From live sports not being broadcast due to the broadcaster not having the rights in your area, to live broadcasts being bombarded with advertisements, to leagues deciding against putting a team in a city because it’s not profitable enough even if the sport is popular in the city (see Quebec in the NHL), to rich leagues from the global core stealing all the talent from the rest of the world leaving competitions in the global south worse off. I could go on and on.
The way professional athletes are used and abused for profit is also terrible. There’s inherently some element of danger in sport, whether it’s low impact or full contact, but the profit motive always means safety is a lower priority. The NFL covering up the well known health effects of head injuries is just one example that comes to mind.
It chews up and spits out kids from marginalized communities too. Its really sad here in the the states
People treat children from poor backgrounds ascending to the status of high level and well paid professional players as inspiration but for every one such success there are thousands of failures. It’s the part of the same trend where a child funding a medical procedure by operating a lemonade stand is portrayed as wholesome.
It convinces kids and families that they will be able to escape their oppression by getting rich in the NBA or NFL. Its an unfortunately very effective tool to destroy revolutionary consciousness. I don’t think it is a coincidence that there was an explosion of famous black athletes following the Civil rights era, or that none of them became a Muhammad Ali like figure.
Players are discarded like trash the moment they get “uppity”. Best example is (don’t know the spelling) Kaepernick.
It also whitewashes evil corruption orgs like FIFA
I think capitalism fucking sports is part of the reason I could never get into them. I live in the suburbs of the city that is very passionate about it’s sports teams. The teams are considered part of the local identity. But, with the way burgerland sports teams work, players are traded between teams all the time such that few, if any, of the players are from the city or the surrounding area. When the players of a team have no real connection to an area, what is left to use as part of the local identity besides the team’s branding?
I totally agree. I prefer it when leagues have teams that were founded in the city they play in with most players having a connection to the city
Agreed, I live in a city with some popular teams and one of the team’s business models is get rookies for cheap, train them up and sell them as soon as they’re famous/well-liked/(expensive).
Quebec City not having an NHL team anymore infuriates me and I barely even watch/care about hockey
Im somewhat confident that at least the NBA (not the teams but the actual governing body) is waist deep in gambling and match fixing.
The increase in amount of gambling ads has been insane in every sport, and there’s a massive financial motive for leagues to be promoting gambling and also steering results in certain directions.
The NBA governs a sport which its ruleset is so easily influenced by refereeing. Because a single players ability to influence games is so great, a couple calls (or non calls) can drastically affect the score of a game and be incredibly, if not impossible, to detect wrongdoing.
It has already been proven that referees in the NBA blatantly steer(ed) the outcome of games for personal reasons (monetary or simple team/player preference). For more on this see Tim Donaghy and his comments about the Suns and Spurs series from 2007.
There’s also very strong indications that the league “nudges” or “massages” games by influencing their referees (through selecting certain referees or informing them of calls they want) to call games in ways that would more likely result in preferable outcomes. I recommend the whistleblower podcast for more on this type of fixing in the NBA.
The NBA gets money through great ratings on TV and longer series and popular stars playing more brings in huge money. But I think there also may be a case where these games are being bet on not only by referees (if at all still), but actual league higher ups and shareholders, or even other shady associates.
I’m sure you don’t like the new collective bargaining agreement. I can’t believe they’re being so brazen with it, it’s so obviously a conflict of interest for players to be able to invest in betting companies.
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I forgot another one, the best players coming from private schools
Especially esports.
I like this video on the topic.
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