other ways to see the games or simply stop watching.
The lesson of the mp3 is that you cannot beat technology. The music companies sued people for sharing music, but it had no impact on the process. The sports leagues can try the same thing with the pirate sites, but it will fail too. It is simply too easy to access these sites. What is even funnier about this is most of the pirate sites block the ads during the games. The leagues cannot even say to their advertisers that their ads are getting viewed by the pirate users.
There is a cost to this. Pop music has reached a nadir because the only way to make money is to generate Potemkin stars like Taylor Swift. The reason you never hear anyone talk about the content of a Taylor Swift song is because even her fans do not care about the content. It is simply a thing to be swept up in until she gets too fat to make it work and a new star is generated. The same is true for the butt wigglers who target the black music audience.
This may be why movies and television are terrible now. On the one hand, they need to make going to the theater appealing, which means massive computer-generated worlds that dazzle on the big screen. On the other hand, it means dealing with the reality that content best watched at home is easily pirated. That leaves little motivation to pay for quality writing and directing. Instead, the money goes to attention grabbing nonsense like race-swapping and girl bosses.
That paints a bleak picture for sports entertainment. A model built on the assumption that television revenues will continue to grow at double digit rates is not going to do well when the revenue stops growing entirely. Throw in the fact that owning a team is mostly about tax dodging and rent seeking and you see the problem. Like music in the 1980’s, the sports entertainment world is a massive bubble. Similarly, technology is the pin that will pop that bubble.
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Frankly, there’s too much of everything these days, except for competence and level-headedness in government circles. I counted up the college bowl games and there’s 49 of them – 49! And most of the sponsors you’ve probably never heard of. It used to be a matter of honor to qualify for one, now it’s like who doesn’t get in? In my neck of the woods we have the “snoop diggity dog Arizona bowl presented by gin & juice dr. dre and snoop” – sounds like a real winner – lol.
Personally I’ve always preferred the classic contests put on by the Poulan Weedeater Bowl and the Taxslayer.com Bowl.
The Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl may be a decent replacement.
I do miss the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl. The best name ever.
Yes, the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Shreveport…it’s a fine town. NOT! Had to fly to nearby Bossier City and Barksdale and always stayed on the post. Not a good liberty town, that’s for sure.
Northern Louisiana is basically southern Arkansas with lots of feral blacks.
From what I see, guys are spending more money than ever on sports. Whether it is gambling, buying incredibly overpriced tickets, the apparel, or the multitude of services like Red Zone, it seems like more of a cash cow than ever. One thing that might spell its doom though is that younger kids don’t have near the interest anymore. There’s still a lot, but gone are the days of sports cards, hanging out with your buds to watch the game, and the frenzy for local teams. They might suck the current adults dry of money, but it likely won’t last… Read more »
I thought COVID was going to beat out much of the excessive money sloshing around in sportsball: boy, was I wrong! It all roared back bigger than ever.
The gambling thing has truly killed professional sports for me. When SCOTUS struck down the ban, I thought it meant that I could go to AC or Vegas and have a fun time betting on a couple of games or laying down a couple of props. What it actually meant was that these leagues all turned into casinos that have a suspiciously high amount of influence and power over the future outcomes that people are betting on. The leagues are all in bed with these casino companies, you see a gambling ad every single commercial break, all the sports shows… Read more »
Gambling is going to destroy sports. There’s too much money in rigging the games. It’ll be just as notorious as boxing in the Don King era.
Although you can pay the players enough to make bribing them to throw a game prohibitively expensive, the glaring point of weakness continues to be the referees
Players have already been suspended for betting on their own sport, and one guy has already been banned for life for manipulating his own props. I find the idea that nobody is colluding with these companies (that are not shady bookies, they are huge corporations that operate in the open) to be totally implausible. You could be making $50M a year and still end up with a gambling problem – see Phil Mickelson, or Michael Jordan.
Yup.
It’s an accepted part of the NBA the refs have supported some star players over others since forever. Heck, once went to a girls high school basketball game where the refs were clearly corrupt.
On local teams, although it’s a common complaint, all my local teams are filled with people with no connection to the area. Even the lower levels are like this. Even the damn colleges are like this since everyone nowadays is a transient that uproots their lives every 5 years for the next big scam. It inspires nothing in me and is difficult to get into. There is no pride in it.
Only thing my family watches is World Cup (mostly for the drama and corruption) and the Thanksgiving parade. No TV, no Netflix, no Prime. Not interested.
…owning a team is mostly about tax dodging and rent seeking and you see the problem…
Unless you are the Rooneys, who turned owning the Steelers and local political influence in Pittsburgh into controlling an entire league, and in the process making themselves the Democratic Party kingmakers in Pennsylvania by controlling the billions in the nationwide NFL economy. When you have every Democratic President from Jimmy Carter to Joe Biden pay homage to you, and you have the power to call off the fraud machine in a swing state in 2024, you are more than that.
You are the mob. The Rooneys tried to go straight, but like the godfather, they pull you back in. It also gets your minimally talented female family members movie roles.
Yeah, that was sometimes lame. However, if the album in question was Appetite for Destruction bought on the basis of Welcome to the Jungle, then it was a win-win!
Of course, most albums are not Appetite.
Actually, there were a lot of great albums back in the musical peak times of the ’60s and ’70s, and they are still avidly collected by people who weren’t born until the ’80s and ’90s…and they play them on turntables…As to the new generation of vaccine and fluoride damaged kids, not sure that’s the case…
I am one of those 80s born aficionados, and I play them on the turntable. I love albums – clarifying that album means the estimation of the sum, not the parts. The reason for the turntable is not just sound quality (to be fair, I am a decent musician as a hobbyist), but the who ritual of selecting, putting on, and focusing on nothing else, except maybe the sleeve cover. The point is, Music used to be the focus, where the auditory used to be the sole stimulus. Now, music serves as non diegetic background music to whatever else is… Read more »
The real artists wanted to take listeners on a journey with their albums – this started back in the mid-1960s but bloated out with the pre-punk “concept albums” of the 1970s. Talentless cut-outs like Vanilla Ice were the ones selling an album on the back of a single song.
Yeah, the Boomers can suck it, Appetite For Destruction is the perfect album, front to back.
The perfect accompaniment to an hour of rollerblading.
I never bought albums where I was only interested in one song. The best artists made the whole album good.
I agree. There were so many albums from the past where each song is very good, sometimes great. Often the album was considered an art form, such as the “concept album,” like Tommy, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, The Wall, Sergeant Pepper, etc.
Like real estate in California for a long time now it has mystified me how people can pay these huge prices for sports and concert tickets and the subscription fees to watch their favorite, usually black, sportsballer?
Operations like Ticketmaster and its upcharges would make Al Capone blush.
Never mind $250 or much more for tickets to see NFL games live to avoid the race mixing tv commercials.
But it just keeps going on.
Until it doesnt, i guess.
deflation is in the answer. Another guy i read likes to point out that the “rich” have almost all their wealth in paper value and can’t access this, but he is incorrect. Worked at a big investment bank about a decade ago and the “rich” were taking out jumbo loans against the value of their portfolios. Round and round we go…………………..where we stop…….deflation
The reason why people fear deflation instinctively is because when you boil it down, it means you’ve got too many people.
Why do we pay so much to live in California? Because we are insane.
I’d pay good money to live somewhere like Bishop or Lake Tahoe.
I sadly left coastal California because of overcrowding and non-whites, but I miss it a lot because the weather is mild summer almost all year round and you have quick access to the gorgeous ocean and mountains. Marin County or Laurel Canyon in the 1960s must have been paradise.
But one of the curses of being a human is that you usually don’t appreciate the good times as you are living through them.
I’ve spent enough time in LA and Miami to get a sense of the paradises they must have been in the mid 20th century
Tickets for the first World Series games this year at Dodgers Stadium started at around $1,200. For the June 1st UEFA Champions League soccer final in London, secondary market tickets started at just over $3,000 (almost impossible to get direct tickets). Event sold out, of course.
This post touches on something that the entire current global system is desperate to avoid thinking about, which is that the current cycle is about to turn over over and the end of the constant growth of the last couple of centuries is nearly upon us. The global population will probably peak within the next 2 decades, possibly even 1. At that point, or even before(do even the morons in charge think Africa is going to be a comparable market to the West or Asia?), so many of the current systems that are based on more, More, MORE are not… Read more »
Live attendance at sporting events is an interesting trend to watch. Colleges still have a built in base of support that is willing to spend a lot of money to go to games. Last night Duke and Kansas played in Las Vegas, reported attendance was over 14,000 and it looked like it on TV. The Maui Invitational is currently being held in Maui, and although played in a small gym, each of the eight schools involved can get a couple thousand fans to travel over to Hawaii during Thanksgiving week to watch the games. With college football, attendance has held… Read more »
On the one hand, they need to make going to the theater appealing, which means massive computer-generated worlds that dazzle on the big screen. On the other hand, it means dealing with the reality that content best watched at home is easily pirated. That leaves little motivation to pay for quality writing and directing. So true. I was lamenting this to my wife the other day. It’s all amazing CGI and special effects. Doubt a movie like The Deer Hunter would ever be green-lit today. What a story that told. Then again, I think the director (Cimino?) was one of… Read more »
I don’t know. I thought the NFL would lose a bulk of its fan base but it hasn’t. It’s stronger than ever. The product is worse than ever but I still see fat Norman V. Cheespuffs wearing his favorite brown guy who hates him jersey. It’s really quite remarkable.
How much of it is Professional Sports is one avenue of escape from the feminization of entertainment? If a guy wants to watch some TV, Professional Sports doesn’t make fun of him, tell him he’s a loser, nor shoves “Stronk, Induhpendent Whamen!” into his face and down his throat 24/7/365. (Oh the ADVERTISEMENTS do, but what guy watches the ads? Except us, cursed with the ability to notice. And don’t get My Lovely 🥰 Mrs. nor I started on chicks on the sidelines.) So a dude can watch a football game for a couple of hours in peace, or go… Read more »
Those ‘overseas operators’ also conveniently strip out the increasingly-horrible advertising….
However, after Woke found Baseball’s front office and leaked onto the field, I quit cold-turkey.
There’s a small ray of light on this topic w/ 2 NHL teams: the Anaheim Ducks and Dallas Stars. Starting this season, they stood up an app called ‘Victory+’ on which nearly all of their regular season games can be watched for free within their respective territories (based on IP address) on cell phone, tablet, smart TV etc.. They figured out the cable model was failing, many of their fans had already cut the cord, and decided to make the leap into running their own app & production. Unfortunately it reverts to TNT and Max when the playoffs come round.… Read more »
One thing about Prime though – they toss in the channel for free with the Amazon subscription which usually pays for itself with the free shipping. So not as bad a deal as others.
The content is not that great, but there are a few things that are interesting – the behind the scenes sports documentaries are pretty good (“All or Nothing” I think they are called).
almost all my non-prime orders ship for free anyway. Prime is not worth having IMO.
It seems like more than just a coincidence that right when growth in sportsball as a business concern is beginning to become threatened, gambling on it is becoming more legalized and much more promoted. Helping draw and keep the attention of “fans” who might otherwise not have cared so much. Which helps keep those streaming subscriptions up. The mysterious unexplainable thing about the new music industry economy is why so many fans are still willing to pay top dollar to be packed in like sardines, sitting in uncomfortable chairs, to listen to shit music. But they do. Which suggests sportsball… Read more »
Something weird happened with basketball recently. The NBA signed yet another record TV deal. This by itself is basically business as usual when it comes to sports, as Z indicates. Yet, this deal was signed while the NBA is in the middle of a full throated collapse in ratings. We are talking about 40%-50% declines year-over-year, after last year’s already horrible ratings. The NBA’s signature day of Christmas is now getting eaten alive by the NFL. It seems people have just totally tuned out the NBA, and it isn’t too surprising. The players are just the most unlikeable and obnoxious… Read more »
Consider the possibility that sportsball is at least somewhat subsidized, much as broadcast media in general is, because the circuses must go on, just as the propaganda must be propagated. Some of the same fedloldollars that prop up the networks can be redirected to prop up the circuses. It is not a big leap, after you notice all the sportsball stadiums paid for with public funds.
It’s because they are not just paying for the live broadcasts, but also highlights, access to players/coaches, and (while probably not explicitly in the contract) tip offs of “breaking news”. Essentially 24/7/365 content to fill not just TV but also their online properties as well.
Fortunately jazz, Z’s favorite genre, has only benefitted from tech.
You no longer have to live in an urban area to hear it and since the 90s there has been a steady flow of out-of-print albums being released as CDs and Mp3s.
“You can’t beat technology” should be the motto of the age. Power will belong to the set of incipient elites that best adapts to this reality. So far, amazingly enough, it is the Trump/Vance/Musk triumvirate is winning the future, but they do have less baggage from the old managerial world.
Note: That does not necessarily mean “our side” is winning. Power requires sacrifices, and the DR, or whatever we’re calling it these days, will (probably) be the first on the altar.
At least with American sports, you generally only need one subscription to watch, say, the NFL. If you are a soccer fan (especially European/SA), each league seems to be on a separate platform. And then the international tournaments are on yet another platform.
Sucks.
Any self-respecting American doesn’t give a rat’s ass about that Euroweenie “sport.”
But America now has one of the world’s major soccer stars in Christian Pulisic.
Wrong skin color for (GM).
I made the mistake of going to a Boston College football game with a relative perhaps 8 or 9 years ago in Newton, MA. There was no advertising at the game other than posters and the like. But the game was frequently halted 2 or 3 minutes at a shot for what appeared to be no reason at all. Of course it was for advertising to the television and radio audience. If you’re at home you can get up to take a wizz or whatnot. But at the stadium you pretty much have to just sit there and wait for… Read more »
You’ve got to be a true blue fan to make the hassle of the gameday experience worth it. When football games lasted two hours it was one thing, sort of like going to the movies, but now it’s 4, not counting the drive there, parking, getting inside and back out, making it more like a 6 hour odyssey, and a whole day commitment for anybody who wants to tailgate.
I think sports will devolve into a gambling racket. Young people seem more interested in their fantasy teams or the myriad ways to bet on just about anything that happens during the game. That may be the major source of revenue for them going forward.
Very sad, but it is what it is.
don’t know how much general interest there is in vinyl, here, but i recently purchased a ‘near mint’ copy of the Manassas double album. It originally sold for $9 in 1972; the equivalent price today would be $57. I paid about $50 including shipping. sounds gorgeous in a way digital just can’t match. what is peculiar to me, is that many people today are buying vinyl that was based on a digital source?! not sure what you are actually hearing at that point. here’s the thing, a shiton of master tapes (that any vinyl reprint should be using) were lost… Read more »
Great essay. Only thing I think was left out is the rise of legal sports gambling, and how that industry (just like the pharmaceutical industry and legacy news media) is in many ways heavily subsidizing the entire sports industry even as traditional revenue streams are starting to decline. I haven’t checked in a while, but I understand the lifetime value of a customer for Draft Kings or Fan Duel is so extreme, that they are both willing to pay an abnormally high amount for advertising and customer acquisition, and not really bothered by low overall ratings of casual fans.
Entertainment is extremely price sensitive. When prices become unreasonable people will just run up the Jolly Roger and pirate what they want. I think I paid $4 to get the entirety of the Rugby World Cup last year. I could have found it for free with minimum difficulty, but why bother when it was four bucks.
Speaking of Midway 1942, the 2019 movie “Midway” was pretty decent.
The one good thing about the modern age is that with websites around, you can follow your favorite band and see when they’re going to be performing near you. The internet has made a whole raft of things possible, mostly good. I don’t see many people hating Amazon Dot Com or Reddit — some things *have* gotten better. The internet will undergo rapid evolution in the centuries to come, its architecture adapted for the holographic and VR worlds. And with every new step into a new frontier, there will be billions to be made by the quick and clever. Long… Read more »
Technology kills that which it loves. It’s like the scorpion crossing the river on the back of the frog and promising not to sting. But of course technology is going to sting. The biggest stinger of all is on the scorpion we call AI. If Skynet ever arises, we can thank our greed and laziness for making it possible, on the river we call our lives.
— Greg (my blog: http://www.dark.sport.blog)