Is hockey even the fourth largest anymore? Isn’t MLS bigger than the NHL?
Hockey is my candidate, and I’m a big fan. It’s already almost exclusively on cable TV – if I switch from cable to streaming, I only have a couple of options if I want to watch the Islanders – literally one or two streaming services have MSG. Now, there are a couple of games that I can’t watch without also subscribing to ESPN+, which I’m not going to do. So, I think they’re taking short term revenue, but risking losing fans.
I saw a modified football helmet that has padding on the outside – if the concussion thing gets to be too much, they’ll switch to that. Baseball isn’t going anywhere and neither is basketball.
I’d be curious to see how much such a helmet would actually help (and there has been a lot of work done on improving football helmets in the past decade-plus, including those big padded helmets).
My understanding is that the real issue for concussions (and for sub-concussive injuries, which are also felt to be a big factor in CTE) isn’t the head hitting something hard, it’s the brain hitting the inside of the skull, and I’m not sure how much a better-padded helmet can help with that.
You could be right. If the CTE is just due to hard stops and not due to impact, the helmet won’t help.
Also, I’m wrong about the size of MLS – it’s still significantly smaller than the NHL in terms of revenue, and slightly smaller in terms of viewership.
I saw a helmet a few years ago that, instead of having a hard shell, featured a shell that “gives” - under impact, it caves in a little bit, then springs back to its full shape again. The idea is that it would absorb force much better this way rather than a hard unyielding shell which allows the force to transmit to your skull.
I don’t think a helmet with padding on the outside would ever catch on because it would obscure the team logos, and would also look a bit silly.
I’ve seen some of those, as well. If such helmets can do enough to reduce brain trauma from hits and rapid deceleration, that’d be awesome, and could help a lot; I’m just not yet sure that they will.
I think the only thing that could kill a league (as opposed to one simply growing gradually less popular and lucrative as fans’ tastes change over time), would be a major cheating/gambling scandal. We’ve seen with steroids and the Astros that fans can forgive cheating to win. But I don’t think a league could survive revelations that games were routinely being thrown. Even then, if the sport was still popular enough to command a mass audience, it would eventually be replaced with another league.
The NFL will not be sidelined by concussion stuff, and local HS football in rural areas like where I live now (go Trojans!) is as popular as ever.
What’ll kill it for me is the inability of referees to either not throw a flag when none is warranted, thus altering the outcome of a game (Stealers on MNF versus the Bears, the helmet to helmet hit in Bengals v Jets, etc), or actually throwing a flag when one is warranted (like the late hit suffered by Justin Fields in the same MNF game).
A lot of the local high schools have the exterior padding on their helmets for practices, but not for games (where I believe it’s illegal as it’s an add on product, not certified for use by the helmet manufacturer). The coaches/trainers/risk management people think that it’s worth it.
RE: the NFL, this is only a sample size of 2, but my sons, who are now 19 and 16, I tried a little bit to interest in football when they were younger, just so I could have a football buddy to watch games with.
But not only do they not like football, they seem to consider it a sport for old people and people of average intelligence at best. I get the impression it’s a common theme among the youngs these days.
To counter with my anecdote: I know a few kids who are still super-into NFL, and the young adults I know all seem to love MLS. Baseball, OTOH, seems to be completely dead to anyone under 40.
Maybe if the people are only watching the sport, but to play American football effectively requires, IMO, the most intelligence and tight team coordination of all the sports listed in this thread.
Yes, of course. I was expressing my sons’ opinion, not my own. It is a game of intricate strategy to coordinate and play. It also does not require average or below average intelligence to enjoy-- it’s a game that can be enjoyed on many different levels. I, IMHO, consider myself at least slightly above average intelligence, I enjoy watching football very much, and I still don’t quite understand all the aspects of the game at times.
Right, my post wasn’t meant to be a knock on you personally or anything. It was supposed to emphasize that while it’s quite normal for viewers of the game to be drooling cavemen, a player who happens to be a drooling caveman himself would either not make it to the NFL at all, or wash out of it very quickly.
It’s hard to imagine a multi-billion dollar enterprise not existing anymore. I can’t think of any that don’t really exist anymore but some are completely different such as Kodak, a huge part of their revenues was film.
So I think that sports will still exist, albeit maybe very different than today’s games. The leagues may have different names and the size of the fan base may be dramatically lower.
I don’t see less TV eyeballs as being a problem in any sport. The technology has changed. I watch baseball on my computer now, I’m not counted as a TV eyeball. Same for other leagues I suspect.
If there’s a worry about concussions in football, it will simply evolve into a somewhat different game than today’s. Baseball is different today than even a few decades ago. I may not like some of those changes but I’m still a fan.
The NHL survived even as a whole season was wiped out and attendance was not affected. MLB came back even as the World Series was canceled, although it took about 7 years for attendance to get to the same level.
Short of a nuclear war, one thing in my mind that could fold any of these leagues are player-management disputes, primarily involving money. One or both of the sides could refuse to compromise leading to the dissolving of the league if it lasted for a year or two. Another could be some terrorist attack. Yet another would be a total economic collapse, worse than the Great Depression since sports leagues existed and still do from that period.
Hockey also has its share of injuries but I think physical leagues will deal with these by rule changes and not remission.
Boxing probably is not in the list, but I always thought its problems were a failure to produce younger champions and loss of market and interest to things like MMA which were more violent, entertaining and with more technical skills.
I can see soccer becoming more popular and displacing others if it has not done so but believe the leagues will survive for many years.
