There haven’t been any dance marathons since the Depression, have there?
I understand what the OP said, but the poster’s point about Tennis is that it is experiencing a serious decline in popularity. I assume he meant as a professional spectator sport.
I don’t think there is any doubt that this is the case in the US. I didn’t cherrypick data, I showed the only list of comprenesive, long-term ratings that I could find on short notice. It was much more accurate than viewership for one match.
Harness racing is dying out even faster than thoroughbred racing. The few remaining events almost feel more like historical recreations than actual competitions.
I’m going to agree and disagree, sort of, with you here.
With regards to your second point, I actually think this is the primary reason boxing is dying out in the USA (and much of the First World.) There is simply no clear system anymore - I don’t think it’s a matter of the number of divisions, really, it’s a matter of the number of boxing organizations. For much of boxing’s history there was, at any given time, one champion. In 1971, the heavyweight champion of the world was Joe Frazier. In 1954, it was Rocky Marciano. In 1940 it was Joe Louis. There was a consistency and a story you could follow. If someone held on to the championship for a long time, like Louis, that was amazing. If it was a one shot wonder like Lee Savold, that was part of the story, too.
Today there are, by my count, three champions. I believe at one point a few years ago there were four or five; frankly, it’s hard to keep straight. The equivalent in, say, football, is if you had the NFL, USFL, WFL and a fourth football league all claiming their champion was the Super Bowl champion, and teams didn’t play consistently in one league but just scheduled around 16 games a year at their own leisure and the four leagues engaged in squabbles and shenanigans over who the champion was and what game was actually the Super Bowl, and at the end of the year two leagues say it’s the Ravens, one says it’s the Patriots, and one says it’s the 49ers and you have no clear idea why.
Now, the argument that boxing was hurt by staying off broadcast TV is a very compelling one, but here’s my problem with it:
UFC isn’t on regular television either.
If not being on network TV killed boxing, why is mixed martial arts, which has essentially the same issue with free TV, exploding in popularity?
When I look at MMA, the key difference between it and boxing is that there’s ONE major governing body, that being UFC. There are lesser organizations - there’s six or seven MMA organizations out there claiming to boast a champion - but there’s no doubt as to what the real championship is; UFC. The guy holding the UFC title is the man at the top in MMA. I don’t even follow MMA, but I know who Cain Velasquez, Georges St-Pierre, and Anderson Silva are. I actually heard about it when Silva was defeated.
So why, despite the fact you can’t watch a UFC title bout on free TV, is MMA eating boxing’s popularity?
I think it’s even simpler than that. There’s no Muhammad Ali in the sport anymore.
Back to the OP, I don’t even remember the last time I saw a gladiator take on a lion using only a short sword, do you?
Long before Ali, boxing was immensely popular. Every city had its gym and well-attended local fights.
most of the major manufactures championships in racing are dead (as in, the car is more important than the driver), F1 being the only one remotely close and that too is being turned into a drivers race for reasons unknown
imo it’s a lot more exciting to have multi-millon pound cars with active magic aero and super-sculpted profiles with the bleeding edge of technology than what is there current (example: F1 management told Pirelli to build worse tyres since their current ones were too good)
Google “ali liston closed circuit.” The championship fights between the two were shown on closed-circuit TV, which was when I initially became aware that there was such a thing.
‘Exploding in popularity’ at what level? Something can go from a small niche following to a large niche following without being on regular television. I’m saying that a major sport would have a tough time remaining a major sport if cut off from regular television for nearly two decades.
The largest sport I have seen “die out” is inline roller skating - especially hockey. I remember when there was a reasonably professional inline hockey league; now, inline skating (of any type) isn’t even part of the X Games..
Fox airs it on occasion, on Saturday nights. (However, between its baseball and college football contracts, the next “UFC on Fox” event will probably be in mid-December, unless it gets moved to Fox Sports 1.)
Chunkey was a game that Native Americans were still playing at the time of European contact, but it was already in decline. Today lacrosse is far more famous, but back in the day chunkey was the dominant sport in what is now the U.S. As far as I know, the game is now completely extinct.
Shuffleboard was immensely popular in colonial New England, despite being condemned by Puritan leaders. I used to play as a kid, but I haven’t even seen a court since the 1980s. It’s still being played, but I wonder if it’s on the way out.
I also wonder about horseshoes. My uncles and their friends used to play, but I haven’t seen a horseshoe pitch since Bush The First left the White House in 1993.
I would also lay some blame on those mid-late 80’s Mike Tyson fights. People felt ripped off at shelling out money for a bunch of PPV fights lasting 2-3 rounds and began to think it may be as fixed as pro wrestling.
My grandfather paid good money for the Tyson-Spinks fight, which lasted 91 seconds.
Believe me, it wasn’t fixed. But it was still pretty disappointing.
It’s still big in the Midlands. I lived in Birmingham in the early nineties and there were three kids in my year who competed in juniors.
Side hacking.
The problem is that the more technology you stuff into the cars, the smaller the tolerances get and the less interesting the racing becomes. If you’re old enough to remember the 1992 and 1993 seasons you’ll know exactly what I mean: they were some of the most boring races of all time, only briefly enlivened by Senna driving the balls off a succession of underpowered McLarens.
The last time I found F1 interesting was in the Lauda era. It’s become a soulless prove-out of the computer projections.
It was interesting to me in the late nineties because of the whole Prost/Senna “fuck you!” angle, but the racing itself was pretty boring.
A big factor in F1 races being interesting or boring seems to me to be the track. Very generally, an older track will give an exciting race, and one designed by Tilke won’t. And Monaco tends to be a bit of a procession, but is not always.
How many people know what the official Canadian national sport is?
Lacrosse. It apparently grew too violent. NHL, beware.