Posted on 09/01/2020 3:29:45 PM PDT by conservative98
With their boycott of games earlier this week to protest the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, athletes in the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball have crossed a bridge that they may find difficult to return from. Though professional athletes have become increasingly politicized since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began his “Star Spangled Banner” protests in 2016, the widespread cancellation of games, including NBA playoff contests, is unprecedented.
The walkout in support of Blake, who was wanted on a sexual-assault charge and whose own girlfriend called the cops on him, hardly represents the kind of compelling case against police brutality one might build a mass movement around. If players, in the midst of a pandemic slowdown already costing professional sports billions of dollars, were willing to shut down their industry in this instance, how frequently will they feel compelled, or even pressured, to do the same in the future? Fans who were already watching less sports may react negatively to being lectured by wealthy athletes who regularly walk off the job.
[cut]
But the players themselves don’t hold all the cards. Americans have been falling progressively out of love with the NBA, for instance, and the pandemic has only exacerbated an already difficult situation. TV ratings, mediocre after the season restarted, are down collectively by 40 percent on the TNT network, and 20 percent on ESPN, since their peak nearly a decade ago. Even more troubling is that the league’s network TV premium broadcasts ratings on ABC are off by 45 percent, what a former public relations executive for the NBA describes as a “cratering” of viewership.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
I understand being into sports if you are playing yourself or have some personal connection like to one of the players. But otherwise popular sports in general are way too abstract for my taste. I’m the type thats more into MMA or hunting or gladiatorial combat if it still existed. Something more concrete and functional. I always thought the idea of being invested in dizzy privileged millionaires punching around a ball was a bit silly. I guess this latest nonsense just seals it.
Let them bur and the cities who ponied up the cash for staudium should sue sue sue!
Boycott? I thought when employees got together and refused to work it is called a strike.
Well thats just how capitalism works.
why pay hundreds of dollars to go to a stadium when you’re just going to get drinks thrown at you and verbal abuse for not kneeling in submission to cancel-culture, only to find your vehicle vandalized in the parking lot for having the wrong bumper sticker?
Done.
Shhh...let’s just sit back and watch them implode. You’ll know it’s almost over when they again call us racists but this time for NOT watching their games.
Nauseating. I hope they all go bankrupt.
Those of you still addicted to being couch potato spectators of professional sports, just let it go. Stop watching. Stop talking about it. Find an activity that will better your life. Actually do something.
If nothing else, play a sport in person with some of the people in your communities.
Pi$$ on them. Pi$$ on everyone of them. I have not watched the NBA since I last went to a Seattle Supersonics game in 1995!! I have not been to a MLB game since we saw the Cubs play the Mariners 20 years ago in Seattle. I haven’t watched the NFL since they bent their knees to the Flag before games. I don’t watch college sports anymore. IF, IF I want to watch a ball game, we get in the car and drive 3 miles up the road to the local high school, which we have nothing to do with because we have not kids, grandkids, etc. in that school. But, we go watch their football games now and then. I will support the local kids, but I no longer GIVE A DAMNED PENNY TO PRO OR COLLEGE SPORTS!!! Pi$$ on all of them!!! I hope the whole damned mob goes bankrupt.
Last NBA game I went to was around 2006. After the game, I get back to where the car was parked and there is smashed glass everywhere. No car. It was found the next day in Newark. I haven’t been to another NBA game in person since.
Blacks may be the majority of players in the NFL an NBA, but without WHITE fans, they are a niche product.
Salaries are going to be going way down and soon. They have completely destroyed a large portion of the white support of sports and many of them will NEVER be coming back.
Go ahead and piss on whitey and see what it costs you!
What makes you think we aren’t? I gave up of the whiney pandering sports leagues over 20 years ago and I haven’t looked back.
Plenty of other things to do on a Sat or Sun. Others are finding out the same thing.
Because of his skin color?
Or because they can totally empathize with the plight of a large violent man whose women are always calling the cops on him?
Or this Fall in particular, find an activity that will help save America from destruction. Like volunteering to do precinct walks for local candidates who have tough races.
If you hate the thought of personal contact in the form of cold-calls or knocking on the doors of GOP-leaning Unaffiliateds, then do things which require zero face-to-face contact such as "Lit Drops" - that's where you drop off at doorsteps the literature for candidates at all levels from Pres. Trump down to local statehouse and County-level people.
At this date, most County GOP parties are probably still focusing on getting through to Unaffiliateds who have been tagged as leaning more right than left.
Later on, as soon as ballots first arrive in people's mailboxes (in everyone's mail for some states, but only in absentee voters mailboxes in others), they switch to GOTV (Get Out The Vote) mode, where you do everything you can to make sure every GOP or GOP-leaner has received their ballots and knows exactly where & what dates & times they can drop off their completed ballots.
Boycotting Themselves Out of Business!
By skipping games for nebulous political demands, pro athletes are alienating fans and cratering their own industry.
Don’t waste your time telling them why you left them, they don’t care about you, your family and friends.
Nice!
Threaten to alienate fans? It should already be a done deal! There shouldn't be any fans left. . . .at least patriotic ones.
the black players have expressed such a strong racist attitude that it is difficult to even discuss this situation without mentioning race
but
I personally don’t care if the players are black or purple with orange polka dots. So long as they just play ball and STOP insulting us fans and our country (which, not incidentally, has treated them EXTRAORDINARILY well - many of these players are in the Top 1 percent Elite, to use one of their communistic phrases).
I, for one, will make sure to give them or their teams NOT ONE RED (or purple or any other color) cent! I don’t pay $200 a ticket to be insulted in my face!
they can GTH!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
