I know very few hardcore football fans who sit in front of the TV with their kids and watch every Sunday. It happens now and then, but the people I associate with as football fans aren't passing that love of football down to their kids because the kids don't really give a shit to tell you the truth. You want your kid to love a game? Then you take him to games. He may pick it up on his own, but he's very likely to if you actually take him to games and less likely to if you rely on having him sit around and watch TV with dad. My brother-in-law, the Steelers fan, has two boys aged 12 and 7. He no longer lives in Pittsburgh so he never goes to games. He and his dad and older brother had season tickets during the late 60's and then the glory decade until 1980 and that's how he picked up his attachment to the Steelers and to NFL football. He has retained this over the years but his kids now are just not NFL fans. They talk about the Steelers with him (and the Jets with me) and they are growing up in an area that is very much dominated by the Patriots, but they don't like football and they don't watch it. That's what the old guys do on Sunday while they are online doing other things like WoW and Halo 3 and Toontown. They do Soccer and Karate. Those kids are never going to be NFL fans because they've never been taken to a Steelers game to see what all the hubbub is about. My brother-in-law and I have tried various things to get them interested over the last few years, like pizza-making parties to eat in front of the game, like taking them to a local sports bar and sitting in the family section to eat wings and pizza during the game. The thing that would work maybe is to take them to a Steelers game, but that's like a $500 investment (conservatively) and would take a long weekend to pull off and the return of possibly getting them interested in NFL football is just small compared to that. You may think this is a TV driven event that can survive off of that forever, but then again that's what the NBA thought too and they're a few years ahead of the curve on the NFL in terms of destroying their fan base.
It's all a matter of opinon as to what the future brings, but to use the NBA as some sort of example is absurd. The NBA has never had remotely close to the ratings that the NFL has always had. The NBA has also always been marketed in the exact opposite way that the NFL has been marketed - as a star-driven league, which is very bad when stars leave teams or turn out to be bad guys. The NFL is always all about the franchise and the league. Players come and go, but the franchise and the league stay. My prediction is that if the NFL fails, just about all of the sports and entertainment industry will have failed before it.
The NBA from 1983 to 1998 had much higher ratings for it's championship series than it has managed since them. The problem? Fans priced out of seats during the NBA's explosion of interest from 1977-78 (NBA-ABA merger) to 1988. Kids, particularly white suburban kids, just aren't fans in the way they were in the 60's and 70's. They don't get to go to games because the ticket prices are out of sight. The NFL will fail to whatever comes next. I don't know what that is going to be, but then again I would not have expected sitcoms and dramas on TV to begin falling before reality TV and the various competition shows that have emerged nearly entirely since 2000. Boxing has fallen to various other forms of martial entertainment in a very short period of time. Think about it: do you really expect the TV screens to be dark just because the NFL failed or do you expect something else, whatever, to have finally beaten them out?
Your various examples don't hang together, and have nothing to do with the NFL anyway. To say that NBA ratings for the championship series dropped ten years after your own time frame for when seats became more expensive is pure speculation, nothing else - why would it take 10 years for that to happen? I would say that a far more likely cause is that the cable TV, video game and internet revolutions, combined with oversaturation of basketball on TV, led to a drop in ratings. The NFL can never suffer from overexposure, since its season lasts only four months and involves only 16 games. Boxing has been dead for decades, with slight spurts related to appealing individual stars like Ali and Leonard (again, a marketing strategy that is nothing like that of the NFL). It will take a lot better ratings before MMA is viewed as anything but a fringe sport, despite what its proponents would have you believe. None of this changes my basic point. Fifty years ago very few fans saw an NFL game in person. Thirty years ago very few fans saw an NFL game in person. Ten years ago very few fans saw an NFL game in person. Nowadays very few fans see an NFL game in person. Rising ticket prices has absolutely no effect on the vast majority of fans. If the league eventually finds itself with empty stadia, they'll lower ticket prices or just give the tickets away - either way, it will have relatively little effect on the bottom line. They'll have already gotten their PSL money, the luxury boxes will not go empty, and the TV billions will keep rolling in. Edit: I forgot to mention the most obvious reason why ratings went down for the NBA Finals after 1998 - Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan were no longer playing in them. Fans simply didn't find Duncan, Kobe, and Shaq nearly as appealing - again, the fatal flaw in the NBA marketing scheme that the NFL has avoided. Nobody watches the NFL playoffs just to see Eli Manning, or even Peyton Manning, for that matter.
My first memories of football is going to shea with my dad, packing 10 sandwiches and various other tidbits and watching a game live. We did that once a year for 5 years when I was young. That's where I became a big football fan. Without that who knows? When I became 19, I bought seasons and 28 years later it continues except the food intake and quality has increased. Football is about the game and atmposhere, its totally different then baseball. Baseball is about the game and weather.
This is a truly excellent post. Very rarely do I run into a post that causes me to consider reversing a stand I've taken on an issue minutes earlier. I try to think out my posts, take the stand, then voice my opinion. This is one of those posts that comes along and causes me to really think about what I've said. Thanks for the interesting Steelers story. It rings true and quite possibly makes your point valid about going to games as opposed to watching on TV. Years ago, I found hockey on TV quite boring (who doesn't???). But a friend of mine was getting Rangers tickets and, what the hell, I'll go to a few games. Well, live and in person, what a difference, and I found myself watching Rangers games on TV whenever I couldn't be in the stands! I loved the game and even watched other games... Flyers, etc. Then my buddy stopped getting the tickets and my kids came along and I stopped going to the live games. Within 6 months I also stopped watching it on TV. It was back to the same old boredom again. Today, you couldn't pay me enough money to sit in front of a TV and watch a Rangers game, unless it was loaded with some kind of media hype. Okay, so maybe hockey is not a good example of the relationship of live games to TV (because we all know there's a world of difference in this sport), but still, there might be something to BradwaySucks' post above. I think you DEVELOPE a love of the sport by going to the game and seeing what the whole experience is like, then you continue loving the sport by watching it on TV and imagining what it's like to be in the stands. If you cannot imagine what bedlam and horror and joy is going on in the stands on a certain play (because you've never been to a game or haven't been in decades), you could quite possibly lose interest. The more I think about it, I get so much more out of watching football on TV because I know what it's like in the stands. Take that away and who knows? It might just become another hockey game to me, the Jets taking the place of the Rangers, who I haven't seen live in about 35 years.
Because a 9 year old going to a game in 1983 or 1984 is the 24 year old post college guy in 1998, who suddenly has a limited amount of time in which to budget his entertainment choices. If he was going to games regularly as a kid then he's probably a huge NBA fan and invested in both going to games and watching on TV. If he was just watching on TV back in the day, well there's lots of stuff to watch on TV, and the NBA's ratings go down. Shaq and Kobe, BTW, are every bit as big as anybody to ever play the game except for Jordan. Bird and Johnson and Erving were great players but they didn't have more cachet than the Lakers of just a few years ago.
Bradway and Sec 227 - The examples you put forth are occurring in your lives and elsewhere, they are certainly the exception and not a trend. Just Google NFL TV ratings. The league is bringing in more and more viewers yearly. The draft in April attracts huge numbers. there is no evidence anywhere that the league is slipping in popularity. In fact, it is one of the strongest "sure things" going on TV. As for kids interest, I can only rely on what I see. Living in the transient Atlanta area, I meet people from all over the country. I have seen children in my neighborhood wearing Falcons, Giants, Patriot, Steelers, Eagles, Broncos and my oldest wears his Curtis Martin jersey from time to time. There seems to be some interesrest shown by the next generation. But Budweiser isn't really looking to attract the 10 year old with their ads. They want that 25 year old guy and the NFL has been a home run for them for a long time. The percentage of NFL viewers that actually attend a game is miniscule. The stadiums are 70,000 people full and most are the same folks week after week. If the viewing audeince is somewhere around 1.5 million people, that means 95% of the folks never step foot in a stadium.
It occurred to me as I was reading the various responses, which have all been very well though out and presented, that the reason taking a kid to the game is so important it that it makes them focus on the game. The reason my nephews aren't watching the games with us is that there is so much else to do in their busy little lives. We can sit them down in front of the TV and create all sorts of lures to try to keep them there, but something is going to pull them away sooner rather than later and then it's over for that week. I think I'm going to propose a trip to Pittsburgh next season to go see a game. Once they're there there's nothing else to focus on but the game and they'll get a chance to see what all the hubbub is about.
Just pray you get a good game with some excitement. I took my 6 year old up to Nashville last year for the Jets-Titans game. It was a snooze fest between two bad teams. (How that Titans team made the playoffs is a mystery). Thankfully, they did enough with stuff on the field and video boards to keep his attention during the commercial breaks that were more entertaining that the game itself.
What you're saying makes sense to me but that definitely wasn't the case for me. My father to this day has never been to an NFL game. He never played organized football, he never encouraged me to like football. I watched the '85 Bears superbowl on TV at a party my parents were at and fell in love with the game. I began watching football games regularly on TV, reading books about players, and playing football with friends. Over 20 years later, I've been to probably about 10 NFL games, own more Jets gear than any normal person should, buy Madden NFL football every year, purchase NFL Sunday Ticket every year, and spend way too much time on on an NFL teams fan message board. My parents only interaction with football was watching it on TV, and that's what got me into the game. They never even encouraged me to watch it, I just did because they were. Maybe that's not how it works for the majority of people, but that's how it worked for me.
You're missing the point here. NFL ticket prices are only now beginning to shoot out of sight. It's really only since the late 90's that some teams have begun attaching a huge premium to virtually any ticket sold in the house. There were no PSL's at all before 1993, when the expansion Carolina Panthers instituted them and raised $160 million dollars almost overnight. There are still only a dozen teams or so that have the PSL's in place but just about everybody is going to jump on this bandwagon in the next few years. NBA ticket prices went out of sight in the late 70's and early 80's when Jerry Buss financed his purchase of the Lakers and the Forum and found himself needing to exploit every possible source of cash. Laker's courtside seats went from $15 in 1979 to $45 in 1980 to $75 in 1981 and thereon until they reached $1,500 in 2001. That's a hundred fold price increase in 22 years. All of the NBA teams followed suit and ticket prices began to skyrocket. How many every day fans increased their income a hundred fold in the same 22 years?
I don't think either one of us suggested the league is slipping in popularity (at present). But I do think that the league could eventually slip in popularity over a 10 to 15-year period if people are priced out of attending live games. If their children don't ever get to go to a real football game, how much interest as an adult will they have in a certain team or in watching any NFL team, really? Oh sure, rudimentary interest. A kid in Atlanta will root for the Giants just because they won the SB last year. But that won't generate die-hard fans the way attending a live game does. That's usually the thing that hooks you, not the TV version. If TV can hook you at an early age to the NFL, so can all the other video crap as well. Your description of neighborhood children in the Atlanta area is a good case in point. Many are transplants. They'll wear the jersey from whence they came (or possibly some other new jersey if that team gets hot). But what we're cultivating is, at best, a "warm weather" football fan, not the die-hard fan. They may have gone to a Jets game or two, but their love of that particular team will wain in time. And as Bradway points out, there are so many other distractions for kids nowadays. If all they have is a TV version of what a game looks like, how would you expect these kids to ever develop a die-hard devotion to tuning in his/her TV set every Sunday and staying with it all day when they become an adult? It probably won't even carry them past the age of 11 or 12: "Hey, dad, the national air hockey quarterfinals are on now, can't we turn off this BORING Jets game now, PLEEEEEZZZZE???" I think you'll find that it's not entirely the same 70,000 each week. I notice quite a bit of rotation. There have been many posts on this board by people who can't afford to pick up a lot of games on eBay, for example, but they do buy one game or two games per year and try to bring their kids. With proposed escalating seat costs however, even those tickets will probably be priced through the roof and they'll be priced out of rarely (if ever) going to a game at all. Now, it's interesting that you live in the Atlanta area and bring up seat attendance as it relates to game interest, because nowhere in America is college ball (Friday night ball, etc) more popular than in the south. Millions attend college games and high school games and the interest is huge. What would the interest be if they never attended a live game? Couldn't afford it, so they're forced to watch the games on TV only? I'm just saying that the NFL is pushing the limit of fan expansion with their PSL policy. And it's probably completely unnecessary for them to do this (to force them, basically, with their cockamamie insistance that the stadiums be paid off in 5 years... what business pays off real estate assets like that in 5 years?) to have to charge the PSLs, because the revenue from so many other sources (cornerstones, naming rights, etc) should really enable then to carry all the expenses. Instead, they'll sell their PSLs and tickets to large corporations who will dole them out as perks to out-of-towners, out-of-towners who really aren't fans of the team or even possibly NFL fans per se, so that the likelyhood exists that many of the seats will be empty... far more than we have today... and that the results of that down the road is devastating to the NFL in the long run.
Not sure if anyone saw this article today that details the giants psl plan, while I'm not a fan of this at all, it is realtively reasonable for the majority of the seats ESPECIALLY considering what was proposed in the survey. I don't have enough posts to post a link, but it is from the bergen record nortjersey.com Giants fans who buy seats in the lower level of their new football stadium — even in the end zones — will have to pay a one-time fee of at least $4,000 per seat for the right to continue buying season tickets in 2010, under a new Giants pricing plan unveiled Thursday. Fans with upper deck seats will face less sticker shock, with about 90- percent of those seats featuring a $1,000-per-seat personal seat license fee, or PSL. The other 10 percent — the first few rows in the upper deck between the end zones — will have a $5,000 PSL. News that the Giants will be charging for PSLs — with final payments due March 1, 2010 — has produced a flurry of inquiries to the Giants front office in recent weeks. Giants co-owner John Mara acknowledged in a conference call Thursday that some of those people had questioned whether his late father, beloved Giants figure Wellington Mara, would have done such a thing. “Believe me, I feel that,” Mara said. “But my father wasn’t faced with this kind of debt on a new building like this, either. We didn’t go into this process thinking we’d end up with PSLs.” Club officials expect the PSL fees, after taxes, to raise about quarter of the $750 million in construction costs the Giants are covering for the facility they will share with the Jets. The top PSL price is $20,000 per seat for 4,162 seats in the lower level, closest to the 50-yard line. About 15,000 Giants fans will have to pay at least a $10,000 PSL fee. The 9,000 club seats will sell for $400 to $700 per game, with PSLs starting out at $7,500. As for ticket prices, Upper-deck tickets with $1,000 PSLs will cost $85 and $95, the $5,000-PSL seats will cost $105. On one side of the field, 2,113 seats — with access to an exclusive lounge behind the Giants’ bench and other perks — come with a $700 per game price. The seats directly across the field, but without such perks, will sell for $160. Mara said he hoped the variety of price points will enable longtime to fans to keep coming to games, even if they cannot afford to sit in a similar section in the new stadium. “Some may have to move,” Mara said. “I hope not, but that could occur. “I’d like to think there are affordable alternatives here.” Asked if the new era might lead to “new blood” as a stadium fan base, Mara added, “I’m not interested in getting new blood particularly. We’ve had a loyal fan base for a long time.” Current ticket prices range from $85 to $115, so fans in the upper deck will face little to no price increase for tickets. Giants are not the first National Football League team to institute PSLs. More than a dozen other teams have them, including the Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears. The Giants’ $20,000 ceiling for PSLs pales in comparison to the $150,000 being charged for the best seats in the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas. That stadium is scheduled to open in 2009. The first set of Giants fans will receive the glossy brochure detailing the PSL charges as soon as next week, with a staggered rollout extending until February 2009. Seat license holders will be able to sell them to the highest bidder, beginning in 2011. The Jets have not announced their PSL program, but a recent survey sent to their ticket holders sought reaction to the idea of PSLs of at least $50,000 for the most coveted seats. The footprint of the new stadium will be more than twice as large as 32-year-old Giants Stadium, which will be demolished after the 2009 season. The new facility, which will have a corporate name not yet announced, will feature far more toilets, food points-of-sale, escalators, elevators, and other conveniences
www_._northjersey_._com/sports/giants/Giants_fans_seat_license_4000_each_for_lower_deck. html just delete the underscores above to get to the article, the also have a seating chart and pricing schedule
Agreed. But... Look at old MLB tapes -- no one went to the games. Even good teams. Even big games. The shot heard round the world -- 35,000 announced attend. Maris' 61st home run -- 24,000 http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA196110010.shtml 78 Yankees (World Series) 2.3 million (roughly 28k per game)(led the league). 72 Reds (lost world series) 1,611,459 (3rd of 12)(less than 20 per) Yet -- despite that people did not go -- they watched (or listened). Granted there is a lot more competition for attention now (internet, etc) but you can develop a "love" for the game by watching.
Jets confirmed they will be going with PSLs as well. With the Giants announcing the specific facts, figures and dates regarding their Personal Screw Licenses, the Jets confirmed what just about everyone anticipated. "We are developing our PSL plan that we will announce at the end of august," team spokesperson Bruce Speight said late this afternoon.
That baseball has too much commodity to sell out every game is pretty much undisputed. 81 games is a LOT of games to fill a 50,000 seat stadium over a 6 month period. The Giants attendance was fairly shoddy all through the 40's and 50's and you can make a strong argument that Horace Stoneham was just a bad businessman, compared to the Yankees and Dodgers, especially after Rickey arrived on the scene to run the show. Nonetheless, I got my love of baseball from my uncles - who took me to Mets games regularly during the 60's and early 70's. I probably saw 10 games a year at Shea and a couple more at Philadelphia when the Mets were good enough to travel to watch. They in turn got their love of baseball from my grandfather and father, who were big Giants fans from the 30's onwards and took them to as many games a year as they could afford. I haven't been a serious baseball fan since 1994, but I still watch the Mets out of the corner of my eye and cheer when things go right for them. When my niece, who is a big softball player, wanted to go see a baseball game we hopped on the train and went down to Shea and caught the Mets last season. We'll do it again this season when her little league all-star team finally gets knocked out. She's a softball fan because she plays it, but I bet when she's thinking about taking her kids to a game in 20 years she'll be going south to see the Mets even though Boston is a lot closer. And I'll almost guarantee she'll be taking her kids to baseball games as long as she can afford it.
i think everybody knew that psls were coming when the new stadium was talked about and being built. it's how most of the nfl franchises. i'm on the wait list and was pretty shocked at some of the prices they wanted. now that the giants have come in and said what their prices are the jets have to be in the same ballpark. as it's been said before, how can an orginaztion who has won just about nothing charge more then a team that just came off a superbowl win and has actually had a good amount of success in the last 10 or so years.
If the Jets/Giants really wanted the opinion of what the fans thought (they don't) then they could have asked the question prior to building the new stadium of whether the fans wanted a renovated stadium without PSL's or the new stadium with PSL's. Asking now is so blatantly transparent. I know this is probably unrealistic as the Jets didnt own the stadium, but just a thought.
