Capitalism has a price and enshittification is the consequence.

I hate how gambling is everywhere so I refuse to put money into it but I still watch football every sunday.

Same way I’ve always felt about professional sports. Do what you want, have fun, but you’re taking a game way too seriously.

That’s why we Germans own our clubs so we can vote against many of the things you described above.

I want you to do a little thought experiment with me…

Sports make a shit ton of money. They have advertisements crammed anywhere they can. When you go to a stadium, the shots of crowds are almost always pre-recorded, or actors, so they can package the emotions they want to convey without risking a genuine moment from genuine fans not going exactly how they want it to.

They gouge you with ticket prices, they gouge you with food/drink prices, the gouge you for parking. If you’re watching at home, you have to subscribe to their specific streaming platform, and even then it doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to see the game they want.

They recruit kids in high school and college and use them knowing full well that less than 1% will have anything resembling success. They spend millions upon millions exploiting these kids.

They give quasi-legal performance enhancing drugs to their athletes. Ones that are labeled as supplements and aren’t technically against the rules, but do the exact same thing.

They hide studies that say their sport causes long-term injuries. They bribe local officials to get huge tax breaks on building new stadiums. They have teams of lawyers and PR personnel to cover up all but the most extreme controversies from their players. They have people working night and day to find new ways to keep people’s attention and have them consume more. They found a way to make gambling legal again and have been pushing HARD for it.

Now I want you to look at all these underhanded and slimy tactics they use, and really ask yourself: “Are the games themselves rigged?”. If your immediate answer is “No, of course not! They would never mess with the integrity of the game itself!” why do you feel that way? Why do you trust organizations, that have shown they hold nothing sacred if it means more money, to NOT mess with the game itself? You know they would if they could get away with it; and with the state of the world today, do you really think they COULDN’T get away with it?

I’ve tried to get into watching sports a number of times before. I do enjoy the athleticism and strategy needed to play and win, but I think you picked out the bug bears I also had fairly well.

I’ve found playing sports much more rewarding than watching them.

You hit the nail on the head. The enshittification is real.

I’m a diehard Astros fan. Game tickets are still pretty affordable but everything else is expensive af. When I was living in Austin where Astros games weren’t really syndicated on TV, I still couldn’t watch them even if I subscribed to MLB.TV because I was in their blackout area. They make it a pain in the ass to even watch games and then they wonder why MLB attendance is down.

I’m still a big fan of all my teams but I really only casually follow sports at this time. You can still be a sports fan while not taking it super seriously.

I followed futbol 𖦹°ᯓ⚽ ( european leagues and international tounaments mostly), for close to 15 years. (Mid 2000’s till the pandemic)

The biggest ones for me were:

Time sink.- Games are long, I get restless now. Also, too many hours a week spent watching tv.

Keeping track of too much info- It stopped being fun when I had no one esle to discuss it with in a casual way.

I’ve always pirated futbol so ease of access was never an issue for me, but looking for sources is also kind of a chore.

Social media.- there’s always been big scandals in sports, but now we get to know too much about the players / others themselves: this guy is a racist, this one a wife beater, or a rapist, etc. (and look, no consequences!). It was easier back then to just focus on the games. I find it hard to enjoy a match when I know the quality some of the people involved.

There’s also the corruption, the lack of ethics (like Qatar building the world cup infrastructure with slave labor)… Sigh

When the world cup was on, I used to sit through all the games I could, even had them on the background while at work. Now, I’m not really excited for next one, even though it’s the last thing that I still followed.

I might watch some games, but I don’t feel passionate about the sport any more.

I used to watch as much sport as I could find. Now I can’t find any unless I revert to paid, or questionable, streaming sites.

I started as a foundation member of my local A-League club and remained for over 12 years, my seat never changed, but they would classify my seat differently from silver to gold to platinum, this substantially increased the cost, now it’s not affordable.

I get far more enjoyment watching the 1st team of my son’s soccer club – it’s cheaper and I’m happy to volunteer my time around the club.

I feel like following a specific sports team feels like a full time job now. You can’t just watch the games live, you have to follow all the players on social media, watch for trade rumors, following the pre and post seasons, know all players names and play fantasy sports. I used to like to casually watch most of the local teams play but the expectations around being a fan is too high. Since I am male it is assumed that this is my whole life and hobby when really I don’t care that much. Now, I only want to watch a game with my friends as an excuse to hang out. It feels not worth the effort because there is too much content and you need to consume it all to engage with it. Makes me want to opt out

I don’t follow pro sports, sometimes watch the college teams or the international gymnastics amateur competitions. Occasionally a soccer (football) match of our not top division but good local team but not often. Just not into watching men play games usually. But stuff like gymnastics and ice skating is so entertaining to watch. Competitive dance too.

There really isn’t any value past entertaining you, right? If it’s not entertaining you anymore, the value is gone.

Oh I guess I forgot rugby. I do not follow it at all but find it fun to watch. And the college used to put the basketball games on their TV channel with all the timeouts, halftime, everything taken out so it was just st gameplay and I always enjoyed those too. So sometimes I do like watching men play games if they are all action and not too long.

There is so much money involved. I would almost say that there is too much money involved to leave the results up to the athletes.

How much corruption is there that never gets publicized or even discovered?

Our struggle has been the enshittifcation of streaming the games. We don’t live in the market of our hockey team we like to watch. In order to actually get (legally) 95% of the games we would need to subscribe to about 5 different services and still be blacked out for the games against the “local” team, which is 4 hours away from us, unless we also pay for cable/satellite television as well. We used to legitimately pay for the service that the NHL offered where we could get just our team, or all of the games, for one season price. Then they split everything to all the different networks so now we’d need sling, TNT, espn+ (and the highest tier of it), nhl network, prime, Apple TV +, and a cable subscription

I quit watching all sports, cold turkey, four years ago and haven’t looked back. I feel so much better now and have more free time.

Would it be weird to say that I don’t feel anything about it at all?