If one is going by dollars, I don’t see how this can possibly be true. The U.S. film industry - this is just cinema - is as large as the four big professional sports leagues combined, by revenue. That is, again, just cinema, not dedicated TV< like Game of Thrones. The U.S. music industry is roughly as big as the movie industry. I can’t find a figure for TV, but it’s gotta be enormous, surely?
The shape of fandom is different; most people are a dedicated fan of only a few sports teams, but a fan of many movies and TV shows. That’s just the nature of movies and TV shows, though; it’s not reflective of the relative popularity of those things.
Yeah - and I’ve heard that gaming exceeds basically all other entertainment combined.
But I think you are twisting things somewhat by using $ as your yardstick, and comparing interest in an entire art form, with fandom of a particular team/or interest in a particular game. You think it comparable to say, “I’m an Eagles fan” as “I like to go to the movies.” I think those somewhat different statements.
I think a better comparison to the OP would be to say, “Avengers (or Citizen Kane, or whatever) is just a movie.” Or maybe comparing (specific team) fandom, to Star Trek groupies.
When the Avengers came out, there was a lot of advertising and press. Avengers is pretty exceptional in terms of earnings. Would that compare to a Super Bowl? March Madness? How does the interest and resources spent compare? I don’t know. But I think there are a lot more regular sports “blockbusters” than Avengers movies.
I admit that cities compete to attract the film industry. We’d have to compare it with expenditures to attract/keep sports francishes. Again, are those efforts made towards a specific team/movie, or an industry? And people spend money for posters, clothing, etc for both sports and movies.
While “just a game” might rightly only be applied to sports, other forms of entertainment have the same concept. Fans who get too deep into a tv or movies series might be told to “get a life”. That Shatner appearance on Saturday Night Live was a “just a game” moment for Star Trek fans.
When it comes to sports, I think amateur/pro status determines who can really afford to say, “It’s just a game.”
If you’re playing in college and your goal is to turn pro and make a living playing a sport, then at that point in your life, it’s more than just a game. An ill-timed injury could derail your whole career.
But for the star players who are already making lifetimes worth of money every season, they can afford to sit back and say, “It’s just a game.” There are countless athletes who have been quoted saying how they are so grateful they get to play a game for a living.
Just recently, Giannis Antetokounmpo interviewed after the Bucks game 3 loss in the Eastern Conference Finals:
It’s funny, considering how many pro athletes from different and even rival teams are close friends, I expect that it’s either “just a game” or “just a job” to most of them too.
I tend to agree, but I think it misses the point. I grew up in West Virginia and WVU football and basketball are an “us v. them” sort of thing. Likewise, and to a lesser extent, Pittsburgh is the closest large city to my part of the state so it is sort of an adopted home, where we go to the “big city” so the Pirates, Steelers, and Penguins are all part of that tribalism (but not Pitt, to hell with them; people from WV hate fucking Pitt)
All that being said, it is not like the WVU teams are made up from a bunch of true blooded West Virginians who showed up to Morgantown to try out for the teams. Most of them come from Florida or other places across the country. It is very rare to land a West Virginian on a WVU team.
Same with Pittsburgh. It’s not like the Pirates pass out cards at the local Primanti Bros. sandwich shop or call on the local yinzers to show up at PNC Park to form a baseball team. The players come from everywhere.
So, why does this tribalism extend to teams composed of people nowhere near like “us”?
Maybe collegiate and professional sports are “just a game” but when you look at high school sports it is much more serious. Watch the series or movies or read the book for Friday Night Lights.
If you’re not a tribal person, then they really are “just games.” Fun, interesting games, some of them, but games nevertheless. I’ll never let myself get vested in a team again, at least as long as billionaires own teams and schools won’t extend full liberties to their scholarship athletes.
QB1 on Netflix is well worth watching. Each of the 2 series follows the senior year of the 3 best high school quarterbacks. The first season featured Jake Fromm the now Georgia QB. The second had Sam Hartman of Wake Forest. Very, very serious stuff.
Hell, my alma mater - UofI - taught me well. Those fuckers cheated their asses off in both football and hoops, yet could never figure out how to win the big game! :smack:
On thinking about it more, it’s not the size of the industry that I object to; it’s how cancerous it is. Sure, the movie industry and the music industry are as big as the sports industry. And sure, schools have music programs and theater programs as well as sports programs. But music and theater don’t take over schools the way sports do. No drama director would ever tell teachers “You have to give this kid a passing grade; he’s my best actor”, and if he did, no teacher would ever take him seriously. You don’t see schools dropping half their budget on a great orchestra conductor, and then give him some sinecure “teaching” load that he’s totally unqualified for just to justify it.
No argument here. But of course this only applies to “big time” college sports. It doesn’t apply to professional sports; and it doesn’t apply to a small liberal arts college’s football team, or their volleyball team or their field hockey team.
It applies even at the middle and high school level. I was in the break room at one middle school, where one of the other teachers there (apparently, the football coach) said that he hoped the local Catholic elementary school burned down, and when one of the other teachers protested that her kids went there, he amended it to say that he hoped those two kids specifically got out before the school burned down. Why did he hate the Catholic schools so much? Because he was tired of having to tell the high school football coach that his star players were going to Catholic schools instead.
Can you imagine that level of toxicity coming out of the choir or drama club?
Just a game might not be the right phrase. ‘It is just entertainment” is my feeling for TV, movies, books and sports.
At the professional level those aren’t natives of the city, they are being paid to be there. The local pride is akin to “our prostitutes are better than yours.”
Tim n va, I do t think that’s fair. If sports are entertainment, athletes are entertainers, not prostitutes. They’re hired to be the focal point of our rooting interest, to play the hometown hero.
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