Quote:
Originally Posted by tfi racing
Even the NFL isn't immune to the general trend of plummeting TV viewership.All major sports properties are experiencing a decline in viewers and attendance,it will be fun to watch the management of these big media companies sweat and panic after boning us for decades...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...cc0_story.html |
It's really not that surprising to see this happen considering how the big leagues have treated their traditional, hardcore fans by effectively pricing them out of games. I said this in the NFL thread, but I'll repeat it here. In the NFL you often had generations of fans who would hand down season tickets to the next one and it would become kind of a family affair, and as such the city became attached to the team as it became ingrained in the culture. It was also the working man's source of entertainment, and you'd see NFL teams become sort of part of the blue-collar identity of certain cities. Once the NFL exploded in popularity and owners started demanding new stadiums and threatening to leave, it was only a matter of time before the hardcore fan was priced out and the cities grew less attached to their teams.
Now the NFL is still making money hand over fist, but the warning signs are there. The hardcore fans are more than happy to stay home and the corporate and casual fans become unreliable in down years. So now you have what is essentially the first generation of fans who can't afford to go to the games their parents took them to, and so the sports team isn't going to be as much of a part of their identities except in the years that the team is doing well. They're also not going to be passing on the tradition of going to games to their kids, so it's unlikely that their kids are going to feel any real attachment to the local team. I predict the next generation will likely grow more attached to certain players than local teams (we're already seeing this in European soccer).
There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this but combining it with a decline in cable subscriptions means that viewership likely continues to decline for all but the big matchups.