Let me veer off my usual area of research topics this week and write about sports. Like many readers, especially Barrett Sports Media subscribers, I spend a reasonable amount of time watching live sports or used to. What I’d like to know is whether I’m the only one becoming more and more disillusioned and trying to find better ways to spend my time?
The trigger for this rant was the report that Bally Sports (the bankrupt Diamond Sports Group network name) will now be FanDuel Sports. We’ve gone from watching a local team on an RSN somehow tied to a casino group to one tied to sports betting.
For those of us who have no interest in losing money while watching live sports (remember: the house always wins!), the volume of betting information is a major negative. I watched game six of the Dallas/Edmonton NHL Western Conference final last week. It was a great game with Edmonton winning 2-1 while being outshot 35-10. And Connor McDavid’s power-play goal in the first period was a thing of pure beauty and one of the reasons that I love hockey.
But did we really need updated odds each period that Kenny Albert had to dutifully point out to the viewing audience? And let’s not consider the number of sports betting ads during the game.
College sports has essentially become another pro league, although you could argue that major college athletics, mostly football and men’s basketball, has been that way for years. Now, we have the “portal” and NIL. Michigan State, the school where I earned two of my degrees, recently and proudly announced a couple of NIL hires. While the previous “amateur” system may have been less than ideal (student-athletes couldn’t even be offered “pocket money” for expenses), watching million-dollar-a-year college football or basketball players takes something away from enjoying the game. And do you believe that Michigan State can keep up with the likes of Michigan, Ohio State, and a good chunk of the expanded SEC? Let’s go to the portal!
With respect to professional sports, COVID taught us a few things. Did you know that only 40% of baseball’s revenue comes from ticket sales? I’ve been convinced that the NFL could operate with no fans in the stands and still be profitable thanks to television rights and other revenues. 2020 proved that assumption to be essentially correct.
The money has accelerated beyond any semblance of sanity. My thinking works like an essay question you may have encountered in a high school history class that started out “Compare and contrast…”. In this case, every time I read about “corporate greed” and CEOs making $10 or $20 million a year, I compare it with pro athletes making well above that amount (we’ll dismiss Elon Musk’s proposed $56 billion pay package at Tesla as an outlier for the purposes of this discussion).
As an example, it’s easy to argue that Dave Calhoun has done a poor job as CEO of Boeing (by the way, he was the CEO of Nielsen when it bought Arbitron) and that his pay package of over $30 million this year is far more than deserved. But he’ll make less than a decent number of quarterbacks, a few wide receivers, any number of pitchers, numerous NBA players, and some European soccer stars. Some of them will probably perform as poorly as Calhoun has at Boeing, but at least, the Boeing job is an everyday gig.
The Wall Street Journal published an article last week playing off the reports that the NBA will be receiving $76 billion from their video partners starting in 2025. The result will likely be the first $100 million per year contract for an athlete. The WSJ is betting on Luka Doncic although I probably should have used a word other than “betting”. Can you place a bet on that with DraftKings?
Even though most of the team and league revenue is coming from sources other than tickets, ticket pricing is becoming a bigger deterrent to attendance. True, MLB attendance is running ahead of all-time records, the NHL and NBA are doing fine (and the NHL will probably improve again next year with the move of the Coyotes to Salt Lake City) and the NFL doesn’t really care.
But when I look at ticket prices for teams near me, specifically the Titans and Predators, the prices are beyond what I feel is worthwhile. Can I afford it? Yes. Do I want to? Not necessarily.
Are we hitting “peak sports” in terms of money? Is there a “canary in the coal mine” with the cancellation of Jennifer Lopez’ concert tour likely due to less than stellar ticket sales? If you want to read a great sports business article, last Friday’s Financial Times ran an in-depth look at John Henry and Fenway Sports, which owns the Red Sox, Penguins, and the Liverpool Premier League team and is getting involved with the PGA. As an aside, the article mentions that taking a family of four to Fenway Park now costs around $400.
I have one ticket package and it’s with the Bowling Green Hot Rods, our local “High A” minor league team affiliated with Tampa Bay. The Hot Rods let me exchange tickets as often as I want and threw in a suite for my renewal for this season. It’s a fun team to watch and while they aren’t MLB caliber, the team plays hard and wants to win as much as any other level of play.
The downtown Bowling Green ballpark is nice, the concessions are almost reasonable (because it’s Kentucky, the club level has more bourbon options than you’ll find at most major league parks!), and parking in the garage next door to the stadium is free, unlike some MLB stadiums where parking can exceed the ticket price if you plan to sit in the bleachers.
By the time you read this, the Stanley Cup Finals will have started and I’ll be watching, despite that it’s ESPN’s turn (please coax Doc Emrick out of retirement, bring back Gary Thorne, or at least use one of the other play-by-play guys like Bob Wischusen or John Forslund…Sean McDonough is a pro’s pro, but he never sounds like he’s excited to be at a hockey game). But I can promise you that I’ll spend less time with college and NFL football next season.
One of my MSU friends proposed going to a game next season. My response was that visiting Michigan to see friends was fine, but there’s no interest in going to a game. I used to watch a reasonable amount of college basketball but missed the entire tournament this year.
Is this a real trend or just an old guy doing a “get off my lawn” spiel? What do you think?
Let’s meet again next week.
