subject: American sports [print this page] American sports American sports
Football, baseball, and basketball, the most popular sports in America, originated in the United States and are largely unknown or only minor pastimes outside North America. The football season starts in early autumn and is followed by basketball, an indoor winter sport, and then baseball, played in spring and slimmer. Besides these top three sports, ice hockey, boxing, golf, car racing, horse racing, and tennis have been popular for decades and attract large audiences.
VIOLENCE AND SPORTS
Although many spectator sports, particularly pro football, ice hockey, and boxing, are aggressive and sometimes bloody, American spectators are notably less violent than are sports crowds in other countries. Fighting, bottle throwing, and rioting, common elsewhere, are not the rule among American fans. Baseball and football games are family affairs, and cheerleaders command the remarkably non-violent crowd to root in chorus for their teams.
COMMERCIAL ASPECTS
For many people, sports are big business. The major television networkscontract with professional sports leagues for the rights to broadcast theirgames. The guaranteed mass viewing of major sports events means advertiserswill pay networks a lot of money to sponsor the program with announcementsfor their products. Advertisers for beer, cars, and men's products are glad ofthe opportunity to push their goods to the predominantly male audience ofthe big professional sports. Commercial businesses enjoy the publicity whichbrings in sales. The networks are glad to fill up program hours and attractaudiences who might perhaps become regular viewers of-other programsproduced by those networks, and the major sports leagues enjoy the millionsof dollars the networks pay for the broad-casting rights contracts. Many sportsget half of their revenues from the networks. National Football League (NFL)teams, for example, get about 65 percent of their revenues from television. Thenetworks' 1986 contract with the NFL provided" each-of the 2g teams in theleague with an average of $14 million a year. -
"Just as in any business, investments are made and assets are exchanged. Team owners usually sign up individual players for lucrative long-term contracts. Star quarterback Joe Namalh was invited to play for the New York Jets, one of the NFL teams, for $425,000 in 1965. Coveted baseball player Kirk Gibson recently signed a three-year contract with the Detroit Tigers for $4.1 million. More often in the past than now, team owners traded players back and forth as items for barter.
Any business' operator hopes to get a good deal. However, the network sports industries have not been faring well lately. They have experienced financial setbacks mainly caused by the oversaturation of sports programming on networks and compering cable channels. Networks claim they are now losing money on once-lucrative telecasts. Ironically, the slump in business is occurring at a time when sports shows are drawing larger audiences than in recent years. Part of the problem is that advertising costs got too high, and the industries mat traditionally Duy ads beer ana car companies are not paying the high prices. Networks, dependent on advertising for revenue, are hoping that the market will change before they have to make drastic reductions ir sports programming.
