Sports has a Gen Z problem. The pandemic may accelerate it.

[Double Barrel]

Sports has a Gen Z problem. The pandemic may accelerate it.

Excerpt:

Rich Luker is a social psychologist and founder of Luker on Trends, a sports polling outfit that has been measuring fandom and consulting with pro leagues for more than a quarter-century. He has been watching fandom drop among young people for the past decade and sounding alarms.

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Tim Ellis, the NFL's chief marketing officer, says the league's own data bears that out. "There's no strategy for bringing in a 35-year-old fan for the first time. You have to make them a fan by the time they're 18, or you'll lose them forever," he said.

That's why the NFL has been so worried in recent years. When Ellis joined the league two years ago from Activision Blizzard, the popular video game maker, the league had seen its young audience trend downward for six straight years. He stressed to team owners that finding a solution was urgent.

"Gaining and retaining young people is key to future-proofing the NFL," he said in a recent interview. "So when we look at that generation, I personally look at it as the lifeblood and health of the brand and our business."

Source

Considering the costs associated with attending pro sports games and related merchandise, I would not be shocked if the peak of pro sports has already come and gone. Money is increasingly tight for more and more families, and spending $500+ for a family of four to attend a game are luxuries that many folks will just find something else to do.

 

[Wolf]

I am no gen z but i have lost interest in most sports. I used to watch all of them,but preview guides and had a pretty good interest in them.

Now..not so much.
For me it was watching the team grow. Draft players that became my favorites. Watch the team become something. Now? Why buy a jersey of my favorite player? He most likely will be gone in a few years.

Wjy go to games when corporate has taken over the seats? If you lived in a city and have season tickets..i remember a few members in here said from week to week they never knew who was next to them besides that those people had nothing invested in the Texans but talking business or whatever.

Yeah family of 4 paying 500 plus or whatever to go to a game just not feasible for most.

I kinda get turned off that an owner will want to use tacpayer money or whatever to fund a stadium yet first sign of wanting a new stadium will threaten to leave if we dont meet the demands.

The greed to the sport. I understand players want to make money, the owners are.
But in sports,for example say 20 million a year isnt enough so they opt out and then get 40 million a month.. just a big turnoff to me now now that i am older.

Noting against maholmes. But really.. 500 million in the life of his contract when pricing is just only going to go up. Crazy to me when people are out of work.

Maybe this year has reset my priorities but seeing how the Texans came out and finally admitted what all teams basically do..hey stadium is sold out based on gameday experience so it doesn't matter what product we have. Puts a bitter pill on my mouth..as a fan i want championships.something to be proud of

So i just keep a side eyed watch on sports now. I have always felt bad for small market teams,they barely have a chance

 

[Speedy]

hey stadium is sold out based on gameday experience so it doesn't matter what product we have.

No, the stadium isn't sold out because of game day experience. It's sold out because of the scam known as Personal Seat License (PSL). Those tickets HAVE to be bought or you lose what you paid seperate from the tickets, which is a pretty hefty investment, that you would then not be able to recoup.

I had non-PSL season tickets because back when I bought them, I couldn't wrap my head around the PSL concept. You're telling me I have to pay a boat load of money up front for the RIGHTS to buy the tickets? No thanks. So my seats were in the nose bleeds because non-PSLs weren't offered anywhere esle, and though I wasn't guaranteed the right to buy those same seats every year, it worked out that way.

But after 18 years, they eventually priced me out. My seats were $35 per seat the 1st 2 seasons (2002-2003). At the end they were $87 per. Not to mention parking went from $10 to $32. With 2 seats and 1 parking pass, that was $80 a game in 2002. My last season last year was $206 per game. And the last couple of seasons where I couldn't attened every game, I couldn't give the tickets away. So I've always wondered when this was going to be too much.

The prices are so high, that people willing to spend their disposable income on it, just aren't willing to anymore, or at least as often. I love going to Astros games, and would go to tons of them if it were more affordable, but because they aren't I go to maybe 4-5 games a year. If that many.

I get what the prices to sporting events are, and as long as people keep buying at those prices I can understand why sports owners set them there. I mean, why not? But it can't keep skyrocketing like it is. I'm a sports fanatic and it finally got too much for me. How the hell are you going to sell that to a generation who couldn't care less?

So yeah, with the way this "pandemic" has halted things, including people's means to make a living, on top of this next generation not giving a rat's ass, I think big changes are coming.

 

[Corrosion]

I'm pretty much a sports junkie - four sports in school , college scholarship for baseball that I lost due to injury .... have family members who played MLB and both played and currently coaching in the NFL.

My boys .... they don't have a single care in the world about sports. None , Zip , Zilch , Nodda.
My oldest played tee ball .... he sat in left field picking flowers with the little girl in center field. Not kidding. Middle kid never played sports at all , he'd rather make music and my daughter just wants to ride her horse ...
They are too busy doing other things , music , video games , wrecking my woodshop ... and the majority of the kids they go to school with are similar ....

Yeah , I think we've seen the peak of pro sports in the traditional sense. E Sports will be the next big thing.

 

[steelbtexan]

What are E-Sports?

 

[Mollywhopper]

I really don't see e-sports catching on very much similarly to actual sports. I get younger people getting into it more lately, but people tend to grow out of playing video games, at least in the sense of taking them serious in a competitive manner, as they get older and have more real world responsibilities.

It's also an event dominated by really young participants. Actual sports have young 20-somethings at the pro level, but e-sports is dominated by teenage youngsters. That's just not a thing anyone older than them will latch onto.

And maybe even the biggest knock is that it's just really really hard to broadcast effectively. Sure you can put the 'game' on the screen, but that's just one aspect and it's a legit challenge to capture the minutiae of what's going on with a team of people playing something as mirco as a video game on a macro level for an audience.

It can have a sustainable niche, but jmo that's where it maxes out at.

 

[Double Barrel]

Yep. My sons watch some e-sports and tried to get me into it. I just can't watch someone else play a video game for very long. I've been a gamer my whole life, but I'd rather play the game than watch someone else play.

I agree that I don't see it being a mainstream entertainment that can compete with pro sports. But, I've been known to be wrong when it comes to the trends of youth. I never though YouTube channels and Twitch streamers would be a big thing, but my kids rarely watch broadcast tv shows and it's all about the independent internet channels.

I do think there will some reckoning in the years to come with the pro leagues. I would not be shocked to even see some contractions in the future and a reduction of overall salaries.