The Changing Sports Landscape

I've been going to college football and basketball games my whole life. The first ever was in 1994 when the Cincinnati Bearcats took on the Indiana Hoosiers (somehow the eventual 2026 National Champion Indiana Hoosiers). A year or two after that I went to Ohio State to see Illinois get run over by Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George. I went to Xavier games at the Cincinnati Garden with my Cub Scout troop. I hand cut confetti for the first dunk of the game. My first MLB game featured a Barry Larkin homer over the left field wall at Riverfront Stadium. And in that same building I saw Rod Woodson pick up Jeff Blake 3 times when the Steelers came to town and smoked my Cincinnati Bengals.

These are some of my favorite memories.

The Business of Sports

All the while, it was a commercial experience. Sports are an entertainment product meant to generate revenue for team and league owners. Advertisers and brands invest in real estate at games or during commercial breaks for a chance to sell to fans tuning into the entertainment product. That's the business. It's not a civic enterprise to find out which city is better or worse, it's exclusively to bring people together to advertise to them.

Folks who are exceptionally good at those games get paid to play them in the hopes they will win games for their team...where winning draws fans to attend the game or buy more gear or purchase season tickets or buy more hot dogs.

I'm not trying to sound harsh, it's just a hard realization I've had over the last several decades. We are consumers of a product, not a small part of the product. Our cheers don't really mean anything, it's only a means for the owners to know we will show up again next time because we're addicted to the product.

Chase Center

This is an extremely harsh view, I get it. There are way more positive things than negatives here but it hit me hard recently when I went to Chase Center in San Francisco to see the Golden State Warriors.

My first NBA game was to see Shaq at Market Square Arena. We were in row RR in the upper deck. It felt like we were looking off a cliff we were so high up. My experience at Chase Center was awesome. I loved every single minute of being there and I could not keep my eyes off Steve Kerr watching him work. Watching Steph Curry exist in space is now probably equal to seeing Shaq 30 years prior.

But the big thing that stuck out was the amount of visible commercialized space (VCS, new term I'm gonna claim). Every single inch of the arena was littered with sponsored space. Every single second was scripted. A "which concession would you rather have" game followed by a "higher or lower" casino style card game presented by the local casino chain.

SOMEBODY SCREEEEAAAMMMM (sponsored by Thomas J Henry) blasting from the jumbotron. Constant music playing during each possession to elicit some sort of emotion to keep me engaged in the game.

It felt like being IN Idiocracy.

It Was Always Like This

And it's always been like this, I just didn't notice. I think that's the part that's jarring. It was and always has been an entertainment product to generate interest. Sports have now become so big and easy to commercialize that it's starting to tip past the point where I'm noticing it.

I'm still going to go to games. I'm still going to cheer. But I can't unsee it now.