Sports viewership shows how much our priorities have shifted in pandemic
For some, watching sports offer a welcome distraction from the mundane. Ranked matchups and good-natured rivalries fill otherwise tedious weeks. Sports competition is steeped into our culture, creating its own lexicon filled with gems like armchair quarterbacks, season tanking, and soccer flopping.
Watching sports offers an alternative to monotony, if only for brief moments between timeouts. These leisure pursuits add flavor to life, sometimes inspirational, and often uplifting. This is why when the pandemic fell into its lull mid-year and sports finally returned, the assumption was TV viewership would sharply increase. Surprisingly, this was not the case.
Networks were primed to see healthy viewership numbers when live sports returned. Parched sports fans should have been eager to drink up any new competition, no matter the sport. Data showed a different story. Compared to last year, viewership in almost every single sporting event decreased.
According to website, Sports Media Watch, the horse races that make up the coveted Triple Crown, The Preakness, Kentucky Derby, and The Belmont were down -61%, -43%, and -32% respectively. The NBA Finals were down -49%. Hockey’s Stanley Cup Final was down -61%. College football is down -30%. The NFL is down -13%. These are disastrous numbers in an already devastating year.
It seemed preordained that our country get high school, college, and professional sports back in full force, hoping to bolster the moral of the masses and assist those looking to recoup lost profit. Sadly, the push for widespread sports to return took precedence over children returning to classrooms. It appeared that college conferences were imploring to keep their piecemeal football schedule intact while maybe considering how to get students back to campus. Sports leapfrogged the line of things that might make us feel like we were living in a relatively sane time amidst a global pandemic.
Based on the abysmal viewership numbers, it appears our priorities did a factory reset when panic took hold. The fact that negative viewership numbers are across nearly all sports present a clear representation of our mental state through 2020. There is no denying that viewers this year are grossly anxious.
Is the pandemic solely responsible for the downtrend in sports viewership? I do not believe it is, but it does carry the most weight. I offer that sports fell into its rightful category of entertainment when COVID-19 struck. Knocked off the echelon of religion and fanatical fandom, sports took a backseat to real worries in people’s lives (health, family, house, job, etc.). I would not expect someone to care about a home run in a throwaway game while preoccupied with a teetering job or possibility of contracting a deadly virus.
People were downright weary after a couple of months in the pandemic fray. Turning on the television to watch the NBA Finals or World Series seemed like the proper medicine to cure people’s bleakness. It ended up solidifying the notion that we are all simply tired. It is evident that the worn out multitudes will not complain about the lack of movie theaters, or music concerts, and certainly not about a ballgame on TV. When exhaustion strikes, entertainment and competition cease to be compelling.
Networks are hedging their bets that viewers will eventually come back. Money changes hands while players keep putting themselves on the line. We are living in an unusual time and trying to use current trends to predict future sports viewership is useless. Until there is a true sense of normalcy, void all prophesies and expectations. Sports are important, but rivalry, tradition, and a winning record are meaningless in these unprecedented circumstances.
Jim Jackson works in the bourbon industry and resides in Frankfort with this family.