Post: #51

Hispanic parents are going to have their kids playing baseball and soccer. Its a growing demographic in the US. Baseball is very popular in Latin America, Caribbean, and South America. Baseball is not going anywhere. They do need to shorten the season though. That will be tough to sell to the owners. The biggest growth for baseball right now is probably in Asia. China could become a huge baseball hot spot in 20-30 years.

Post: #52

The biggest threat to all sports is the loss of television revenue. That's where the bulk of the money comes from, but less Millennials are buying cable and satellite tv packages. There's simply no cash cow in the long-term to justify $10m+ per year contracts. All major league sports will have to come to terms with doing business in a New Normal economy that doesn't support their current business model. The league owners seem largely out of touch. They've been riding a cash cow for decades, but that cow is about to throw them off its back very soon. People just aren't watching sports on tv like they used to, and ticket prices are out of reach for many in the middle class. Hard times ahead for all sports leagues IMHO.

Post: #53

YankeeTravels that was a solid post, enjoyed your takes.
One thing though, I don't know if Golf is as popular as you make it out to be. Yes everyone loves Masters Sunday or a showdown in the US Open but I've noticed some trends. Nike stopped making clubs and adidas sold TaylorMade to some private equity firm. Without Tiger I think the PGA has taken a bit of a hit. What a great era the early 2000s were for golf, Mickelson, Vijay, Ernie, Tiger and Duval. Will Speith, Rickie, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, DJ, Scott, Rory or Jason Day and Oosthuizen be able to generate the same buzz as those old legends? Furthermore, check out this article from NY Post:

Quote:And for Generation Y, at least, the answer is no. According to the National Golf Foundation, there are an estimated 24.1 million golfers in the United States, down from 24.7 million in the previous two years and over 5 million fewer than played the game in 2005. In 2013, for example, golf in the United States lost over 400,000 players, half of whom were millennials.

https://www.google.ca/amp/nypost.com/201...oring/amp/

There still are very large purses though. Big corporate sponsors. It will be interesting to see if this trend of Millenials that don't like golf continues and starts to hit the PGAs bottom line.

Post: #54

Step 1: Find a male dominated interest.
Step 2: Dumb it down so it will suit women because double the $ and also sexism is bad.
Step 3: Profit. Well, more like watch the profits wither away.
Step 4: Move on to the next male dominated interest to find ways to destroy it. Because why should guys enjoy anything in life?

A lot of guys I know got red pilled because of Gamergate. Meanwhile way before that women journalists invaded sports locker rooms and dumbed down the commentary and in the business world made business newspapers into little more than gossip columns because female readers complained about the columns being too long.

Post: #55

(09-15-2017 08:57 PM)911 Wrote:  I think rugby 7s has a good potential for growth in America. Open game, fast, open field running, intuitive, no large scrums compared to XVs, tournament format, and olympic sport to boot. XVs is a bit weird for outsiders if you didn't grow with the sport.

The 13-aside Rugby League (as opposed to the 15-aside Rugby Union) would be interesting to North Americans. The five tackle system is where American Football got the down system from. It is physically more demanding than Rugby Union as it is faster, has less stoppages and the tackles tend to be three defenders on one attacker.


As a whole, multi-channel, subscription TV sports channels have damaged male team sports as this brought about the sad fact that young men prefer to watch sports than train and play them, the uber professionalism has brought about the franchise system, players have no loyalty to the club and the traditional fan base is priced out from going to the stadiums to watch the matches.

A sign of decline is the sudden appearance of the women's games on mainstream TV. As we know, we women ascend to positions which were once for men (politics, civil life, the church, sports etc), it isn't the cause of the decline, it is a symptom of existing decline.

Post: #56

(09-15-2017 12:49 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  I started the NFL thread, I was a die hard fan for decades.

The breast cancer thing grinds me and annoys me to no end. What the fuck about a disease that kills men like prostate cancer.

Turned on Monday night to see my beloved Chargers, they had a woman calling the plays. I stayed with it for like 5 minutes, thinking she must be a sideline reporter. When I realized she wasn't, I turned off the TV and went to bed.

The West is fucked, the agenda to turn men into women is stupid.

This is it in a nutshell, for why the league is dying. Last weeks Monday Night Football was a total disaster on all sides. The woman calling the game on ESPN had zero experience calling any sort of sporting event, let alone Monday Night Football. The sideline twerp had to take to Twitter and issue a sobbing apology about his lousy performance. They took him off the air after his awful sideline reporting.

Post: #57

Feels like it's 2 main things for the NFL.

1. They have maxed out all revenue streams. Ticket prices, miserly stadiums, TV Ads, DirecTV to get Sunday Ticket, gouging municipal tax payers for new stadiums, etc... - there just is no more that they can squeeze. The NFL's market has matured.

Especially ticket prices and the stadiums.

I remember for the '13-14 playoffs wild card round teams couldn't sell out stadiums for the playoffs, including the Green Bay Packers. You can charge $150 a ticket for nose bleed seats for the NE Patriots, but not the Rams, Chargers, and 49ers. I wonder what the average ticket prices (including all taxes & fees) and beer prices were for those empty California games last Sunday. I'd pay $35 after taxes & fees for nosebleed seats & $10 beers to see the Rams, but not $100+ and who knows for beer.

As for the miserly stadiums, 2 Decembers ago I paid over $100 for the non-playoff bound Ravens for a top deck seat in a 1/5 empty stadium. I was curious what it was like since I'd never been to a regular season NFL game before. I couldn't believe how tiny my seat was. Southwest has lazy boys by comparison. If I had gotten stuck between 2 obese football fans, I would have been miserable. I decided that I'd much rather be at a college game in an old school stadium.

2. Cord cutting.

Everyone under 40 is doing it. ESPN is fucked because of it. I never had cable and with amazon prime & netflix, I don't see why anyone would want it. The only thing that sucks is not being able to buy Sunday Ticket. I'd bet that much of the drop off in ratings is because people under 40 refuse to pay year round for DirecTV just so that they can pay for Sunday Ticket on top of that. As well, many young people probably physically can't get DirecTV since if you jack up housing prices in large sections of the USA and stick everyone in north facing apartment buildings, it's impossible to get satellite. I used to work with Nielsen's system and it can easily break this down by demographics and allow you to do year over year comparisons. It's telling that no one who has access to their data is discussing how the ratings fall splits up among age groups. I think plenty of under 40s want to watch the NFL and would pay for Sunday Ticket, but only streamed and with no strings attached.

While I don't like mass immigration or all the protests, I'm not really buying the demographics or PC arguments in this case. They probably have some impact but get drawfed by the 2 reasons above.

Post: #58

(09-16-2017 12:29 AM)John Michael Kane Wrote:  The biggest threat to all sports is the loss of television revenue. That's where the bulk of the money comes from, but less Millennials are buying cable and satellite tv packages. There's simply no cash cow in the long-term to justify $10m+ per year contracts. All major league sports will have to come to terms with doing business in a New Normal economy that doesn't support their current business model. The league owners seem largely out of touch. They've been riding a cash cow for decades, but that cow is about to throw them off its back very soon. People just aren't watching sports on tv like they used to, and ticket prices are out of reach for many in the middle class. Hard times ahead for all sports leagues IMHO.

They're largely out of touch.

I used to be pretty active on /r/NBA. Every year there's a bunch of people interested in getting NBA League Pass to stream games on their laptop.

The problem is the service is absolute shit. IIRC

-Stream quality was bad
-No playoffs/Finals
-Still subject to local blackouts

If the leagues could work out realistic streaming options, they would make a shit ton of money.

I don't have cable but I still have weeknights where I get the craving to watch NBA. If I could pay $3 to get a high quality stream I'd pay in an instant, just so I didn't have to go to the virus-ridden stream sites that exist today.

Same thing with the Finals, my roommate and I streamed every game because it was such a fun series. We put up with the stream failures, time delays, everything. If there was an easy option to buy the finals for...$25? We would've paid.

The founders of Spotify had this mentality. Somewhere in an interview they said something like "if you make legal streaming easier and faster than illegal, everyone will use legal." Same thing with sports.

Post: #59

It's not just the NFL that's dying. All sports are dying. Participation is down heavy in sports. In many places leagues are coed for little kids. Not because of political correctness and gender diversity bull shit but because there's only enough kids for one coed league for age groups when there used to be a boys and girls league.

Post: #60

There was no need for them to have expanded the season years ago, so that the world series is played close to Thanksgiving now

Post: #61

I've stopped watching over the past five years. My biggest reasons, in order of significance:

1) realizing sports are ultimately a distraction, largely a waste of time, and that grown men should do something else with their time and focus
2) having to deal with personal issues that demanded a lot of time/focus/money
3) feeling bad for players getting their brains scrambled for others' amusement
4) getting fed up with PC culture which has infiltrated sports and entertainment

Post: #62

(09-16-2017 11:00 AM)realologist Wrote:  It's not just the NFL that's dying. All sports are dying. Participation is down heavy in sports. In many places leagues are coed for little kids. Not because of political correctness and gender diversity bull shit but because there's only enough kids for one coed league for age groups when there used to be a boys and girls league.

I think the reason for this is really simple. Less people are having kids now and those who are having one, maybe two kids at most so it would follow that participation is down in sports and other kids activities as well I'd assume.

Post: #63

(09-16-2017 12:12 AM)Razor Beast Wrote:  Hispanic parents are going to have their kids playing baseball and soccer. Its a growing demographic in the US. Baseball is very popular in Latin America, Caribbean, and South America. Baseball is not going anywhere. They do need to shorten the season though. That will be tough to sell to the owners. The biggest growth for baseball right now is probably in Asia. China could become a huge baseball hot spot in 20-30 years.

Mexicans aren't that much into baseball, caribbean hispanics are, but overall, they're a relatively small percentage of hispanic migrants. Baseball isn't very popular in S. Am. outside of Venezuela.

The only countries where baseball has been entrenched in Asia are Japan and Taiwan, because those countries were de-facto American colonies where nearly everyone grew up playing little league in school. I don't think baseball has a chance in China compared to basketball and soccer.

Baseball has also been in slow decline in the US as a participation sport:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/...e5255a77eb

Post: #64

I often wonder where professional sports would be if we truly had a free market in this country. Take away taxpayer-funded stadiums, and what is left? Take away the highly subsidized TV-cable industry which in turn pays off ESPN.

One thing that would help professional sports a lot would be a return to reasonable salaries. Go back to the salaries of the 1950's and 1960's. Guys will still play the games. But they will also be more grateful for what they have. The public will be able to identify with the more as well.

The most ironic thing is that most of these guys end up broke by the age of 45 or 50.

Post: #65

I think the NFL just got too greedy.

First, I watched and read a lot about the St. Louis Rams moving. That was a shitty and evil thing to do.

Second, the money the players and teams are making is so public, its really hard to feel the connection to a specific team like people used to. Do you really care that a bunch of mega millionaires living in wacky mansions lost?

I only usually see football first hand for the Pro Bowl. Within the last few years I sawmRoger Goodell pull up at a restaurant. The son of a bitch has a motorcade. It was several vehichles, and the one he was in was a bulletproof Cadillac with all kinds of big antennas coming out, like he needs secure com's or some shit.

Its a big money fest that ultimately alienates its main customers.

Aloha!

Post: #66

(09-15-2017 12:49 PM)rudebwoy Wrote:  I started the NFL thread, I was a die hard fan for decades.

The breast cancer thing grinds me and annoys me to no end. What the fuck about a disease that kills men like prostate cancer.

Turned on Monday night to see my beloved Chargers, they had a woman calling the plays. I stayed with it for like 5 minutes, thinking she must be a sideline reporter. When I realized she wasn't, I turned off the TV and went to bed.

The West is fucked, the agenda to turn men into women is stupid.

Apart from the cancer situation, soccer in Europe (football) is silmilar now. Equality/Diverse adverts everywhere, women referees and so forth

Post: #67

The NBA isn't doing well either.

I don't know it was brought up either, but the reason behind this is that the NFL and NBA - like so many other things - are fully owned by (((them))) and they have politicized and racialized the leagues for the last many years. Direct and indirect discrimination of white players too.

Post: #68

(09-16-2017 11:33 AM)R_Niko Wrote:  I've stopped watching over the past five years. My biggest reasons, in order of significance:

1) realizing sports are ultimately a distraction, largely a waste of time, and that grown men should do something else with their time and focus
2) having to deal with personal issues that demanded a lot of time/focus/money
3) feeling bad for players getting their brains scrambled for others' amusement
4) getting fed up with PC culture which has infiltrated sports and entertainment

Well let's not get carried away. The players are voluntarily getting their brains scrambled not for others' entertainment but for access to money, pussy, and fame for themselves. Whether you are entertained or not is about the furthest thing from their mind. They know the deal and there is absolutely no reason to feel bad for them, anymore than it makes sense to feel bad for druggies who throw away their lives for a high.

Post: #69

Another general factor is the lack of identification.

Players are paid so extreme amounts of money that they essentially become elite of elites.

I mean, what does it say about me - the viewer - when I watch some people toss a ball around with half assed motivation making more in a week/month than most make in a life?

What is it I am really watching?

What does it say about a society and system (international capitalism) that we have to pay people $30 million a year in order to subdue the general populace?

If you can pay an athlete $30 million a year then something is really wrong.

Simply put, what the fuck are you doing watching people play ball for $30 million a year when you're addicted to pain killers and have no job. What the fuck are you doing watching it while society disintegrates.

At some point, the whole thing becomes unwatchable, you have to face what its about. The bread and circus. And when the (((owners))) begin attacking you politically, through the thing meant to placate you, then how can you watch and keep watching?

Post: #70

(09-16-2017 11:59 AM)doc holliday Wrote:  

(09-16-2017 11:00 AM)realologist Wrote:  It's not just the NFL that's dying. All sports are dying. Participation is down heavy in sports. In many places leagues are coed for little kids. Not because of political correctness and gender diversity bull shit but because there's only enough kids for one coed league for age groups when there used to be a boys and girls league.

I think the reason for this is really simple. Less people are having kids now and those who are having one, maybe two kids at most so it would follow that participation is down in sports and other kids activities as well I'd assume.

I think sports culture is dying as a whole. Fitness culture may be on the rise (crossfit, for instance), but sports are. Not to mention the rise of "esports" and gaming

Post: #71

NFL/NBA/Baseball are maxed out in the US. Are you guys aware that many US team owners also own European soccer clubs? The English Premier League is very popular globally.

• Shahid Khan (Jacksonville Jaguars) owns Fulham FC
• John Henry (Boston Red Sox) owns Liverpool FC
• Stan Kroenke (Denver Nuggets, LA Rams) part owns Arsenal FC
• Glazer Family (Tampa Bay Buccaneers) owns Manchester United FC
  

7 of the top 10 earning sports teams are soccer teams:

1. Manchester United: $774 million
2. Dallas Cowboys: $700 million
3. FC Barcelona: $697 million
4. Real Madrid: $697 million
5. Bayern Munich: $665 million
6. Manchester City: $590 million
7. Paris Saint-Germain: $585 million
8. Arsenal: $526 million
9. New England Patriots: $523 million
10. New York Yankees: $516 million
    

I think that most of the world wouldn't get into the NFL - it's too long and boring. The stop start nature of the games is a massive turn off.

Post: #72

↑ the fantasy football nerds want to put a hit on Goodall? Damn they take that serious

Post: #73

(09-16-2017 04:49 PM)nek Wrote:  

(09-16-2017 11:59 AM)doc holliday Wrote:  

(09-16-2017 11:00 AM)realologist Wrote:  It's not just the NFL that's dying. All sports are dying. Participation is down heavy in sports. In many places leagues are coed for little kids. Not because of political correctness and gender diversity bull shit but because there's only enough kids for one coed league for age groups when there used to be a boys and girls league.

I think the reason for this is really simple. Less people are having kids now and those who are having one, maybe two kids at most so it would follow that participation is down in sports and other kids activities as well I'd assume.

I think sports culture is dying as a whole. Fitness culture may be on the rise (crossfit, for instance), but sports are. Not to mention the rise of "esports" and gaming

Esports is a whole new level of calling shit sports. I was shocked to hear it as a term. It's even worse than when Nascar drivers call themselves athletes.

Post: #74

Interesting how the Rams skipping town and the Colts, a generation or even two ago, are different. Now it's a parody and nobody is welcoming the new franchise.

Post: #75

(09-16-2017 04:50 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  NFL/NBA/Baseball are maxed out in the US. Are you guys aware that many US team owners also own European soccer clubs? The English Premier League is very popular globally.

• Shahid Khan (Jacksonville Jaguars) owns Fulham FC
• John Henry (Boston Red Sox) owns Liverpool FC
• Stan Kroenke (Denver Nuggets, LA Rams) part owns Arsenal FC
• Glazer Family (Tampa Bay Buccaneers) owns Manchester United FC
  

7 of the top 10 earning sports teams are soccer teams:

1. Manchester United: $774 million
2. Dallas Cowboys: $700 million
3. FC Barcelona: $697 million
4. Real Madrid: $697 million
5. Bayern Munich: $665 million
6. Manchester City: $590 million
7. Paris Saint-Germain: $585 million
8. Arsenal: $526 million
9. New England Patriots: $523 million
10. New York Yankees: $516 million
    

I think that most of the world wouldn't get into the NFL - it's too long and boring. The stop start nature of the games is a massive turn off.

Many are starting to fall out of love with the EPL due to the monopoly like price tags and the soulless atmospheres.