This column was published in the Evening Echo of July 11th, 2012. It is significant in so far as it marks the 10th anniversary of my first column.
It is nice to be able to say that my opinion and comment have been published 520 weeks in a row. There are a great many people out there who are more than capable of achieving this, but they have never been given the chance.
Five people need to be mentioned. Liam Horan, the then Sports Editor of the Evening Echo, who gave me the start when he said, “You’re always going on about things, why don’t you put it in a column?” (This should be read in a Mayo accent!) My wife Anne, who has had to read a lot of dodgy first drafts, and my children Donal Óg, Seán and Bríd, who, in fairness, never criticise the “Old man’s” work; they just call it as they see it!
Everyone has a favourite sport. And most people believe that their favourite sport is one of the best, if not the best, to take part in or to watch. Somewhere in the world there is a group of people who believe passionately that curling or rodeo are as good to watch as hurling, football or rugby. Strange, but true.
“To each his own” Cicero said. Another anonymous Latin scholar put it more accurately, “De gustibus non est disputandum” which means, “There is no accounting for taste”.
Taste is one thing, but when it comes to the art of “accounting” or making money, one sport stands head and shoulders above the rest; the National Football League (NFL) in the USA. No sporting organisation anywhere in the world comes within an ass’s roar of the revenue generating and profit sharing capacity of the NFL.
There are 32 teams (franchises) who share the profits of everything from TV rights to jersey and merchandise sales. The organisation tries everything it possibly can to keep all 32 teams competitive. This includes salary caps that limit the amount of salary a team can pay its players and a recruitment policy (known as the draft) that allows the teams with the worst playing record recruit the best incoming players.
Of course not everything works, there is a human element to the NFL, as there is with every other organisation, and that brings its own problems. In general however, the NFL has done a better job than your average communist country in treating everyone as equals.
That is why I was surprised to read an article in CBS Sports last week with the headline “NFL in scramble mode in what could be a losing battle to keep fans filling its stadiums”.
“My God!” I thought, “if the NFL can’t fill its stadiums, what hope have the sports over here?” The short answer to that is NONE.
Last weekend was a record weekend for attendances in GAA’s provincial finals. That is record low attendances. The combined attendance at the Leinster Senior Hurling (22,171) and the Munster Senior Football finals (9,138) was 32,309. Ten years ago an attendance of 32,000 would have been considered below average for a Cork v Kerry Munster football final. Even the Kerry v Limerick clashes of 2003 and 2004 brought attendances of around 20,000. To fail to pull even 10,000 paying people to the most important football game in Munster must ring alarm bells.
The Leinster Hurling game was different. In fact, I would suggest that the 22,000 attendance was good, considering there was no real prospect, in advance, of a close game. Those who stayed away missed an incredible display by Galway. But given the gulf between the teams in their league game, a Galway win over Kilkenny was unforeseeable.
Attendances are down at all the GAA championship games. And it is not just the GAA either. It is the same in English soccer, cricket and rugby where there is a far greater population base to support the games. If the NFL is suffering a drop in attendance you can be sure it is the same for every sport across the world.
Mike Freeman, the author of the CBS Sports article blamed advances in technology as the main reason for falling attendance. “Technology is getting so good that one day (very soon) stadiums will be vastly less populated and the fan experience will be mostly limited to watching the game in HD, on a couch, roast beef sandwich in hand, no line for the bathroom, no traffic…technology and comfort will trump the excitement of being at the game.”
He went on to say, “…it’s only a matter of time before tablets (iPads etc.) get better too. One day you’ll be able to answer the doorbell, get the nachos, cool the beer and resume the game at your own leisure…you can’t do that in a stadium.”
Maybe he’s right. It is certainly much easier to organise your Sunday sport around a television broadcast than to take off to Limerick or Thurles or Croke Park and lose the whole day.
The readers of CBS Sports did not agree with Freeman. There were nine pages of comments at the end of the piece. Almost all the comments told the author he was wrong.
“How can you write an article about declining attendances and not mention the outrageous cost of attending a game?” was one comment. “Pretty simple solution: stop charging $100/ticket and $9 beer” said another. “Why would I take my three daughters to a place where I have to continually bow up to foul mouth drunken idiots to keep them from offending my kids?” said a father. While several others cited the view from their seats in the stadium compared to the TV coverage as the reason they don’t go to games anymore.
On that point, the NFL insists that the lowest seats must be six feet above the pitch level. Can you imagine what these people would say if they sat in the first five rows of Croke Park, the Aviva Stadium or Páirc Uí Chaoímh?
There have been several articles written on other websites in response to the CBS piece. The main thrust of all of them is that it has become too expensive and too intrusive to attend live games; especially when the alternative is to watch the games in HD, with slow motion playback, in the comfort of your own home.
Sport has always been a mix between show business and competition. For a long time the main source of income was what came in through the turnstiles to see the “show”. That was the 20th century model. That model no longer works because with new technology, you don’t have to be there to experience the event.
The average sports fan has reached saturation point. There are too many matches that are billed as “vital” and “important”, but in reality they are little more than warm-up events. Last Sunday’s Munster Football final was a typical example. The Cork team has too much power for Clare. The Clare management knew this, so they used the game as preparation for their fourth round qualifier game in three weeks time. All this is fine. But don’t try and cod the people by charging exorbitant prices and asking them to give up a full Sunday for this type of game.
If an NFL team, which has only eight home games a year, cannot make their games special enough to fill its stadium, what hope has a Cork v Clare non-knockout game?
The GAA will have to re-think its policy on the early round of the championships and qualifiers. While it is true that there is no accounting for taste, the average GAA fan is discerning enough to decide that over-paying for non-competitive fixtures is not palatable any more.