A Sporting Economy

This whole economic free fall is also going to take its toll on the greatest of all great distractions that keep people sane in a harsh world--the world of sport may never be the same.

Now, the professional sports leagues and even the NCAA look like they'll be okay. There aren't going to be stories about how the NBA or the NFL will be cutting games from their schedules because of a lack of funds. The leagues and the teams (mostly) will be fine.

What might change because of this economic mess that we're in is the fan who attends the games. The common fan, the common fan family, may not be able to afford to go see a team that they've supported their entire life. The great guys at Sports Illustrated cover this (in a way that brings them back to their old glory days) and also cover how sports is dealing with this economic crunch with stories about NASCAR, the NBA, the NHL, high school and college sports.

The main article highlights how hard it is for true sports fans to go to games because of a shitty economy and rising ticket and food prices and ballparks and stadiums. The other stories, in this fashion, are a little bit more worthwhile to read.

The "changing face of the fan" story could have been written a couple of years ago or hell, even a decade ago. It's been a slow process, but this economic downturn has accelerated that.

How did this happen? Simple. The new state-of-the-art stadium/arena/ballpark. Don't get me wrong. Fans, teams and everyone enjoys these new facilities. And we kind of need them, especially in places that play in dark, damp, ugly things (like Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego).

But with these new facilities comes higher prices. Most of these new ballparks have smaller seating capacities, causing tickets prices and the like to go up. There are also luxury boxes, eliminating room for the averaging fan at these smaller parks.

And slowly, the demographic attending games went from the die-hard fan--who could be someone in the lower, middle or upper echelon of society--to the casual, almost not-even-caring fair-weather fan which mostly comes from that part of society where $100 bills are pocket change.

You can see it when you go to professional games now. The fans are muted. The fans may not even be watching. They're more interested in talking to their pals than to see "their team" win a game.

I've seen this in San Francisco at Giants games. Seen this in Chicago at (WTF?!) Cubs games. I've seen in Washington, D.C. and in San Diego.

Most of the fans there go to games for the stuff in the periphery. They're more interested in what kind of funnel cake the concessions stand has than who's pitching.

It's not all like that. Not yet. The die-hards, the true fans, they still exist. But now the process has been sped up. And now, it's only a matter of time before T.V. stations and radio crews have to pump artificial crowd noise into their broadcasts because the crowd at the game won't even know what the fuck is going on.

But thankfully, it's not like that now. Except for in Anaheim. Did you see all those Botox-injected, blonde, 40-year old, mothers at Angels Stadium during this playoff run? I sure did.

And in the future, all of our stadiums might be filled with'em.