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Author Topic: Sports Fans  (Read 1788 times)

Greg

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Sports Fans
« on: May 24, 2016, 09:14:11 pm »

I love sports.  I really love to follow my teams and have always been a statistics guy.
Sports is very very significant to me. 

Having said that...

Here's what Ive seen in sports that disappoints me:

There is no Muhammad Ali who, at risk of great financial, professional, and personal risk is willing to use his platform to speak on issues that help people.

Billionaire owners having the public build stadiums on their tax-free, multi-billion dollar businesses

College sports in America are so completely out of control that I cant comment.
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kylenz

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Re: Sports Fans
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2016, 04:59:29 am »

I don't know if it's the same thing in America, but my biggest peeve when it comes to accommodating sports fans, is having ALL live-to-air sports behind a paywall on 'Pay TV' networks. You have to subscribe to over $100+ a month just to watch all your favourite sports.

This is harming future generations who grow up unable to see their sports heroes in action as their families cannot afford the upkeep of the pay tv subscriptions. We are seeing dwindling participation numbers of children in sports and I feel this is a major contributor. Conversely, people are also refusing to turn up to events at stadiums because they would rather sit at home and watch it on tv (they're the ones that can afford it after all).

It's a shame. New Zealand used to be a nation of sports-mad people. And now they're glued to their phones all day.
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kylenz

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Re: Sports Fans
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2016, 05:22:02 am »

Case in point, I remember a time when all sport was on 'free-to-air' tv, and our heavyweight boxer David Tua had all his fights screened live for free.

Well our current heavyweight contender Joseph Parker fought the other night and it was only available as a pay-per-view for $50 on top of the monthly subscription that people already pay if they want to see sport.

It turned out that hundreds of thousands of people watched the fight streamed for free on the internet, and now SKY TV and the promoters are threatening to go after the people that watched it. SKY are already losing subscribers in droves (especially with the competition of Netflix etc) and this latest debacle of wanting to sue everybody is becoming a PR disaster for them.

The way we watch tv is changing, and these networks are doing nothing to adapt. I'm sure many people would've been quite happy to watch the event if it was a reasonable price, streamed live on the internet with no ads. But it's this bullying attitude and clinging on to the old paradigms and old ways that is really polarising the sporting public. If they don't change, they will die.
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2 of 3

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Re: Sports Fans
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2016, 05:58:22 am »

Yeah, The Sports Network here actually owns most of the pro teams. So far they haven't charged extra to watch.

On another similar note....why do we have to pay to watch commercial tv?
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