Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Sun 2024-10-06 9:30AM New York Jets @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Buffalo Bills @ Houston Texans
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Carolina Panthers @ Chicago Bears
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Cleveland Browns @ Washington Commanders
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Indianapolis Colts @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Miami Dolphins @ New England Patriots
Sun 2024-10-06 1:00PM Baltimore Ravens @ Cincinnati Bengals
Sun 2024-10-06 4:05PM Arizona Cardinals @ San Francisco 49ers
Sun 2024-10-06 4:05PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Denver Broncos
Sun 2024-10-06 4:25PM Green Bay Packers @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-10-06 4:25PM New York Giants @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-10-06 8:20PM Dallas Cowboys @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Mon 2024-10-07 8:15PM New Orleans Saints @ Kansas City Chiefs
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
People get this causation backwards very frequently. The NFL isn't tricking you into arguing with people online less, or thinking that it's a spectacle, or giving you microplastics. It is downstream from the things people desire to watch and participate in. Consider that the National Lacrosse League has all of the same incentives yet you don't think of it very frequently. Maybe you think "giving viewers and participants something they yearn for" is immoral, but the intuition needs some workshopping, I would suggest focusing on the gambling arguments.
The NFL employs marketers, psychologists, designers, sociologists, media people for the purpose of tricking you into buying their product. They might do this through an advert, paying a celebrity to post about the sport, through youth influencers, or by associating their stupid game with an actual American tradition like Thanksgiving. They are more clever than you and me and they have more money to spend on their image.
People “desire to watch” (did you mistype when you included the word “participate”?) things that they consider relevant and important. The problem is that they aren’t wise to the extreme lengths that corporations go to trick you into thinking their product is relevant and important. Arguing that the NFL doesn’t trick people because few watch Lacrosse is like arguing that Nike doesn’t trick people because few buy Rebok: not every corporation is equally adept at shilling their product.
Then let’s just bring back the colosseum. We are close enough with the MMA. We might as well let them kill each other instead of just causing brain damage. Truly, the people yearn for the colosseum, and it is immoral to keep them from bloodsport.
Are you actually familiar with NFL marketing, or are you just making assumptions? The NFL is unique among major pro sports leagues in that it has realized that there is no better marketing tool than the game itself. Baseball tries to appeal to tradition and present itself as a sort of timeless, historical pastime that acts as a bridge to a better era of American life (which seems preposterous today and is probably why their numbers have been declining for years). The NBA tries to create synergy with anything that might engage youth culture (hip hop, fashion, primordial competition, nostalgia for the 1990s, the word "amazing", etc.). NASCAR appeals to Red State contrarianism. Soccer appeals to people who see themselves as forward-thinking globalists who appreciate fandom more than sports. But the NFL just uses football.
Unlike the other leagues, the NFL never tries to trick anyone into watching something they weren't otherwise inclined to watch. The league's marketing revolves around two things: 1. Making football essential to people who are already inclined to like it, and 2. Making it more essential to people who already find it essential. Occasional shots of Taylor Swift aside, they have no desire of appealing to the casual fan, or luring a 15-year-old in off his skateboard. Unlike Gary Bettman's vision for the NHL, the NFL has no desire to push its product on nonchalant audiences with transitory interest.
One only has to look at the evolution of NFL draft coverage. For decades, this was strictly a business meeting that took place in a hotel conference room. Then, in 1980, a representative from a fledgling cable network called ESPN asked commissioner Pete Rozelle if he could televise the event and Rozelle's response was "Um, I guess you can if you want to. Why would anyone want to watch that?" Soon they started allowing a small live audience. Then they moved the event to the weekend. Then they moved the event to larger venues to accommodate larger audiences. Coverage snowballed; soon you couldn't get away from it. In the 2010s they moved to a three-day prime-time event. Then they started rotating among NFL venues to accommodate ever larger live audiences. Then it moved on to broadcast television. This year, 775,000 people showed up to watch the draft in Detroit. The NFL never sought to turn a boring meeting where not much happened into a major event, it just sort of worked out that way. Other leagues have tried to turn their drafts into similar extravaganzas, but for some reason they just can't trick people into taking them seriously.
If you want further proof of this, look at the one thing the NFL has tried to aggressively market: The Pro Bowl. All-star games used to be big deals. Baseball had 2 a year at one point, and the NHL and NBA games were always something to watch. The Pro Bowl lacked the prestige of these games, and the NFL never could figure it out; why does a game featuring the best players of the most popular sport in America draw so much apathy? For years, the league just sort of shrugged, but then they decided to do something about it. First, they moved it from the weekend after the Super Bowl to the weekend before the Super Bowl. The logic was that the other leagues got better ratings by holding their all-star games in-season. Doing this snuffed out what appeal the Pro Bowl had: Despite being an inferior game, it was the last chance to watch football for months. Then they moved it from Hawaii to the mainland, eliminating the appeal of seeing sportscasters casually dressed in khakis and Hawaiian shirts outdoors in a tropical paradise while my world is covered in a foot of snow. Then they ditched the AFC–NFC matchup and let old-timer coaches pick their own teams, which meant I couldn't even reflexively root for the AFC because they had all the Steelers on them. Around the time they started monkeying with the format was around the same time the players themselves stopped caring. While they never went all-out, until 2010 or so it at least looked like a normal football game. But the physicality got less and less until the lines were playing patty cake with each other and players were giving up as soon as a defender got near them. Then the defenders stopped even trying to tackle. Then the refs started just blowing plays dead when they were obviously over. So the NFL's most recent fix is the Pro Bowl Games, a series of skills competitions and flag football games that NFL Network Radio won't even cover. Ratings are lower than ever.
The biggest clue to the NFL's marketing, though, is its non-football content. I'm specifically talking about NFL Network radio, and how its programming differs from typical sports talk. Most of the latter consists of loudmouths with big egos and no sports knowledge trying to outdo each other with contrarian hot takes so morons will get fired up enough to call in and argue. They'll focus on the absolute stupidest drivel and make that the centerpiece of discussion for a week. The worst was when, a few years back, one local guy suggested that the Steelers should trade for Patrick Peterson, and they might as well give up on the season if they didn't. Never mind that neither the Steelers, nor the Cardinals, nor Mr. Peterson had any interest in making that trade happen; it was all a media fabrication. Contrast that with NFL Network Radio, where all the hosts have impeccable credentials and assume the audience knows about football. The callers ask intelligent questions, and they get intelligent answers. Shows like Movin' the Chains say "We're going to give you in-depth analysis and if you have any questions, we're experts who can answer them." They don't say stupid shit so some guy flipping through the dial while stuck in traffic will get pissed off enough to hate listen.
In essence, NFL Network Radio works exactly like FOX News: It stays on message and invents talking points for its core constituency to absorb. If Jalen Hurts is temporarily benched for Kenny Pickett in week ten, how will he react? Is his contract an albatross? Has Eagles coach Nick Sirianni lost control of his offense? Is Sirianni on the hot seat? Will Pickett be able to redeem himself after his career in Pittsburgh came to an ignominious end? How will this impact your fantasy team? These are the ideas football fans are supposed to talk about during the run-up to week eleven, and NFL Network Radio ensures that those debates will be part of the public discourse. It does not matter that Hurts did not lose his job or if the Eagles are out of playoff contention. By inventing and galvanizing the message, NFL Network Radio (and by extension the NFL) can always deliver the precise product people want. The idea that anyone is being tricked is preposterous.
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Think of the 99% of activities hobbies or media you have no interest in, then consider that they also hire marketing professionals, perhaps even the same ones. The suggestion that everything would be in peace and harmony without evil corporations tricking us into being fat or dumb is so childish and poorly reasoned that I'm disappointed seeing it on our humble website. People like things they are predisposed to enjoying, or which they objectively value. If the national poop-eating league was given 100 billion dollars to market, I struggle to imagine all that advertising and psychology convincing me or you to watch it. On the margin advertising is obviously effective to get people to play, attend games (both forms of participation, shockingly), buy jerseys, and the like, but your argument here is so poorly developed I struggle to engage with it. Accusing me of mistyping while spelling Reebok wrong is also funny enough that I'll point it out.
The second argument is more coherent, that even if 'sports' are naturally popular, the degree to which they are catered to or how they are played is immoral. My simple response is what I've written above, that if someone tried to open a gladiator coliseum nobody would watch it or participate in it. My simpler response is "tackling people isn't nearly as bad as killing them." The meaningful degree to consent to bodily harm is not clear for contact sports, whereas I think about almost all people would think it is clear for We who are about to die.
Also worth a mention is that contact sports aren't particularly dangerous to life and limb compared to things like cycling. An 18-year-old elite women's cyclist just died at the world junior championships. The spring, the defending Tour de France champion suffered a crash that shattered his collarbone, fractured multiple ribs, and punctured a lung.
Safetyism is not a superior approach to life relative to accepting that virtue requires some risk. I have never heard anyone claim that cycling is a bloodsport because people get hurt badly sometimes.
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Americans do not engage in consumer activity for purely rational reasons, after a full assessment of the merits of the activity compared to alternatives, and with full knowledge of which activities produce the most happiness. Americans buy lotto tickets and gamble on their phone because of advertisements. Americans buy overpriced shoes and other items because of advertisements. They choose their beer based on advertisements. Companies frequently use celebrity endorsements because they know this tricks the consumer’s mind. Advertisements are not just to placate the gods or something, they work because they trick you. You need rationality and ideally wisdom to prevent this from happening; and yes, I think that wisdom can usher in peace and harmony and wellbeing.
Companies spend large money on celebrity endorsements. Adidas spent a billion for Messi. Nespresso spent 40 million on George Clooney. They understand that they can trick people to their product, like the NFL, which requires the belief that the NFL is popular in order for it to become popular.
This isn’t a sophisticated argument. Of course there must be something primitively alluring if you intend to make a lot of money. So all the people who would otherwise have made the poop eating league are instead making the NFL or gambling companies or OnlyFans or sugar or pop music or Fortnite. They use everything they can to get you to watch, eg half time show musical performances. What draws someone to spectate professional sports is the propaganda that it is culturally relevant, socially valuable, and worthy to witness. Why do people watch current sports games instead of game reruns from 2010? For no other reason than the hype. If the NFL were selling games from 2010 at half the price of viewing 2024 games, still almost everyone would watch 2024 games, because they value the surrounding hype and not the content.
People have been gambling since before recorded history, all across the world.
People have also been engaging in conspicuous consumption since before recorded history.
“Americans gamble on their phone because of advertisements” is not negated by the fact that gambling has always existed. People in America have always gambled, but fewer, and in specific contexts, and less frequently. Are you trying to argue that gambling hasn’t increased despite the legalizing or advertising of gambling? Or that the celebrity endorsements of online gambling companies have been futile in bringing in customers?
People may gamble more, or less than they have done in the recent or distant past. Certainly the recent SCOTUS decision has made online gambling far more popular compared to the recent past, but thinking of men drinking in taverns in frontier, it wouldn't shock me if gambling was far more common then. Historic moralising certainly focuses on gambling to a degree which seems weird to my modern ears.
However, your point didn't argue that advertising has increased gambling rates relative to some counterfactual. You argued that:
In contrast with:
Which to me implies that if it weren't for advertising and marketing, this is what they would be doing.
I'm not a sports guy myself, but aside from the gambling aspect, I think collective entertainment is basically a good thing. It's good when you and your neighbours like the same things and have a common identity and basic understanding of the world. It's good when people socialise together in person, even if it is just to watch big men throw and kick a ball. Church would probably be better for aggregate happiness and sense of community, but we work with what we've got.
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These arguments and ideas all stem from a very narrow view of consumer choice and individual psychology. The correct answers all lead back to my original post. People have an appetite for leisure, discretionary spending, risky behaviour, lifestyle purchases. Advertising can sway some of these choices from Coke to Pepsi on the margin, but your suggestion that there is mass trickery going on to induce people to buy something which they are otherwise averse to is an elementary and naive understanding of the power of suggestion and consumer preferences. In short, companies aren't spending all their effort to get you spending money on things which you have deemed less socially valuable, but instead to spend your money on their specific product instead of something else. You should re evaluate whether it's likely that everyone shares your value, moral, and belief system and is being tricked by advertisers to do bad things, or if your mental model of their behaviour is perhaps very flawed instead.
You’ve ignored nearly all my points, so I will simplify them for you.
Why do you think people watch current NFL games, and would not view older NFL games if they were less expensive? Is it based on the content of the product, or is it based on the manufactured hype around the product? If it is based on the manufactured hype around the product, to what extent do you think this hype is due to the astroturfed (pun intended) millions or hundreds of millions in making NFL appear socially relevant on social media and TV? If the consumers understood that the hype is fictitious, do you think they would still watch as much?
If I hire people to show up at my storefront and loudly proclaim how important my product is, while pretending to be legitimate, in order to bring in passersby, would you consider this “trickery”, or just “satisfying the appetite for leisure and discretionary spending”?
Why do you think Adidas spent one billion dollars for Messi? Does Messi affect the quality of Adidas sneakers? Do you think a rational consumer making rational choices would pick a shoe because it has the name “Messi” attached to it? Or is Adidas instead manipulating the purchasing habits of irrational children and low IQ adults?
Why have many people, myself included, attended more than one performance of Die Zauberflöte when the Met Opera and Medici.TV have prior performances available for streaming?
The leap to an F6 in Der Hölle Rache is challenging even for professional sopranos. Elite performance witnessed live is thrilling, as the possibility of failure adds to the stakes.
Your comparison isn’t accurate. A real life performance of the Magic Flute is a multisensory experience with superior aural sensation, among other things. I am not asking why someone would see a live NFL game. I am asking why the overwhelming number of NFL viewers never buy old “episodes”, but instead only watch the latest installment. If you are into classical music, you would actually do the opposite. You would determine which performance of the Magic Flute is the greatest and then buy a high-quality record of that. Recent performances of classical music are not favored due to their recency among classical music listeners. The most listened-to performances are years if not decades old, and even in the guitar world the recordings of Segovia and Bream are given special attention despite the poor audio quality. Same when television: lots of people want to see which show is the best, even if that’s 90s Twin Peaks or 00s Friends. This is despite the improvements in film technology.
The reason the average nfl viewer only watches current episodes is that the NFL markets itself as relevant, spending enormous sums to make people think it is relevant. It’s like an attentional pyramid scheme. When people realize there is no reason for it to be relevant, that they were lied to, the industry will fail. They protect against this by claiming they are “tradition” and an “American staple” instead of garbage.
But continued live performance has led to continual innovation. The NFL is live action chess. There are coaching family trees tied to different systems/concepts. Systems have shelf lives as there is perpetual innovation and counter innovation.
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Because, contra your claims above, current NFL games are a source of civic engagement, discourse, and philosophy. Of note, people do watch older games. The other day, I went back and watched a fun Bills-Patriots playoff game while I was cycling on Zwift. NFL Network televises old games that people watch. The advantages to real-time developments are that it's all happening live, we're engaged with something as a community of viewers, and there are few shared experiences in the modern world.
Yes. In the area where I do buy expensive sports products (running shoes), I can observe that the best runners in the world wear a couple specific shoes - if it were possible to run faster and win prizes wearing something else, they would do so (or at least a few would). I can be confident that the shoes on the feet of the guys running 2:03 marathons really are as good as it gets.
Moreover, "rational" doesn't mean that someone doesn't enjoy aesthetics, in-group symbols, and branding. You might as well suggest that someone that's truly rational wouldn't prefer a green shoe to a blue shoe when they're otherwise identical.
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Not the OP, but to answer your questions:
First, there are people such as myself who will watch older NFL games because we want to see how the game evolved and because we like to reminisce, but that's obviously not the majority of people. The reason most people don't have any interest in watching older NFL games is because of the inherent drama of a live event. If a game starts at 1 pm, few people who can't watch it then are going to tape it to watch later (and those who do are the kind of people who will watch a rebroadcast of Super Bowl XXVI if they catch it on TV). For most people, watching older sports broadcasts is like watching random episodes of World News Tonight from the 1970s; it may be entertaining but what originally made it compelling is irrelevant. If you think this is due to hype, I'll pose this question: If this Sunday, the NFL played all of its normal games, but put the entire week's promotion budget toward Tuesday Night Prime-Time reairs of the games from Week 5 of the 2018 season, which games do you think would get higher ratings? Would hype alone lead more people in Pittsburgh to watch Steelers–Falcons from 6 years ago as opposed to their current matchup with the Cowboys?
It depends on whether the customer liked the product. If it's a good product then they'll feel that their appetite for leisure and discretionary spending has been satisfied. If it's a bad product, they may feel they've been tricked. But if their appetite isn't satisfied then they probably won't buy the product again, and certainly wouldn't buy it again repeatedly. If the average NFL viewer felt he'd been tricked, the league would have gone out of business a long time ago. You act as though people watch football games and are disappointed at the end, but nonetheless fall for the hype week after week.
Adidas makes athletic shoes. Messi is one of the greatest athletes in the world. It is rational for me to assume he wouldn't endorse a shoddy product. If you were offered two bicycles by manufacturers you hadn't heard of, and your only information was that one model was used in the Tour de France and the other one wasn't, which one would it be more rational to assume is better?
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