Fools for fans

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1995 by Wayne M. Barrett

IT'S TIME for fans to let go of the notion that access to live sports events is some God-given right. Sports is a luxury item paid for with discretionary income. Athletic events belong to the individuals who play the games and the owners who pay them to do so. True, the fans are the moronic suckers who provide the gold that all the well-publicized greed is about, but then, whose fault is that?

Whenever there is a sports strike (see major league baseball) or lockout (see the National Hockey League), fans inevitably go into their patented I'm-so-disgusted rant and rave, where they trash the money-grubbing motives of both the owners and players and vow never to attend any more games. Moreover, they swear, it's time to cancel their subscriptions to those sports channels on cable. "I'll be darned if I'm going to help line the pockets of those selfish so-and-so's by paying for sports on TV," goes the fans' rallying cry. However, all this brave rhetoric ever amounts to is a lot of empty threats and hot air. Once the strike/lockout season is resumed, all the anger dissipates. The stadiums and arenas are full. Television ratings go through the roof. And as if sports didn't have enough booming business, the merchandizing of team and league logos on clothing and various souvenir items now is a multibillion-dollar enterprise. For example, in the two hours prior to Game 1 of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals at Madison Square Garden, the sporting goods store adjacent to the arena sold 100 New York Ranger jerseys at $175 each.

Come summer, the National Pastime figures are even more staggering. Just figure it out. The baseball owners get half the merchandizing profit; the other half is divided equally among the players, managers, and coaches. There are 28 teams of 25 players apiece. Each club has a manager and five or six coaches. They take home approximately $65,000 apiece from annual merchandizing sales. This profit margin doesn't even include what the various department and sporting goods stores that sell these items are making.

Unhappy fans? Maybe overseas, but certainly not here in North America. Or if they are, they sure have a funny way of showing it. For instance, most fans (and owners) angrily spew forth the myth that athletes' escalating salaries are responsible for rising ticket prices. Untrue! The sale of sports tickets is like any other consumer good. The idea is to maximize revenue by charging whatever a particular good or service will command, Besides, even if salaries and ticket prices are linked, so what? If the expense of seeing a game isn't worth it, stay home.

Instead, fans flock to sporting events in unprecedented numbers. Even sold-out games don't deter people, as there are always ticket scalpers ready to charge triple figures for a single ducat. In fact, when the NHL lockout finally was settled in January, 1995, the league put together a revamped 48-game schedule, with new tickets to be issued for the new dates and new opponents--with one notable exception, the New York Rangers. After winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in 54 years, the Broadway Blueshirts were to raise the championship banner at their Oct. 3, 1994, home opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins. The game sold out in a flash and the scalpers then had a field day. Ranger management, in light of the outrageous prices people had paid for the banner raising, had no choice but to honor the Oct. 3 tickets for the new home opener, Jan. 21, vs. the Buffalo Sabres.

This kind of madness is no less pronounced in other sports. Face value for Super Bowl tickets is an astounding $200. Scalpers gets thousands! Instead of being held in 18,000-seat arenas, the NCAA basketball Final Four often takes place in a domed stadium boasting a capacity of 75,000. Ultra-successful baseball teams used to draw 1,000,000 spectators a season. Those numbers are laughable today. No less than 2,500,066 will do, and some clubs even have scaled 4,000,000.

By themselves, these trends--soaring attendance, burgeoning merchandizing, skyrocketing television ratings--are remarkable enough. But what's really amazing is they come at a time when sports has become anything but fan-friendly. All across the board, seasons are becoming longer and longer, with more and more teams being admitted into the playoffs (when ticket prices really soar). Thanks to relentless TV timeouts and countless commercials, the games themselves are drawn-out, stagnant affairs. Seasons overlap to such a degree that a mere three weeks after the seventh game of the 1994 Stanley Cup finals--hockey supposedly is a winter sport--baseball held its Mid-Summer Classic, the All-Star Game. The NFL championship game used to be played in late December. Pro football now wraps up in February. If those misguided bickerers in baseball ever play the World Series again, it will be in November, not October, as tradition dictates. As for the National Basketball Association, there's nothing like lying on the beach on a hot summer day and listening to the NBA finals. Like hockey, basketball is another alleged "winter" sport.