|
Regarding attendance and the attitude of fans toward their local team and the game as a whole, there's another set of factors at play, though I have no idea other than a gut feeling as to how much these factors matter as compared to others. This is the combination of free agency, analytics and fantasy sports.
Free agency has obviously been around for a while, so its role in a player's loyalty or lack thereof to an organization is pretty well known. Ever since the Moneyball/analytics "revolution", though, you have to combine this with the way organizations now view players as quantifiable and disposable pieces, rather than individual personalities. With some exceptions, whatever residual notions of loyalty between players and teams are gone. If it is not a quantifiable metric, it is at best ignored or at worst sneered at by the baseball cognoscenti. Non-quantifiable factors like team chemistry and leadership and being a good dugout presence no longer carry much weight. The net result is, with few exceptions such as the Orioles ownership's inexplicably high regard for Chris Davis, teams and players don't really matter to each other.
Then comes the growth of rotisserie leagues and fantasy baseball. Now fans have jumped on the bandwagon of interchangeable pieces and can pick and choose which players they root for, rather than which teams. Why go to a game to see the one or two players who might be of interest, when you can just check the highlights or box scores of multiple games to see how all your picks did? Furthermore, the growth of sports betting sites like DraftKings means you also have a financial incentive to divorce yourself from caring about individual teams and focusing instead on individual players.
That all said, my only real perspective is baseball, so maybe there's a bigger picture I'm missing. I stopped following professional football and college basketball years ago, and I never cared for professional basketball, and association football just bores me to tears. Other than occasional mentions of the NFL's kneeling controversy, I know nothing about football popularity and attendance issues.
|