Ticket prices are soaring, leagues are expanding, legalized betting is exploding, and ratings are higher than ever. Sports are everywhere, all the time, and Americans still can’t get enough.
Ninety-three of the top 100 TV broadcasts last year were NFL games. College football accounted for four top-100 broadcasts. Every week, arenas and stadiums are packed with fans while millions more tune in to listen on the radio or watch online or on television.
Even sports once relegated to niche status — women’s basketball and volleyball, for instance — have reported record-breaking crowds over the past 12 months.
The first month of the 2024 WNBA season set a league record for TV ratings while drawing 400,000 fans to arenas across the country, the league’s best turnout since 1996.
“Sports are one of the very few things that people can kind of watch together, anticipate together and talk about together,” Michael Butterworth, director of the Center for Sports, Communication & Media at the University of Texas at Austin, told The Washington Times. “I think our appetite is robust and not going anywhere.”
Appointment viewing
“I don’t think there’s anything that comes close to sports as far as being able to generate the kind of audiences that were once generated on television,” said Hadassa Gerber, chief research officer of the Television Bureau of Advertising.
Ms. Gerber’s group reported that 82% of February survey respondents said they watched sports on local television at least once a week. This didn’t account for the added viewers on cable channels or streaming services.
“There’s no other thing currently that draws people in like that,” she said.
Streaming services have shifted TV viewing habits. Most people, most of the time, are watching something different from their neighbors or co-workers, but sports provide a communal watching experience.
“Sports have this incredible power to put people in the present moment in a way that no other entertainment content, especially TV nowadays, requires you to be present for,” said Michael Serazio, an author and communication professor at Boston College.
In the halcyon days of “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” TV audiences generally favored the same programs. “ER,” which topped the 1998-1999 ratings, attracted 18% of all viewers on a given night. Nowadays, a top prime-time show might attract 1% of the TV audience.
“There’s so much that has changed in the way people view programs and television, really. Mostly everything is on their schedule,” Ms. Gerber said. “They can record a program and watch it when they want. … The one they can’t do that with is sports. They don’t want to record sports.”
With the rise of streaming, the days of appointment viewing are long gone — at least for scripted content. Sports viewing has filled that void.
“There is nothing else like sports that demands that kind of appointment viewing,” Ms. Gerber said. “You have to be there to see it. You don’t want to hear about it from your friends.”
Pandemic hangover
Some of the sports fervor has its roots in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts say. Like most other live events, sports were put on hold in 2020 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Most stadiums didn’t return to full capacity until 2022.
With no games on the horizon, sports fans flocked to “The Last Dance” in April and May 2020. The ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan’s final championship with the Chicago Bulls quickly became one of the most-watched original productions in the company’s history.
Every Sunday night, social media circles were dominated by memes and commentary from people who would normally be watching the NBA playoffs but had to settle for a trip down memory lane. The 10 documentary episodes averaged 5.6 million viewers who were itching for their sports fix.
“It’s like a drug,” Mr. Serazio told The Times. “People were pretty desperate for [sports] to come back because so much of our lives is built upon it.”
When fans were able to return to live events after years of restrictions, they shattered records.
Nebraska’s women’s volleyball team made history for women’s sports when it drew 92,000 fans to a game last year. This year’s NFL draft was the most-attended event in the league’s storied history, with 775,000 fans over three days.
“Emerging out of COVID, people were trying to get some sense of community back and some sense of pleasure back,” Mr. Butterworth said. “Because we were so split, it has become important for us to reconnect, and sport is one of the very few places where we can do that on a large scale.
The current trends mirror the Roaring ’20s, said George Washington University sports management professor Lisa Delpy Neirotti. After staying inside for two years because of the 1918 influenza pandemic, Americans enthusiastically ushered in the 1920s with lavish parties and new music.
“People are still wanting to get out and do things that they didn’t get to do for two years,” Ms. Delpy Neirotti said.
The rebound won’t last forever.
“Our memory of the pandemic [shutdowns] will wear off, unfortunately. I think it’s already starting to wear off,” Mr. Serazio said.
Escapism
As the COVID-19 lockdowns fade, people will return to sports to forget about their problems for a little while.
“Escape has long been one of the main factors,” Mr. Serazio said. “Research shows that people very much seek out sports as an escape from the ‘real world.’”
The hotly contested presidential election, for example, will dominate headlines and cable news for the next five months.
“Sports is the one place that people go to escape and share a mutual interest with other fans,” Ms. Delpy Neirotti said. “People are looking for community, and sports give that to many people. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with abortion or don’t. You’re going to share something in common with this other person.”
New leagues do not necessarily gain popularity at the expense of assumed competitors. Women’s college basketball didn’t steal from the men’s game when it shattered viewership records this spring. It brought in new fans.
“I don’t think [growth] has necessarily come at the expense of other sports,” Mr. Butterworth said. “Your fans of F1 are different than your fans for NASCAR. So it seems there’s a never-ending appetite for sports and live sports in particular.”
NFL dominance
Most leagues experience periods of flat growth or even declines in ratings, but the NFL continues to be the primary beneficiary of the sports zeitgeist.
“It appears that nothing can dislodge the NFL,” Mr. Butterworth said. “You would think there’d have to be a limit at some point.”
The league will test those limits this year by hosting regular season games six days a week, including matchups on Christmas — a Wednesday — and the first Friday in September.
The bottomless demand has allowed the NFL to spread around the globe and across the calendar. The league has even turned the simple act of releasing season schedules into a televised spring event.
“They are very much attempting to see how far they can push it before ratings sag,” Mr. Serazio said. “The NFL is a symbol for what all leagues want to do, which is to try to figure out when returns start diminishing. For the NFL, we haven’t hit that.”
Mr. Serazio and other experts told The Times that the American thirst for sports must logically have a limit, but they can’t imagine what that limit looks like or when it will arrive.
“It can’t keep going forever,” Mr. Serazio said. “But sports have a really good position in the marketplace. I just don’t see [a slowdown] happening anytime soon.”
• Liam Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@washingtontimes.com.
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