That's completely ignoring what I can only assume will eventually be massive lawsuits around concussions for the NFL.
It isn't random; it's an outdated approach to getting butts in seats. Generally, it will be the local team that is "blacked out" in its home market. The blame goes to the team ownership, not the networks. But I agree, it's stupid.
The NFL has also oversaturated the brand. It used to be Sunday games and then MNF. Each week was an event. TNF ruined the event aspect, and has put on really terrible games showing how thin the league has become. Then there are the games in other countries. For a sport like baseball or basketball 1 game in another country is not a big deal, but the NFL season is only 16 games and losing a home game is a huge deal for the fans, players, and competition aspect.
So yeah, I think all those things (and the stadium issue you mention) have added to up to pushing fans away.
At some point I just felt like I didn't want to watch old dudes "own" young men while they tried to kill each other for America's entertainment. It started to feel like real life mandingo fighting (from Django Unchained) and I decided that I didn't want to be a part of enriching that.
I played the game in a serious social manner (every weekend during the season at a reasonably good amateur level) for 15-20 years (had a few seasons off to do other things) since I was 15. I've had an ACL reconstruction and one shoulder is a painful mess. Fortunately no obvious head issues so far.
I love the game and watch a lot of it, but when the time comes I'm not really sure I want my boy playing.
Thanks for the personal perspective. Do you think this would lead to the same situation the NFL finds itself in now? People hitting harder in part because of the protection provided by the pads?
In rugby, only the ball carrier may be tackled and there are rules against deliberate head high hits. Yet, with the speed, size and athleticism of moden players, the amount of head injuries are on the rise.
I think wearing the padded scull caps would make a big difference to accidental head trauma in rugby. Many of the top players already do.
3-4 hours for NFL? Ick. Only the best, most interesting games maybe approach that sort of time and commercial (aggravation) commitment. And that's setting aside head injuries.
I used to compete in and still watch a lot of downhill skiing. The technological advancements in helmets over the past ten years has been incredible, now we have MIPS foam and kevlar and carbon and in general stuff that's been engineered and crash tested to perfection. Not to mention helmets are now discarded after a single impact. How is it with NFL helmets?
Keep in mind that the interior base of the braincase is a catastrophe of sharp bone, and that you're scraping something with the durability of jello across it every time there's an impact that has any lateral component, which is all of them.
You get the strategy of knowing how many shots the QB has taken in the game, all sorts of new statistics can be compiled for the fans who like that, and you're more or less guaranteed to have one to four serious injuries per game.
The QB now has to figure out defensive and offensive aiming as well as ball management. Tackles and backers need to factor in taking a shot versus possible possession.
Not to mention that QBs get arrested during most games. There's going to be a lot more substitution.
Really, if you're going to talk about "neutering" the game by making it less dangerous to the players, then obviously it makes the game much more manly if you up the stakes this way.
Their marketing campaign was to go after children like the tobacco industry.[1] With head trauma coming to the forefront the NFL is going to the back of priorities.
[1] http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/nfl-football-...
Spending so much on stadiums seems insane. In Pittsburgh the Steelers and Pirates lobbied for and got seperate stadiums, despite minimal overlap in seasons.
The problem isn't that the Steelers and Pirates should have separate stadiums. That's fine. The problem is that the stadiums should pay for themselves.
If a stadium isn't a good enough business proposition to get funded privately, it shouldn't get funded, period.
Yeah. In Munich, for example, the Allianz Arena stadium was built for 340M €, which were brought up by FC Bayern and TSV 1860, in cooperation with Allianz insurance which sponsored the name. FC Bayern paid off the entire debt two years ago (after 9.5 years, it was projected to take 25 years to pay off the debt).
But I'm not totally against public partial funding/investment - especially in the lower leagues the pitch usually is open to all kinds of sport clubs as well as nearby schools, so it makes sense to fund at least part of the costs via public channels as long as the public gets some value back beyond interest payments. (Anecdata: I'm living across the pitch my former school still uses. It's weird to see lots of the teachers random on the street...)
I've been to several events this year at the Golden1 Center and have spent no more than $10 on parking for the evening. The city did use this as an excuse to increase meter rates and extend hours, but it's only $0.50/hr more.
Speaking of commercials, this is what is really killing TV. We have more things competing for our time than ever before, and commercials are the first thing to go. In addition to the time wasting, people also start doing the math. $10/month for Netflix commercial free content or cable $80-$100/month for commercial laden content.
BTW, AMC and TWD are one of the worst offenders with commercial time vs. show time.
This article is about ESPN, which is a live sports network. Cutting the cord is difficult for a sports fan. None of the services you mention are a replacement (yet).
>TV had it's heyday
I can tell you don't watch much TV. It's never been better. We're in a golden age of TV, it's just not on ESPN. There have recently been a lot of extremely high quality, hour long dramas, which basically amount to a movie every week. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Wire, arguably Westworld, to name a few.
Now actual televisions aren't necessarily part of the equation. Plenty of people are watching these series on their phones and laptops and tablets, and sometimes televisions, but not in the way they used to be delivered to said screens.
I agree that we're in something of a golden age for episodic story-telling. I agree that this story-telling was born from broadcast television. I don't agree that it, in its current incantation, can be plainly categorized as "TV".
In the same way that a mobile device is no longer a telephone, though we may still call it one from time to time, and a TV remote is no longer a "clicker", no matter how many times my parents call it one.
Language moves on. We already have a retronym[1] called "broadcast television" that incorporates what you're describing, while the definition of television will probably change with our devices.
The Wire felt like it actually taught me something and made me think about society and my role in it. But to what extent are Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and Westworld basically same as daytime soap operas dressed up so they're palatable to 'discerning' consumers?
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I do find that many people, myself included, justify their TV habits by arguing that we're watching 'quality' TV instead of the usual daytime garbage.
(I've been reading Infinite Jest and recently read Wallace' "E Unibus Pluram"[1], so this has been on my mind.)
One day I will be old and unoccupied, work will be behind me, my capacity to produce will be reduced, I will be more inclined to consume. If TV programmes and films of today are any good they will still be around. I shall watch them then.
Nowadays, he uses my Netflix account waaaay more than I do. And he's catching up on decades of shows, and quite enjoying himself. He just finished Season 3 of ST:TNG. It's been fun talking to him about episodes I watched back in the day, too.
TV and movies are visual mediums, you can tell stories in more interesting ways. People might flatter themselves a little bit but that's not why these shows are popular IMHO.
How is entertaining you not improving your life?
I'm not judging anyone and I'm by no means saying that it's easy to discern how 'junk' a form of entertainment is. I'm just saying that I started wondering whether this quality food I'm having a lot of might just be cleverly dressed up junk food. Specifically in regards to 'quality' shows like GoT and Westworld.
I really don't mean that in a pretentious way. I watch stuff that most people would probably consider junk, so that would be hypocritical of me.
There are higher quality TV shows than ever before. To say TV "had its heyday" is outrageous. TV, not movies, is where the magic is happening these days.
I know people who have paid for HBO accounts to watch shows as soon as they come out (instead of pirating them or binging them a few years later), ditto for cable subs and commercials. The average consumer is not bothered by this stuff IME.
You'd be hard pressed to find something on live cable television that isn't trash or available somewhere else without obnoxious ads (loudness mitigation is a lie) and cheaper.
>You'd be hard pressed to find something on live cable television that isn't trash
Breaking Bad and Mad Men were both on AMC.
Also, Breaking Bad ended in 2013, and Mad Men in 2015. That list only has two entries. Maybe not literally everything on live cable TV is trash, but I think it highlights that there's a clear decline.
While this might disprove my statement, I don't think it's entirely without merit, still.
Is it a problem that some of us like sports? I bet you have a "ridiculous" hobby or two that's a complete waste of money.
And I love the mentality of "TV is trash and I can hardly stand it...but I'll steal it anyway."
I can't even spend the attention required to watch TV most times. I find myself just leaving it on in the background and then realized that I've paused it because something was more interesting on my laptop. Sometimes it takes me hours just to get through one episode.
There is also piracy. I don't have cable but I still watched Walking Dead. Which I've also stopped watching. Live TV just seems so pointless. If a show is good I can just pick it up after like 3 seasons and binge it if I want.
Paying $80 a month for TV is just absurd. And paying for sports is even more ridiculous. I like the NBA, and occasionally the NFL during playoffs. But I'll never watch a game live which just spreads 35 minutes of content over 3 hours to maximize ad revenue.
TV had it's heyday, the idea that it isn't on a steady downward decline towards some new steady state is delusion. ESPN in its current form is done. The impact on athletes salaries should be interesting though.