I have watched so many sports games when I was younger. It was baseball. And then it was also basketball. And then I started playing fantasy football in college. And then I, so I got into fantasy to watching NFL games when I was about 20. And so I watched so many NFL games. And now I don’t watch any at all.
I don’t watch NBA games. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t even pay attention to baseball. I don’t, I barely know what’s going on. And then with the NFL, I also keep track of the NFL. And so I listened to, to Bill Simmons to keep track of the NFL. And then I read Reddit. But I don’t actually watch the games.
And so, this is a problem. This is not just me more and more people are watching less games and less of the games. So, sometimes people will watch, but then they won’t, will only watch maybe the fourth quarter. And I think I would do that for certain games. So, Wimbenyama. I’ll watch some games, but I’ll mostly watch highlights.
So this is a problem because more people are not the type of fans that the sports leagues want to have. So what is the problem? Well, I think that one of the problems is inevitable and it’s not really the sports leagues fault. I think part of this is that we’re just changing the way. Technology has opened up for us to have so many options and for us to be more invested in ourselves.
We’ve got too many, we’ve got so many interests now. There are just the way society has evolved because of technology has fundamentally changed what content we we absorb and we pay attention to and we spend our time on, but I think this has been exacerbated by the fact that these sports leagues have really they’ve taken, they’ve taken the situation for granted and they’ve assumed that fans would always have to buy into what they’re selling or they always would buy into what they’re selling.
But that’s changed because of the reasons I just mentioned, but also because the product Has degraded over the years. And so what are the ways that they’ve really watered down the product? Well, one, one thing I noticed is that the officiating, I’m not the officiating, the, the announcing has been really bad.
And so then the announcing is so sanitized now and there, the, the announcers and the commentators are so restricted in what they can say that you really only get this. Fluffy call of the game and it does ruin the experience. And so, and there’s usually a narrative to be pushed and it’s usually too flowery, especially on the national broadcast.
And I think this is, this is if you think about Charles Barkley’s popularity. A lot of it is in part because he just states what he’s thinking. It doesn’t matter really whether he’s right or wrong, but he’s commentating authentically and that’s not what we get from ESPN announcers, ABC announcers, et cetera.
So The, the the, the, the actual narrate, narrating of the game is bad. And there, there is a narrative being pushed for sure. And I think if it was more authentic, then that would draw in more people. Of course, the pace of the play has also affected things. And so we’ve seen actual baseball has actually changed the way it is played to speed up the game, which I think is for the better.
One of the problems is just baseball. It’s nine innings and it still takes a long time, but the pace of the play has affected. All sports leagues. And so I think they will pick this up and they will think, make things quicker, but there are still in game interactions that take a long time. So when we think about basketball, it’s these reviews and the fouls at the end of the game where we’re these last, let’s say the last four minutes, they end up taking 30 minutes to watch.
This is a problem. People just don’t have that attention span anymore. And so they should have made the pace of the play more palatable to begin with before people ever started having diminished attention spans, they should have made it to where the game was, had a better flow. No matter what there.
And when I say the fouls and the pace of the play contributing to that is the timeouts. So there are so many, there are timeouts being taken and there’ll be strategically taken and then the game stops and then we wait and there’s talking or there are commercials and then we continue. But that’s bad for the product.
There’s also excessive advertisements. And so now you don’t even get a halftime show and the halftime show is horrible anyway, so you don’t really watch it. The halftime show that exists is barely a few sound bites and then it’s overrun with ads. And then the mean to, in the meantime, during the broadcast, there’s ads, it’s powered by this, it’s and sponsored by that.
There are ads all over the courts, the jerseys. Now have advertisements in the NBA. So it really becomes a problem because you’re trying to enjoy this game. It’s for entertainment and you’re also bombarded with advertisements throughout. I think also with going back to the NBA with the tactics that they allow have really.
Watered down the game and when you watch players Flopping and falling to the floor and it’s very obvious to everyone watching the game that there If a foul has not been committed and yet the player that is flopping is rewarding is being rewarded it’s, it’s a, it’s a bad product and they should have fixed this sooner and they’ve, they’ve, the NBA has done this thing for a long time where at the beginning of the season they have these new policies and they’re going to institute them and then you’ll see a major correction for maybe the first week of the season or the first few months there will be these new foul calls, but then they’ll just disappear.
And so that’s happened quite frequently in past years. But this the nba has had a bad product for a while and it’s partly because of the way they allow the game to be Played on the court and this is coming from the nba because it’s not the referee’s fault the referees can referee the game, but they’re told to referee it a certain way and this is obvious just watching the game and the the what the players get away with it’s it’s It’s too, it’s too overt.
It’s right in your face. And so these tactics Should should have been cut out right away the reviews the review periods when we’re having so many reviews. This is another stop of the game It’s not a timeout. It’s not a penalty. It’s not a it’s not a foul it’s a review and then so This is another way that the flow of the game is stopped and people just can’t you can’t just watch the game and be done with it.
There’s so much to the game. And so, I’m not saying that these should be removed altogether. In fact, I think that replay has been a good thing in certain circumstances. But you also have to keep in mind that someone is trying to watch this game. And if you’re prolonging it unnecessarily, and you’re making it to where there are constant commercial breaks, then this is a problem.
And this is something the sports leagues for a long, long time. They’ve just let it run because they could get away with it. Who’s going to stop them? Everybody was watching them. If you wanted to watch professional basketball, you’re going to watch the NBA. If you wanted to see baseball, you watch the show, right?
It’s, it’s Major League Baseball and so on. So the sports leagues have been in a front runner position. And now things have changed because their, their viewership, their fans. are engaging with the with the content in different ways. So it’s not that people have necessarily exited, but they’ve exited the way that the sports leagues need for fans to pay attention to.
And so they’re taking, it’s, it’s not the profitable way, right? Watching highlights on TikTok is not profitable. People that are watching the game summaries on YouTube, which I’ve done, right? If I’m really interested in a game. I’m not going to spend two and a half hours going through the slog of an NBA game.
I can just watch it afterwards on YouTube and this is even from the NBA’s official channel. You can go watch the game from start, all of the major highlights from start to finish. It’ll be like a nine minute clip. And that’s what, that is a problem. And that’s, that’s not all about the game itself, but these are contributors and these these problems, these, these problems with the game have alienated.
Fans now for decades and then a few more things here, the players not actually playing. That’s a huge problem in the NBA. And of course there’s the phrase load management. Other players fake injuries. There are, there’s tanking because sometimes the team’s just not going to be that good. So maybe they’re below average.
So they might as well be really bad. And so they’ll sit the star player for the last 20 games and just tell them that they have a. You know, it’s a hamstring injury and then they’ll just be out. This is all hurt the product. There’s also, it’s not just the, the outright sitting of players and resting of players, some, sometimes you have teams where they’re, they’re playing players less than they used to.
So the star players now are conserved to the point that they’re not playing. 38 minutes per game in the NBA and the NBA has a 48 minute game rather the star player might play like 32 minutes a Game or 34 minutes a game and they’re looking for ways to creatively rest the player and that’s not not that’s not I’m, not saying that’s the fault of the team because it’s strategic but what it is what ends up happening though Is this strategy is getting in in the way of the fan experience?
And so it does come at a detriment. And then I also have here block games on The different league passes. So let’s just say the NFL has this let’s say something you can purchase you can purchase watching games, but you can only watch certain games or your favorite team is locked, is blocked.
And I know this happened with the NBA. And then it’s just like, well, okay, well, if I can’t even purchase directly from the league, the ability to watch my favorite team or the ability to watch certain games. Then that again, it’s a major turn off. And so this is all, when you start to look at this in the broader picture and, you know, looking at these things, not just isolated, but you start stacking this against the leagues.
It really comes out to, as a fan, why would I watch your entire game? I like, let’s just say, I like your sport, or I like the players, or there are some players that I’m genuinely interested in. Well, I can just go watch the clips on YouTube. I don’t need to watch the whole game. Or I can read the Reddit reactions to get my version of the commentary.
I don’t need to listen to your generic play by play announcer. With a, with a, with the commentary, the color commentary, I can just, I can go on Reddit. I don’t need that. It’s not something that’s making a difference to me. So over time, these sports leagues have been in the front runner status and they’re now, they’re now on the defensive.
Now they’re trying to win back fans and trying to build viewership and get to people to watch games and more of games, not just the fourth quarter, not just the second half. But they want you to watch the entire games and that’s going to be a problem for them. Not only because of the societal trends, but because they have an alienated their fans for so long.
And they’ve taken the fans that were really, that really bought into their product. And they’ve they’ve put out a worse and worse product and, and treated them worse and worse.