NFL

[Sheriff John Stone]

Aug 28, 2024 15:05:30 GMT kds said:

Don't forget streaming services. Thursday Night Football is on Prime most weeks. The Christmas Night game will be on Netflix. One of the playoff games last season was a Peacock exclusive.

You know, the more we talk about this, the increasingly casual nature of my fandom is making even more sense.

The thing that depresses me is that there's no end in sight. Yesterday I saw that CeeDee Lamb signed an extension for $136 million dollars. That's $136,000,000 folks. All I could do - and did - was just shake my head. Yeah, I'm old, still living in the past to some extent, and I keep asking myself "How did this happen? How did things get so out of hand?. Priorities? What priorities?" By no means is my increasing apathy a planned thing. Not intentional at all. It just happens, a little at a time until I realize that I just don't have the interest or the passion anymore. It wore me down.

In another day or two there will be another signing for a zillion dollars. Name your sport. Maybe an NCAA player! And I'll just shake my head again, and buy that $45.00 Eagles' T-shirt for my brother-in-law because it was on his Christmas list.

[Sheriff John Stone]

Aug 28, 2024 15:23:13 GMT Kapitan said:

Aug 28, 2024 15:00:07 GMT Sheriff John Stone said:

What's the moral of the story. We, the fans, ultimately end up paying for the brunt of a player's salary. Through all those things I mentioned, the costs are simply funneled back to us, the fans. ...

Oh, of course the owners do pay for a portion of the players' salaries. But, it's significantly less of a hit to them than it is to the fans. 

That's the reality of every business, though. Of course owners don't (usually) pay salaries out of their own fortunes! They pay them out of the business's revenue streams, which are ticket prices, season tickets, suites, corporate licensing, media deals, etc. The owner of my company* doesn't pay me out-of-pocket, either, but through our business's revenue--of which he takes a large share for himself and divides the rest among employees. None of this is a charity! And especially since most fans enjoy most games "for free" (e.g. broadcast TV), the money has to come from somewhere. The old saying goes, when there's no cost for the product, you are the product. In sports, that has always been true: the real money is in the advertising, and the owners sell our eyeballs and ears to advertisers.


*Simplified: my company doesn't have an owner, but various entities that own various aspects of one another. Typically complex corporate structure. But I simplified to make the point.

I think the difference is relative. I won't say apple and oranges, but the dollar amounts we're talking about (in professional sports) is unique. Certainly more excessive. We're not just talking about "normal" profit for owners and players. Somewhere greed entered into the picture. I can feel it anyway.

[Kapitan]

Aug 28, 2024 15:32:44 GMT Sheriff John Stone said:

Aug 28, 2024 15:23:13 GMT Kapitan said:

That's the reality of every business, though. Of course owners don't (usually) pay salaries out of their own fortunes! They pay them out of the business's revenue streams, which are ticket prices, season tickets, suites, corporate licensing, media deals, etc. The owner of my company* doesn't pay me out-of-pocket, either, but through our business's revenue--of which he takes a large share for himself and divides the rest among employees. None of this is a charity! And especially since most fans enjoy most games "for free" (e.g. broadcast TV), the money has to come from somewhere. The old saying goes, when there's no cost for the product, you are the product. In sports, that has always been true: the real money is in the advertising, and the owners sell our eyeballs and ears to advertisers.


*Simplified: my company doesn't have an owner, but various entities that own various aspects of one another. Typically complex corporate structure. But I simplified to make the point.

I think the difference is relative. I won't say apple and oranges, but the dollar amounts we're talking about (in professional sports) is unique. We're not just talking about excessive profit for owners and players. Somewhere greed entered into the picture. I can feel it anyway.

Is there a business anywhere that doesn't have greed in the picture? That charges less than it could just to be nice? Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. (And even more in the college sports world, which has turned me off even more dramatically.) As I said above, I don't like how commercial the whole thing is. But when hundreds of millions of people are interested and willing to pay, the people who have the ability to make money on it try to make as much as they can. And so far, we the fans haven't said "OK, enough is enough: it's not worth $X to me. I'm not interested anymore."

And that is what you're saying basically, I think: that you are actually taking that stand. It's what all of us can do in almost every single situation, at least once you get outside of the essentials like basic groceries. When it comes to entertainment or luxury goods and services, if we are willing to pay, someone is willing to take that money. The only thing that would change the trajectory is if people stopped going to games, stopped buying paraphernalia, stopped watching on TV, etc. It's sad for those of us who actually love the sports themselves to feel so turned off as to turn them off, but there is an "enough is enough" moment there somewhere.

[kds]

Aug 28, 2024 15:27:27 GMT Sheriff John Stone said:

Aug 28, 2024 15:05:30 GMT kds said:

Don't forget streaming services. Thursday Night Football is on Prime most weeks. The Christmas Night game will be on Netflix. One of the playoff games last season was a Peacock exclusive.

You know, the more we talk about this, the increasingly casual nature of my fandom is making even more sense.

The thing that depresses me is that there's no end in sight. Yesterday I saw that CeeDee Lamb signed an extension for $136 million dollars. That's $136,000,000 folks. All I could do - and did - was just shake my head. Yeah, I'm old, still living in the past to some extent, and I keep asking myself "How did this happen? How did things get so out of hand?. Priorities? What priorities?" By no means is my increasing apathy a planned thing. Not intentional at all. It just happens, a little at a time until I realize that I just don't have the interest or the passion anymore. It wore me down.

In another day or two there will be another signing for a zillion dollars. Name your sport. Maybe an NCAA player! And I'll just shake my head again, and buy that $45.00 Eagles' T-shirt for my brother-in-law because it was on his Christmas list.

As long as the leagues keep raking in more and more money, salaries will continue to rise.   

I do find it interesting that athletes' salaries seems to be more of a talking point among sports fans (myself included) than the earnings of entertainers among music or movie fans.   Maybe it's because sports fans watch a player more often and their salaries seem to be publicized more.   

[kds]

Aug 28, 2024 15:40:05 GMT Kapitan said:

Aug 28, 2024 15:32:44 GMT Sheriff John Stone said:

I think the difference is relative. I won't say apple and oranges, but the dollar amounts we're talking about (in professional sports) is unique. We're not just talking about excessive profit for owners and players. Somewhere greed entered into the picture. I can feel it anyway.

Is there a business anywhere that doesn't have greed in the picture? That charges less than it could just to be nice? Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. (And even more in the college sports world, which has turned me off even more dramatically.) As I said above, I don't like how commercial the whole thing is. But when hundreds of millions of people are interested and willing to pay, the people who have the ability to make money on it try to make as much as they can. And so far, we the fans haven't said "OK, enough is enough: it's not worth $X to me. I'm not interested anymore."

And that is what you're saying basically, I think: that you are actually taking that stand. It's what all of us can do in almost every single situation, at least once you get outside of the essentials like basic groceries. When it comes to entertainment or luxury goods and services, if we are willing to pay, someone is willing to take that money. The only thing that would change the trajectory is if people stopped going to games, stopped buying paraphernalia, stopped watching on TV, etc. It's sad for those of us who actually love the sports themselves to feel so turned off as to turn them off, but there is an "enough is enough" moment there somewhere.

For a minute there in 2020, it was starting to look like such a thing might happen.   COVID shut down sports completely for about four months, and when they returned, they were not generating the huge ratings that people expected.   There was actually talk back then of "did people find other ways to spend their time?"   But, just like with a work stoppage, it was pretty short lived.  

[Kapitan]

One thing worth considering when we talk about owners v players in all of this. Yes, all players make a lot of money by any reasonable standards, and some make what strike us as absurd amounts of money.

But here is an article from 2023 that says not only did every NFL team turn a profit in 2022, but the LEAST profitable team was the Buffalo Bills, at an estimated $65 million in profit. Not in revenue, but in profit. The Dallas Cowboys made $460 million in profit. Two-thirds of the teams made over $100 million in profit.

That means that while some players make $10, $20, $50 million a year, every ownership group makes (often very far) more than that every year (despite not playing or actively running the teams, frankly), and those careers aren't 3, 5, 10 years long, the way players' careers are. They can last decades and decades.

So when they get the public to pay for their stadiums (from which they make the profits), when they complain about the costs of running teams, no, I am not especially sympathetic. The greed starts with them, and they make more money than any of the actual players--by A LOT. Yes, they put up the cash to run things, I grant that. I'm not anti-capitalism. But it's hard to criticize the players who do the actual thing we like disproportionately against the owners who are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit a year, even after paying those exorbitant costs such as salaries.

[kds]

Aug 28, 2024 17:24:58 GMT Kapitan said:

One thing worth considering when we talk about owners v players in all of this. Yes, all players make a lot of money by any reasonable standards, and some make what strike us as absurd amounts of money.

But here is an article from 2023 that says not only did every NFL team turn a profit in 2022, but the LEAST profitable team was the Buffalo Bills, at an estimated $65 million in profit. Not in revenue, but in profit. The Dallas Cowboys made $460 million in profit. Two-thirds of the teams made over $100 million in profit.

That means that while some players make $10, $20, $50 million a year, every ownership group makes (often very far) more than that every year (despite not playing or actively running the teams, frankly), and those careers aren't 3, 5, 10 years long, the way players' careers are. They can last decades and decades.

So when they get the public to pay for their stadiums (from which they make the profits), when they complain about the costs of running teams, no, I am not especially sympathetic. The greed starts with them, and they make more money than any of the actual players--by A LOT. Yes, they put up the cash to run things, I grant that. I'm not anti-capitalism. But it's hard to criticize the players who do the actual thing we like disproportionately against the owners who are raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit a year, even after paying those exorbitant costs such as salaries.

Exactly, which makes it seem a little strange that whenever there is a labor dispute in pro sports, fans almost always side with ownership.   The vast majority of the time that there's been a work stoppage, it's because owners are less than willing to give up their profits to their players.   

But, like I said before, you don't hear about it as much.   Player salaries are mentioned all the time.   So fans at large are probably more aware of how much Dak Prescott is making than Jerry Jones.  

[kds]

Adding to the point made earlier about the NFL giving us too much of a good thing, I just noticed that Week 1 will feature four prime time games, on four separate nights.

Tomorrow night, the Chiefs host the Ravens in the season opener. Friday night, the Packers will play the Eagles in Brazil. Sunday night, the Rams play the Lions. Monday night, the Jets play the 49ers.

I guess they scrapped the Week 1 Monday Night Football doubleheader. But, this just speaks to my earlier point that prime time NFL football just doesn't feel special anymore.

[Kapitan]

I thought for sure we'd have carllove gloating a little over last night's Chiefs win over kds's Ravens! (I know I'd be rubbing it in.  )

[kds]

Hell, Chiefs fans at this point probably don't even start caring until after Christmas.

[carllove]

Well - I stayed up two hours past my bedtime last night and had a rough morning 🤷‍♀️. Chiefs have weapons this year they didn’t have last year and that is a great thing. There is excitement in Kansas City, and we had our flags out and made wings, but I think KDS is correct, that the real excitement happens later in the year.

[Kapitan]

I was feeling pretty excited that today's opening Sunday for the NFL, and then I realized half of your teams have played already! Philly, KC, Baltimore... But B.E.'s and my teams square off in NY at noon today. I really don't know what to expect from the Vikings, so I'm going in with no expectations.

[kds]

Its just as well the Ravens played. I'm doing a few chores, then taking advantage of a gorgeous day by having some deck beers and grilling.

[Sheriff John Stone]

I'm still looking forward to today. There's still a lot of good games. There's a couple players with new teams and, of course, about a half dozen new coaches. And - and - Tom Brady makes his broadcasting debut today (Dallas vs. Cleveland). Oh, did I mention that I got my fantasy picks in, too...

[kds]

As a Ravens fan, I'm both impressed and annoyed at the Steelers' ability to win with crap quarterbacks over the last few years.