What do people want from sports today? As someone who gives speeches and lectures about the business and politics of sports before college kids, young adults, middle-aged adults and senior citizens, I ask that question. The answers from across the board are generally the same.
People want good entertainment value for their money but feel cheated today.
The No. 1 complaint is the cost of tickets and how expensive it is for a family to see a major league contest. Second, those who have attended my speeches say there is too much inconvenience in physically attending games.
People don't like the loud, continuous music and the fact that team owners think a game experience should include ear-splitting music, sideshows and boorish actions by fans that in theory give a hometown team an edge. In fact, people have told me after my speeches that games are supposed to be a leisurely activity and for the most part have become hard to attend for numerous reasons.
People 35 and older don't like the fact that they cannot discuss any aspect of a game during any dead moment because some programmer has turned up some heavy metal song to the noise level of a jet taking off at an airport.
People don't like the boorish behavior of young people who seem to use the excuse of going to a sporting event to get drunk and spit out mean-spirited, foul-mouthed obscenities or start fights with others.
Others don't like all the sideshow aspects connected with the presentation of the game because it interferes with their intent of watching a baseball, football, basketball, hockey or soccer game. That includes shooting T-shirts into a crowd where people jump over one another for a chance at getting one of those prized garments. That includes people dressed in sumo wrestler suits fighting at center ice between periods at hockey games.
People don't mind seeing kid hockey players having a mini game between periods at hockey games or Punt, Pass and Kick contests at halftime of football games. That's not artificial entertainment. People don't like the ersatz quality of most sideshow promotions that teams run today.
People do tell me boxing and track and field offer events to watch without the sideshow. Even though boxing is a sideshow in itself with its bikini- or swimsuit-clad card women, still, the action in the ring is the thing.
Some people are very interested in how their taxes go to support stadiums and arenas and how the general public is left out of the public financing debate for athletic venues.
There are a few hecklers here and there who tell me I don't know what I am talking about. That's fine. They are entitled to their opinion as long as I am entitled to mine. And I don't mind the hecklers as long as they realize I get paid and they don't.
College-aged people accept sports as a business these days with grievances, threats of franchise relocation, strikes and lockouts as parts of the sports landscape. They aren't bothered by the turmoil because they don't know anything else. Some of them weren't even born when baseball shut down during the 1981 player walkout.
People 35 and older are resentful of the high salaries and the business aspect of the sports industry.
I do get a cross-section of people in my audiences, some sports fans and some not. The non-sports fans seem to have the most curiosity about the business and politics of sports. They don't go to the game yet are paying for it through government financing of arenas and stadiums.
In downstate New York, people wonder why their taxes go to upstate New York for minor league venues in Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Binghamton and Albany. People in Michigan wonder why, when they went to Seattle, Tampa, Miami and Texas, they paid extra car rental and hotel/motel and restaurant taxes for venues that they probably will never use.
Peter Ueberroth once told me never to underestimate the intelligence of the public. I think sports operators should forget about focus and research groups and head to a library, a local Y, a senior citizens home or a college and give a talk. They might be surprised by some of the feedback they get and might listen to people who are not screened and eliminated by some focus coordinator. They actually could learn something from the average person — who might really be a paying customer.
Evan Weiner (evan4256@aol.com) talks about "The Business of Sports" daily on the radio on Metro Source, a division of Westwood One.
