The Value of Sports and Cities
And why owners don't understand the connection
Sports build communities. Rich people do everything in their power to dismantle communities.
We’re at our strongest when folks come together for a common cause, and a sporting event, whether attended in person or watched in a public setting, funnels our energy into a shared ambition— we want our team to claim victory. To me, that’s the best representation of sports’ true value, when it allows us similar experiences, hopes, dreams. Regardless of the game’s result, the event itself bonds people who might not share much else but don’t need to share much else because everyone being the same person isn’t what community is founded on anyway.
The history of a team, the careers of players, or what’s at stake in the game itself don’t hold value outside the confines of sports lore (no matter how many Muse accounts on Twitter tell you otherwise) but all those things are vital in solidifying— and strengthening— the camaraderie between each community member who is emotionally invested in a game or team. For example, Indiana making the Eastern Conference Finals this year doesn’t mean much for the good of the human race, but the knowledge that exists between Indianapolis residents that their team hadn’t made the ECF in a decade— and how that knowledge shapes their relationship to this specific team and to each other— does mean something. It intertwines the history of strangers, gives them a common overall experience, even if their individual experiences over the past ten years did not crossover at all. The more people have in common, the more they can relate to each other— even if that thing is cheering on the same silly basketball team year after year. The more we can relate to each other, the closer we are to building home for everybody.
So why don’t any of these experiences, histories, or goals seem to matter to sports owners? Why does John Fisher remain unstirred that moving the A’s to Las Vegas will sever decades of (great) baseball history in Oakland? Why is Josh Harris, owner of the 76ers and NFL’s Washington Commanders, willing to dismantle blocks of Chinatown in Philly to build a new stadium that nobody in the city actually wants while simultaneously trying to build the Commanders a new stadium in… not Washington DC?
In part, I think it’s because owners claim to care about the cities their teams reside in. Of course, moves like Fisher and Harris are making show us, through two different yet interconnected methods, that they don’t. These rats (weasels, ghouls, whatever descriptor you prefer) view the cities in which “their” teams exist as disconnected from the teams altogether, and if you’re a sports fan, you probably think that sounds outrageous— I think you’d be right, obviously. The city in which a team plays might be the most important part of its identity. But we’ve seen so many examples of owners moving teams out of nothing but ego and greed to know that owners don’t think that way. Fan support doesn’t matter (Seattle was a great basketball town but the Sonics were still moved to Oklahoma City, and Cleveland was an incredible football town before the Browns were stolen in 1995.) History and branding don’t matter (the A’s have been bad recently but that franchise has plenty of cool history that will be left behind in the Bay Area.)
Also, none of the reasons why I believe sports are valuable are tangible in the way that billionaire owners want them to be. Memories of forgone rosters can’t be measured in current-day ticket sales, and shared experiences don’t show up in offshore bank accounts.
The relationship owners have to their teams starts to make more sense when you realize that owners are indifferent to the importance of human connection and don’t view the interactions people share at sporting events to be consequential or meaningful (or; meaningful in ways that benefit them financially.) To make enough money to buy a sports franchise, a person must completely detach themself from any shred of empathy or human interaction. They must use the labor of people they have never met (and never care to meet) if they want to attain the wealth necessary to buy a team. Once a person can buy a team, they’re already a shell of a being who, at one point, probably felt things and cared about things, but left those endeavors behind long ago.
These owners want the team to feel a complete sense of control— so where that team plays is one of the least important aspects of ownership. I think this sense of control is the main reason why owners—especially new owners—seem anxious to bolt town as soon as possible when they purchase a team. To them, a team they bought that has already existed in a city for decades isn’t fully their team. But if they move the team halfway across the country, change the name, change the colors, and talk vapidly about a “new era”… then they can feel like that ownership really means something; where the exists, the name people call it, and all the new history that will be made in a new location is because of them, the daring and forward-thinking owner.
Sometimes the moves aren’t as drastic as Oakland to Las Vegas; sometimes they’re just a few miles, like Josh Harris moving the Sixers from South Philly to Center City. But I think the idea remains the same— while the recent version of the Philadelphia 76ers played at Wells Fargo Center, Josh Harris’s 76ers will play in a cool, sleek, arena in the heart of the city, and in his mind, any success the team has at 76 Castle or whatever the fuck it’s called will be associated with him as much as any player or coach. Owning the Philadelphia 76ers isn’t enough — Harris, and others like him, want domain over the team and the physical space the team occupies.
Sports owners and US presidents aren’t so dissimilar. The point of having those roles isn’t to fix communities or improve education or help the team win or provide healthcare or do anything beneficial for the people who are being served, the point is to merely have and keep the roles. Politicians don’t fix the things they claim to care about because if they fulfill all their campaign promises, because if everything gets fixed, why would voters have any reason to elect them again? And owners don’t care about improving the team they bought in the city in which they bought it, because that was never the point. Being the owner was the point. So, in that regard, congrats to John Fisher who is moving his team to Las Vegas, congrats to Josh Harris who will likely get his stadium in Center City, and congrats to Joe Biden who will likely be re-elected as president of the united states. Congrats to every owner and president who gets to feel like the richest, most powerful boy in town. You did it, I guess. You showed us.
What I’m Listening to: Jeff Buckley
This performance of Lover, You Should’ve Come Over will haunt me until I’m an old man.
Really hoping you're wrong about Harris getting the arena in Center City. It's not only not needed, it will be actively detrimental to Philly. The only reason Harris wants it is to increase the value of the Sixers for when he sells his shares and makes even MORE money. It's an absolute joke.
As a child growing up in the 60s and 70s, the excitement of actually going to a game has been significantly diluted by technology along with the accompanying sense of community that you reference. I remember well the sense of awe at seeing the colors (the yellow green goalposts and green field in particular) upon entering Cleveland Municipal Stadium along with armies of Browns fans for the first time in the fall of 1972. Today, that experience would be significantly lessened, along with the sense of wonder.
Televisions were originally poor black and white pictures that made going to the game a vastly superior - arguably essential - experience. Even color TVs and the cameras used at games produced a grainy picture until the last 15 years or so as huge screens and high definition pictures made their way into our living rooms. You see that firsthand when relatively recent games from the past are rebroadcast on the NFL network. It's not nearly as clear.
Not long ago, people would note what events they had attended in person as a badge of honor ("dude, I was actually in the end zone for that catch!")...recognition of how superior it was to viewing it on TV. You rarely hear that any longer. Even the in-person experience isn't the same. Modern ticket buying applications mean that visiting team fans now routinely fill seats in your stadium. For many fans, the term "home game" has an entirely new meaning and experience.
Today, televised games have far more information and added entertainment value than attending games in person. In addition to hearing what the Mannings think about things, the NFL and Amazon Web Services want to deliver more real time game analytics to viewers. Modern stadiums now prioritize Wi-Fi so their fans can simultaneously watch the game on their phones.
This trend has been happening for a while now. When the Cowboys opened their new stadium, there was a famous picture of a key end zone catch where every fan in the shot was watching the play on the giant video display over the field instead of the live play in front of them. New stadiums now are desired more today more for what they deliver to viewers at home (e.g. better camera angles, wider crowd shots. better media connectivity, closer lavish suites for in-game celebrity isolation shots etc.) than what they provide for the paying customers in the seats. Facilities are now viewed as more important for free agent signing than for local fans.
Beyond fans now perceiving the watching of the game at home as constituting the best seat in the house (the NFL's recent antitrust case is a terrific example of how the public - and juries - see viewing the NFL experience today), modern viewing decisions have profoundly changed the economics of the game. Today, owners make relatively little money from ticket sales as media distribution contracts and higher TV and streaming ratings now account for a huge percentage of their revenues. Consider that Dan Snyder, former owner of the Commanders, sold his team for $1 billion more than the expected price despite a decrepit stadium that was at best half-filled on game days. His roughly $500 million in annual media revenue share is what drove the price.
The reality is that modern sports today is a remote and individualized viewing product and not an in-person product any longer. Going to games is viewed by many as sub optimal versus watching on a screen. It's a part of why citizens no longer want to pay for stadiums, because they assume they can still see the games in a better way. Why have your tax bill go up when you can just buy the Sunday Ticket for less. That leaves cities without teams or with only one professional franchise as willing to pay for a new facility e.g. see Kansas City versus Jacksonville.
Owners are not the villains here in my view. They are agnostic followers of money - wherever it might be. If tickets mattered more to their bottom line, they would invest and emphasize that and those customers. The real culprit here is technology. Technology has provided us with so much, yet in recent years it appears to be increasingly isolating us. This is not just true with sports - but with everything in life. As it isolates us behind our locked doors, there is a loss of community, of camaraderie and unity. A loss of purpose. Those bonds are crucial to our society and our humanity...and like a habitat that is being drained or bulldozed or cut down, our communal habitats are vanishing too.
Years ago, author Robert Putnam warned of this future in his book "Bowling Alone" - where he described the diminution of American community life through the proxy of vanishing bowling leagues across the US.
Today we are not bowling at all...and are now watching sports alone in our basements. The costs are real, addressing them is unfortunately much harder.