This thought comes from a conversation I was having yesterday with some friends who were bemoaning the fact that the local NFL team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will probably have most of their homes games blacked out because of a lack of ticket sales. The NFL requires that a game must be a sellout 72 hours prior to kickoff on Sunday, otherwise the game is blacked out in the local TV viewing area for a 75 mile radius, thus denying the local fans from watching the game.
While I am not anti sports in anyway, I just decided long ago that I had better things to do with my life than to sit and watch a sporting event for 3 or more hours. Sixteen years ago I moved to Tampa from Denver and at that time I was definitely a Denver Broncos fan and had been ever since my uncle took me to a game in Denver against the Oakland Raiders in 1968, where the Raiders blasted them 43 - 7. Since then it was love the Broncos and any team playing the Raiders. But, I don't love them anymore, I barely know the names of any of their players. The same goes with the Buccaneers here in Tampa, I wish them well; but I am just an occasional observer, not an ardent fan. Occasionally, if the situation fits, I might have the game on the car radio, or streaming on the Internet while I am doing something else, but rarely do I just sit and watch. But, I digress!
Attendance at Buccaneer games has declined in recent years as the teams record sank and the economy tanked. None of my friends buy either single game tickets or season tickets and have always lived on the generosity of others to buy tickets, thus providing them the game for free on TV. I have heard that at one time the 65,000 seat stadium had a 20,000+ waiting list for tickets, but I have no facts to prove that statistic and apparently is know longer an issue.
So my question and conversation with my friends centered around, what would happen if no one cared? Less than 100 years ago, all of the current major professional sports; football, baseball, basketball and hockey, were really nothing more than local club sports played in a few cities. Time, the rise of radio and TV to bring them to the masses gave them additional exposure and they became more and more popular to a larger audience. But the recent NFL lockout pitting billionaire owners against millionaire players may have set in motion the beginning of the end. The NBA currently finds itself in a similar situation where the upcoming basketball season is in jeopardy.
There is a reason we don't have chariot races anymore, the fall of the Roman empire and "changing populations and economy" on the European continent! What about professional sports here in America, can they survive the current economic times?
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