How American Sports Leagues Sold Out and Shattered Sports Culture

[Déjà Bru]

For this thread, I preferred the text of the link from the NYT home page rather than the actual article headline, which is this:

$4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now.

The author does not cite how that figure was calculated or where it came from, which makes it dubious. However, neither do I find it outlandish.

But the main points in this opinion essay certainly ring true to me:

For decades, our national sports leagues — the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League — operated more like civic institutions. These organizations may have always chased the mighty dollar, but they also wanted their sports to last. And as such, they cared about strengthening such powerful intangibles as local pride, generational fandom and public ritual. Tradition was good business. Community built loyalty. Loyalty built value.

Then came the streaming wars. Starting in the early 2010s, live sports events were one of the last types of programming that guaranteed hundreds of thousands if not millions of real-time viewers, and the leagues began to be flooded with requests from streamers, such as Amazon Prime, Peacock and Max, begging for a piece of the pie. At the same time, the leagues were looking for a way to raise the cash required to invest in the lucrative opportunities offered by overseas expansion. And that’s when the business of sustaining sports in America took a back seat, and our country’s sports leagues stopped acting like caretakers and started thinking like asset managers.

The result is that dozens if not hundreds of games that make up America’s national pastimes are being sliced and diced and sold off to the highest bidder — be that a cable giant, or a streaming upstart, or a regional sports network or a subscription app. Games jump from one service to another with so little notice or apparent logic that even some of the biggest superfans struggle to track what’s available where.

Going to a game is similarly growing out of reach: From 1999 to 2020, the average price of a seat across all sports rose roughly twice as fast as overall consumer prices. It increased 19.5 percent between May 2023 and May 2025 alone, one of the biggest jumps of any category tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The result isn’t just inconvenient. It’s lonely. As access shatters, rituals vanish, as do the moments that make sports communal — a bar full of strangers cheering for the same team, the generational ties passed down through the seasons. Those experiences fade under a system that dictates that the more you can pay, the more you can see — until the game disappears behind another paywall.

[Cobra Mgr]

I disagree. Sports' chase for the dollar at the expense of the game itself went full tilt when the majority of franchises were no longer the "family business" and became status symbols for corporate billionaires.

[Amazin69]

Not only sports, but "sports". There are weeks worth of content on YouTube about how badly WWE and wrestling in general have suffered once Vince McMahon had to surrender control.

[Déjà Bru]

By the way, I would estimate the age of the author to be somewhere in his late thirties to early forties, given the visual clues here:

https://x.com/joonlee?lang=en

https://www.instagram.com/p/DH8m92AOiG6/



So these are not the rantings of some old fud who pines for the return of baseball televised on WOR and WPIX.

The "almost two years ago" refers to when he was laid off from ESPN. He must have irked Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee somehow. (Just kidding. )

[Bluenoser]

Sports is no different than any other commodity now. What happened to sports is what's happening every where to everything - G R E E D!

[Ragnar]

I'm curious as to how they got to that $4,785 number. If I stopped watching sports tomorrow, I would not be a dollar richer.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Ragnar

I'm curious as to how they got to that $4,785 number. If I stopped watching sports tomorrow, I would not be a dollar richer.

That's one thing I criticize this author about. One doesn't make such an assertion without a citation, else it looks made up. Which hopefully it wasn't.

He did itemize his own expenditures: "I subscribe to nearly every service there is with live sports — YouTube TV, MLB.TV, NBA League Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, Peacock, Apple TV+, Max, Amazon Prime, Paramount — for $2,634 a year" but that's because he is in the sports media business.

I searched but found only this really long Reddit thread that the article spawned:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comment...o_be_a_sports/

Some guys pointed out the irony of needing to pay the NYT/The Athletic for the privilege of reading that article. But that's not the point. People have always paid for news (although the essay above is a gift article). Sports have always involved profits made from revenue from the paying public.

Rather, the points are:

a. It's getting too expensive to the point that sports are becoming an enclave for rich people, and

b. The "Balkanization" (I love that term; somebody here used in this context and it's so appropriate) of sports viewing is ruining fan loyalty, harming the community and ultimately the sports themselves.

On these points, I think the author did a good job.

[thehef]

I asked CoPilot (because it just happened to be more convenient to access than Chatgpt at the moment) if it could find any info on how the author broke that down.

***************************

In Joon Lee’s guest essay titled “$4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now” in The New York Times, he does provide a rough breakdown of how he arrived at that number, though not in a formal itemized list.

Here’s what he mentions:

📺 Streaming Subscriptions
He subscribes to nearly every major service that carries live sports:

YouTube TV
MLB.TV
NBA League Pass
NFL Sunday Ticket
Peacock
Apple TV+
Max
Amazon Prime
Paramount+

These total $2,634 per year just for access to watch games.

🎟️ Additional Paywalls
He notes that even with all those subscriptions, marquee matchups (like Red Sox vs. Yankees) may still require extra services — e.g., an additional $19.99/month for a niche baseball streaming service.

🏟️ Live Attendance Costs
While not fully itemized, the implication is that the remaining $2,151 (i.e., $4,785 - $2,634) likely includes:

Tickets to live games
Parking
Concessions
Merchandise
Travel or lodging for out-of-town games

The essay is more of a cultural critique than a financial audit, so the number is illustrative — meant to show how fragmented and expensive fandom has become in the streaming era.

***************************

If we assume the above numbers to be correct, I'd say that's a bit of an overgeneralization in that the $4,785 estimate is not how much it costs to be a sports fan, but how much it costs to be a multi-sport-obsessed fanatic.

My own number is approx $1,400, which includes YoutubeTV, a quarter-share of NBA League Pass, three or four months of Red Zone*, plus AppleTv, Max, and Amazon Prime. Attending a live sports event is so rare that I wouldn't include it ... and it would probably come with free tickets.

I'll note that AppleTv & Max are part of package and we did not get those specifically for sports. I'm including the full cost of YoutubeTV even though we use it for much more than sports (but certainly plenty of sports). And while I watch NFL and NASCAR on Prime, that's merely a side benefit of having the membership for shopping/free shipping (IOW, I would be unlikely to purchase the membership if it was just for sports).

*IMO, Sunday Ticket is a HUGE waste of money. Consider that approximately 86% of all regular season NFL games are played during the two main Sunday-daytime timeslots. And, depending upon the market, roughly three games per Sunday are going to be on regular TV - and those are generally going to be your local team, a decent game chosen for your area, and a national game of significant interest. That means that all other games - many of which are going to be of zero interest to you unless you have a favorite team that is out of market - are crammed into a two-game's worth of time. IOW, you are paying a bunch of money ($125 per month?) to have access to a bunch of games that are played at the same time - you can't watch them all. And most of the *interesting* games are going to be on a TV channel that you probably already get. It doesn't make any sense to me. I'd rather pay much less to watch Red Zone. I won't miss anything important! (But will miss lots of punts, penalties on kicking plays, and meaningless running plays.) And that timeframe when the early Sunday games are all ending is pure gold
YMMV, though

[Déjà Bru]

Frankly, as much as I enjoyed the rest of the essay, I am surprised that $4,785 thing got past the New York Times editors, much less becoming part of the headline. If anything, it weakens his argument.

Me? I follow sports in the New York area which is probably even more expensive than Boston. All told: subscriptions (NYT/The Athletic, that's all) about $45 but that includes tons of other features; cable TV and internet $289 but that includes other stuff like those infernal dress shows that the missus likes plus access to this excellent forum; throw in my phone $45 and taxes and fees and let's say $400 a month or, surprisingly, about $4,800 per year. But there is a lot of other value in there.

But if I were a rabid fan of one team, yes, I would be spending additional hundreds of dollars on streaming channels, game attendance, team merchandise, and drinks at sports bars. All of which is voluntary, of course.

So he stretches that point, which is unfortunate, because what he otherwise describes is true. You really do need hundreds of dollars these days to attend a sporting event, and you need to spend hundreds more, if not thousands, to faithfully follow your team if you are crazy about them.

[Amazin69]

Originally Posted by thehef

I asked CoPilot (because it just happened to be more convenient to access than Chatgpt at the moment) if it could find any info on how the author broke that down.

***************************

In Joon Lee’s guest essay titled “$4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now” in The New York Times, he does provide a rough breakdown of how he arrived at that number, though not in a formal itemized list.

Here’s what he mentions:

📺 Streaming Subscriptions
He subscribes to nearly every major service that carries live sports:



These total $2,634 per year just for access to watch games.

🎟️ Additional Paywalls
He notes that even with all those subscriptions, marquee matchups (like Red Sox vs. Yankees) may still require extra services — e.g., an additional $19.99/month for a niche baseball streaming service.

What the what in the what??? Streamers take your money and then want MORE for "marquee matchups"??? Screw that!

Never paid one centavo for any streaming. Probably never will. Feeling pretty good about that, right now.

I'd rather pay much less to watch Red Zone. I won't miss anything important! (But will miss lots of punts, penalties on kicking plays, and meaningless running plays.) And that timeframe when the early Sunday games are all ending is pure gold
YMMV, though

You do realize these are all pretty key parts of the game, right? Field position is a thing. Defense is a thing. Being able to run the ball is a thing.

(Dave Zastodil got Player of the Week one time in, I think, 2004, when he pretty much punted the Bills to death. Deserved it, too.)

Balls and strikes are part of baseball, too. Not to pick a fight, but I can't quite get my head around the "scoring plays only" mentality. JMO.

(RedZone is pretty cool, though, just for how it gives the sensation of flicking back and forth. It sucks that DirecTV has bumped it up to the "Prestige" tier, with all the HBOs I'm certainly not paying for. Oh, well.)

[thehef]

Originally Posted by Amazin69

What the what in the what??? Streamers take your money and then want MORE for "marquee matchups"??? Screw that!

Never paid one centavo for any streaming. Probably never will. Feeling pretty good about that, right now.



You do realize these are all pretty key parts of the game, right? Field position is a thing. Defense is a thing. Being able to run the ball is a thing.

(Dave Zastodil got Player of the Week one time in, I think, 2004, when he pretty much punted the Bills to death. Deserved it, too.)

Balls and strikes are part of baseball, too. Not to pick a fight, but I can't quite get my head around the "scoring plays only" mentality. JMO.

(RedZone is pretty cool, though, just for how it gives the sensation of flicking back and forth. It sucks that DirecTV has bumped it up to the "Prestige" tier, with all the HBOs I'm certainly not paying for. Oh, well.)

I agree, totally. If there's a game I really want to see (and it's on locally) then I'll watch that game, including all the punts and so forth. But otherwise when I don't care about any one game it's more fun to just have Red Zone do the "flicking back and forth" to what's most interesting in multiple games going on at once. And while Red Zone may emphasize "never missing a scoring play," for me it's more about seeing Detroit operating in the Red Zone of a 21-21 game as opposed to seeing what Pittsburgh's field position is going to be, trailing 31-7, after Tampa's punt from their own 40-yard line

[CONN CHRIS]

I get MLB.tv for free through T-Mobile. I subscribe to nothing else. Through Youtube, Blessyouboys, and my free MLB.tv subscription, I get all the Tigers content I want and leave a lot on the table. My response to this essay is "Exert some self-control young man"

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by CONN CHRIS

My response to this essay is "Exert some self-control young man"

Every once in a while, you see a reference to someone who is absolutely shocked by how much they are spending on streaming services. It's as if they don't track the expenditures as they go along, signing up for this and that, and only down the road when they are trying to figure out where their money went do they use a calculator.

Back in the day, before most of you were born (not really, but I like to wax pompous in my old age), there was a high school course named Home Economics. It was cooking and other aspects of household management and mostly, if not exclusively, girls took it. Boys went to Shop Class.

One source says "Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Home Economics began to decline in popularity. Several factors contributed to this decline, including shifting societal roles for women, budget constraints in schools, and changing educational priorities".

Too bad. Not for girls and women, but for people in general. For, one of the best things that could be learned in high school by boys and girls could be the "household management" part of Home Economics, including personal finances.

Because, according to this survey, "79% of Americans representing the millennial or Gen Z age groups have gotten financial advice from social media". That is unfortunate.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

By the way, I would estimate the age of the author to be somewhere in his late thirties to early forties, given the visual clues here:

On his own homepage Mr. Lee states that he graduated from high school in 2013, which would make him right around 30 at present.

I spend roughly 150 bucks on baseball, 120 bucks for the channel that holds the NASCAR rights, and about as much for my F1 channel. The only other thing I watch is DTM, which is so run-down that it's now streamed on Youtube for free.

That's eurobucks, btw, in dollars it's like $440.

Ironically, even the most balkanized sports in your corner of the world are sold as single-rights package to me here. ...except for baseball on Crapple TV, which can't be watched live on MLB.tv, only from the archives.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Westheim

Ironically, even the most balkanized sports in your corner of the world are sold as single-rights package to me here. ...except for baseball on Crapple TV, which can't be watched live on MLB.tv, only from the archives.

That's it, I'm moving to Germany. (Although this was only the last straw.) Do you have a room for me temporarily? Say six months to a year or two? I promise to learn to sprechen Sie Deutsch.

[Westheim]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

That's it, I'm moving to Germany. (Although this was only the last straw.) Do you have a room for me temporarily? Say six months to a year or two? I promise to learn to sprechen Sie Deutsch.

If Mrs. Bru is coming as well, we're gonna run out of space

[Déjà Bru]

It's Sunday afternoon, and it's hot out. (I will do the darned lawn tomorrow, at either dawn or dusk, neighbors also be darned.) So, what time are the Yankees playing?

Um, they've been playing for a half-hour already, having started at 11:35 AM EDT. (That may have something to do with the weather.) But, distressingly, I find that the game is available only on Roku. Roku. What is that?

It turns out to be yet another streaming service hosted by the consumer electronics giant Roku Corporation. It's free, being ad-supported, but it entails yet another, yet ANOTHER, login ID and password. I am so jaded at this point (my password manager app contains 131 sets of IDs and passwords) that I feel no urge to take advantage of this "opportunity".

Another instance of the "Balkanization" of televised sports. These people better hope that I am not typical of the potential market for these services, for my interest is zero. I will watch something else for now (on cable, which is bad enough) and catch whatever Yankees games when I can.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

I will watch something else for now (on cable, which is bad enough)...

Want to know what I found? Triple-A baseball. Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp vs. Syracuse Mets on SNY. Want to know what else? It was baseball, and I enjoyed it.

[Déjà Bru]

Heh, the game being played in Triple-A Syracuse, early on we are treated to closeups of their mascot, Scooch:



But later on, I saw this character (the male version on the left) also at the game:



It said "Rumble" on his chest and that was a clue. It's Rowdy, one of the mascots for the Double-A Rumble Ponies (also a farm team of the New York Mets)! Ruby, the female version may or may not have been there; I didn't see her.

Apparently Rowdy made a few extra bucks for driving the distance from Binghamton to Syracuse.

[Déjà Bru]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Um, they've been playing for a half-hour already, having started at 11:35 AM EDT. (That may have something to do with the weather.)

Um, no. As I read in CBS Sports just now, "In a game that started at 11:39 a.m. to fulfill a Major League Baseball national television contract ..." Which means Roku wanted it two hours earlier to suit their schedule and MLB granted their request. Or was mandated by contract.

So you can't even be sure of what time the game will be on, even given day vs. night and time zone differential, much less what channel or streaming service will be showing it. I cry BULL! (As in, this bull is taking the ring out of his nose. )