I find it amusing that every year: sports ticket prices go up, players salaries go up, and then the FANS are expected to pay for new sporting arenas via extended sales taxes. Ha! You can keep your $10 parking fee,$7 programs, and $4 hotdogs. You're lucky that I agree to pay the damn sales tax; what's it up to--8 cents on the dollar now? Oh yeah; that's fair.
I am done with live sports attendance. It has little to do with sports being dominated by minorities, it has little to do with players' salaries, and it has little to do with ticket prices (as an adult--I've never paid for a ticket). I only partially blame the imposed sales taxes for the new arenas that I don't go to. I am done with live sports attendance because I like sports on tv better.
A standard hockey game on tv has 16 camera angles; at least 4 of them with super-slow-motion. Any good play in any sport (on tv) will usually have at least 2 replays before the action continues. And if my local broadcast is "blacked out" because of a lack of live attendance, I just giggle and go to the bar.
My Dad took me to many baseball games when I was young; and I enjoyed them immensely. But it's a whole different world now; being AT the stadium has become more difficult and time-consuming. There's also no multi-tasking at the stadium; and in this modern age of it that YOU created, watching the game on a screen allows the viewer to perform many tasks (poorly) at the same time. Plus; these sports teams get big bucks from those tv contracts; there is no need to go and see any team play live now. Loyalty? Players sell out to the highest bidder--it's only logical that the fans would eventually develop deep apathy. Personally, I love those "crowd scanning" shots of the arena that show more than half of the seats are empty. Welcome to the jungle; the "empty" jungle.
On another day we can talk about A-Rod and his $252 million contract. On another day we can try and figure out why any live sporting event's attendance is still 80% white (hey owners; imagine if white people simply quit going to your stupid little "events"). TODAY it's just about technology; I raise my glass to the other poor common-man sports fans who are proud (and sometimes amazed) of the newest technology that makes watching sports on television better, cheaper, and more effective than watching it in person. Whoa; shit, I never even mentioned Sportscenter, OR big-screen tv's. Oh well; thank you very much.
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