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Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

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Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#51
post #4

I think of football as one of the killer apps for tv. Baseball is one for radio: baseball is almost always better over radio; there’s lots of space to do something else at the pace of most baseball games.

Baseball is killer in-person but it's also pretty nice to just have on TV. There is nothing else like the tension of a critical at-bat. Football is actually really really weird for a spectator sport and, I think, is generally presented very poorly. 80% of the game is deciphering opposing formations to determine what they each are predicting the opposing formation is about to try to do.

Football is just a really complicated sport; one reason I think it’s popular is that it’s fun on a visceral physical individual level (“Wow, look at that run/block/hit/kick”) for ‘beginners’ watching and is also intellectually engaging as you learn more, “wait, how did they shift the secondary just now??”

Baseball - I like it in lots of forms, too. But I think a good radio announcer can get you most of the fun out of a critical at bat narrating.

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#52

Whenever I think it might be worth it to finally go watch an NFL game live, and I start looking at those ticket prices, I start to question if it's worth it or not. Then I get to the seat view simulator and instantly close the tab because holy hell are the "affordable" NFL seats absolutely terrible to watch a game from. Can you even see the player numbers let alone the names? I guess you need to be a big enough fan t…

I went to go see a Broncos game once about 10 years ago, it was $400 for a single ticket. I was in the top section, 3 rows from the back, I needed a Sherpa to help me get to my seat. I could tell there was a game of football being played down below me, but that was about it. I couldn't see the ball, I couldn't read any of the players' numbers, I couldn't see the refs hand signals. A beer and a hotdog was $30, and the…

I used to go to Rockies games over the summer with coworkers after work and buy cheap seats in the rockpile and everyone would drink and eat and just leave when they felt like it. It's probably the best live sports experience I've ever had.

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#53
post #38

I'd be interested in what kind of eSports game is condusive to VR spectating. I tried doing Dota spectating before, and rigged up a mod for Minecraft vlogging/spectating, and concluded it wasn't quite like being at a stadium, or watching it on Twitch in a way that was interesting.

I am convinced that there is an absurd amount of unrealized potential for spectating in eSports. But everyone seems to just deliver an experience that is more-or-less "like playing the game yourself, but worse, and with forced-hype commentary" rather than an actually engaging spectator product.

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#54

Whenever I think it might be worth it to finally go watch an NFL game live, and I start looking at those ticket prices, I start to question if it's worth it or not. Then I get to the seat view simulator and instantly close the tab because holy hell are the "affordable" NFL seats absolutely terrible to watch a game from. Can you even see the player numbers let alone the names? I guess you need to be a big enough fan t…

College is a good alternative. I go to one of my almae matres' games every year. To me, it's way more fun than NFL for a fraction of the price.

I agree NFL is best at home. Hopefully OTA broadcasts remain a thing for a long time to come.

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#55
This guy is not totally wrong but he is also way off about pretty much everything even just simple basic facts. He writes "Michigan Stadium, the third‑largest sports venue on earth." which is not even remotely true. Michican Stadium isn't even in the top 5 of venues in the US never mind globally[0]. And thats if you just take capacity counts at face value and don't try to include places that have huge standing room capacity like horse racing tracks.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports_venues_by_capac...

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that may be. but that's like saying, "XYZ is a killer app for vinyl" haha. football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. it's not dead, but where growth is measured, it is not good. the cultural thing this guy is talking about in the article, it's going away. fewer and fewer people every year value the aesthetic experience he is describing. TV ownership? trending down. they've never been cheaper for a reaso…

Hmmm. NFL revenue continues to grow, with something like half of it from media licensing. So, I think you’re wrong. My son watches NFL on his laptop, but there’s little to distinguish how he watches it from the experience he would have on a Samsung tv - he’s not like in some chat group trying to get Ochocinco to write his name on a jersey - he’s passively consuming an edited video feed of a football game with comment…

okay, let's look:

    Entity     2016 Rev    2024 Rev     Nominal    Real (Adj)
    ---------------------------------------------------------
    Netflix    $8.8B [5]   $39.0B [6]   +341%      +229%
    NBA        $6.5B [3]   $11.3B [4]   +74%       +30%
    NFL        $14.0B [1]  $23.0B [2]   +64%       +22%
    Inflation  ---         ---          +34% [7]   0%
i didn't say the NFL made less money, because i'm not stupid. i'm trying to describe a secular trend so i'm comparing the revenue growth in different media companies. looking at this table, a simple way to interpret this is, kind of obviously, netflix isn't really about presenting on TVs per se, they make a media platform, which performed way better than the NFL did, almost 10:1, which is really reinforcing my point no? for every 1 dollar someone gives NFL, consumers give Netflix 9. see? to me that is a trend going down, even if to you, it is a trend going up. depends what your benchmark is!

another POV: other people do a better job at making NFL content than the NFL does, which is what you are saying your son is consuming. and listen, honestly, ask him if he or his friends bet on football...

[1] https://www.footballscoop.com/news/report-nfl-rakes-14-billi...

[2] https://www.sportspro.com/news/nfl-revenue-2024-financial-ye...

[3] https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/10...

[4] https://www.sportsvalue.com.br/en/nba-teams-surpassed-us-11-...

[5] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/reven...

[6] https://www.wallstreetzen.com/stocks/us/nasdaq/nflx/revenue

[7] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that may be. but that's like saying, "XYZ is a killer app for vinyl" haha. football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. it's not dead, but where growth is measured, it is not good. the cultural thing this guy is talking about in the article, it's going away. fewer and fewer people every year value the aesthetic experience he is describing. TV ownership? trending down. they've never been cheaper for a reaso…

>TV ownership? trending down. Do you have sales or survey data to support this claim? I’m willing to believe individual households might be less likely to purchase TVs, but my understanding is that manufacturers are producing as many or even more screens than ever, though that might be for commercial or business use. Incidentally, it’s efficiency from this scale that allows manufacturers to sell televisions at such l…

haha well you wouldn't have thought that at some point in the past, tv set ownership was like 100%, so of course it has gone down, but it's still trending down. this also seems kind of obvious to me.

    Household
    Ownership
    Rate       2011     2020     2023
    -------------------------------------
    TV Set     ~99% [3] 96% [3]  88% [1]
    Smartphone 35% [2]  85% [2]  90% [1]
[1] https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/ces2024-smartphone-ownersh...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/

[3] https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2020/nielsen-estimates-121-...

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#58
The article presents its thesis ad nauseum, the idea that "everyone is always mentally reframing the game into the TV view, even if they think they aren't", but never makes any effort to prove the thesis or provide supporting evidence. I'm not convinced he even defines what "reframing it in my mind" even means. Throughout the entire article, the question in my mind is "in what way? What does 'reframing' it look like? What exactly are you claiming I'm doing?", and at no point is that question answered.

A hypothetical is set up where a woman gets to see one great play close up, but the rest of the game happens nowhere near her seat. If your thesis was that "football is better on TV because you get all these unique angles and instant replays that you can't get from the one seat's position", this would be a solid argument. But the thesis is that "we all imagine the TVs camera angle in our heads", and at the end of this hypothetical, you simply assert that this is what she's doing the rest of the game. "It must be true because it must be true", this is just a circular argument.

There is a bit about how every game in modern day is being recorded on cell phones, which is truly irrelevant. That games are being recorded by audience members is a. true of all sports and b. unrelated to what each person is thinking about in their heads in the moment, whether they are or are not the ones doing the recording. That recording, after all, is only from the perspective of the one seat, their present view of the game is unaltered by the presence of cameras in the audience.

There's another point, perhaps meant to follow from the previous irrelevant point, about memories of a party vs a video recording of a party. The idea is that if you watch the recording for a month, that recording will be the only thing you remember, but it's extremely unclear in what way this is meant to relate to the thesis. What you supposedly imagine in your head in the perceptual present has nothing to do with what you remember a month later, and it's not remotely surprising that reinforcing the memory of a recording over the course of a month will cause it to be more easily recalled than memories from the event itself. It's common knowledge that the human brain does not commit every detail and every moment to memory, and it's trivial to demonstrate that this is true: simply attempt to remember what color shirt you wore last Wednesday. There is interesting psychology here, but its simply not related to the premise in any way.

Then there's the throwaway comment about it being "fascism", where you seem to reduce the definition to just "mild behavioral conditioning". This is both based on your premise, which you have not provided proof for, and goes nowhere. It doesn't lead to any further point or conclusion, it's just an aside, "by the way I think that means it's fascism because I think that word means mind control". Even if we assume your premise is true, its more than a little bit of a stretch to say that counts as "mind control". All you've done is dilute the meaning of the word to the point of banality.

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#59
post #8

Interesting, and I have also finished live football games thinking it would have been better to just watch it on TV at home. However, his claim that a spectator would "automatically reframe what she saw into the way it would appear on television" is never supported other than him saying "trust me, it's true, if you don't believe me you are in the minority".

I've been to JerryWorld or ATT Stadium one time for a non-NFL game. Most people just watch the giant screen as the actual players are tiny from the stadium seats. Watching at home/bar was the same conclusion I got to as well. I have no idea how much tickets are, but I know parking is extremely expensive as well, never mind concessions.

Re: Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

#60
post #4

I think of football as one of the killer apps for tv. Baseball is one for radio: baseball is almost always better over radio; there’s lots of space to do something else at the pace of most baseball games.

Baseball is killer in-person but it's also pretty nice to just have on TV. There is nothing else like the tension of a critical at-bat. Football is actually really really weird for a spectator sport and, I think, is generally presented very poorly. 80% of the game is deciphering opposing formations to determine what they each are predicting the opposing formation is about to try to do.

I went to a ball game to watch a buddy's kid throw a first pitch. I didn't know that there was more than one first pitch. We sat around talking after their first pitch and it was already the 3rd inning before I realized the game had actually started. I must have missed the "play ball" announcement.
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