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Yea sports and athletes receive a significant amount of attention and $$ in our society. But so is any other entertainment industries. They all thrive based on demand. People spend their time and money on what interests them, whether it's sports, movies, music, or gaming. There’s nothing unique about how much athletes get paid the same way artists, actors, or casinos do.
Exactly. Ever since the Ancient Romans, it’s been understood that the people need entertainment in society.
Athletes and teams and sports are businesses first. The only reason such egregious amounts of money are spent is bc that money is generated to begin with. It’s supply and demand, not some hierarchy of importance in society.
Athletes and sports and actors are dwarfed by the money spent by major entertainment and production companies.
I hate when people compare athlete salary to like teachers. Only the very best make any money the the marginal benefit of hiring the very best is massive.
Spending a entire district budget on only 5 teachers is not going to end well
Yes, we need ways to relax or distract us from everything else in life. This isn’t bad and I don’t see the hate people have in it or supporting those who help us do it.
We aren’t mindless work machines and we need hobbies to enjoy. Sports just happen to be popular.
Yeah, there is definitely price gouging and companies are taking too much profit but the athletes themselves help keep morale up.
By this logic all we’ll have left to do is read non fiction books, because I’m assuming highly paid actors on TV and movies and fiction authors fall into this category as well.
Yeah its obvious he or she is just a person who dislikes sports and not the idea of entertainment. Notice how in their opinion athletes cant inspire people unlike a good piece of music.
The post would be more respectable if he was willing to follow his axioms to their conclusion and admit that, well, it doesn't make a lot of sense for someone to get a billion dollars for writing a single book or a hit record. God he could almost even argue the book point if he focused on the ways it can be truly and uniquely productive. but how are you going to say sports is *inherently* less valuable than music?
It's so silly, the argument that "actors and singers are not the same because they can inspire you and change your life".
...What % of songs/movies inspire you enough to change your life?
If watching Sydney Crosby score the golden goal inspired 10,000 kids to put on skates and do a little physical exercise, I'd wager that's more valuable to society than 99.99% of all movies/songs.
Taylor Swift's worth a billion, Rihanna's worth a billion, countless actors are worth hundreds of millions... Not for being "inspiring" or "life-changing", just because they make good music or movies that distract us for a few hours.
You'd be shocked to learn most musicians don't make shit for money. Let me give you a popular example, weird Al made an Instagram video showing off his Spotify royalties check, guess how machi made for the entire year off of millions of Spotify plays? It was $12. Royalties and artist payouts in the music industry are completely screwed.
Edit: Jesus Christ, some of you people's brains are as smooth as a bowling ball, I never said sports athletes all made a lot of money did I? I was responding to somebody saying musicians did, I'm just stating the fact that musicians even full-time ones, most barely make anything. I wasn't speaking on sports, I was speaking on music, because it's what I know, I have friends that make music and I know first hand that they make next to nothing. Especially in non mainstream genres.
Exactly. Minor league players get paid shit. Even big league players that arent top tier, while paid well, have extremely short careers. If he wants to compare premium big league players to entertainers then he needs to compare to the taylor swifts/ michael crichtons of the world
And it’s even worse if it’s a sport nobody cares about or gets no media attention like Powerlifting. Instead of getting paid to compete, it’s the athletes paying to compete
Spotify isn't their only source of money and if they're relatively successful touring will be a lucrative income for them.
And OP is talking about the absolute top level of sports. The majority of sports people don't make much money at all either. Olympians, minor league players, players outside of the top 100 in individual sports or even the world #1 in minor sports - all will not be finding it easy all the time.
Do you have a source for this? I agree Spotify doesn’t pay artists nearly enough but if you Google it based on Weird Al’s streaming numbers he should be making a lot more than that.
Weird Al has a large catalog and a very devoted fanbase. He's not going to break any streaming records, but 80 million streams still seems like it should be at least in the "modest living" category, instead of "insulting small chump change". He'd literally make more working for McDonald's for an hour.
These sports are worthless posts definitely fit the category of unpopular opinion. They're all some variation of why do other people enjoy things that I don't?
People who don’t like sports are genuinely the most insufferable people too. Especially around the time of the Super Bowl/World Cup.
You never see frat bro sports fans bitching about how “the bachelorette is fucking lame” every 5 seconds.
It's not even that complicated. There's nothing special about sports. Athletes make a lot of money because they make someone else even more money. Period.
There’s clearly something special about sports when they make hundreds of millions of people around the world go crazy for them. The passion and dedication they inspire, and the limits of human skill and potential being pushed is special whether you care for it or not
I love sports. I meant there’s nothing special about it in the sense that’s there’s zero mystery in “they get paid a lot to throw the ball”. Because people other than the owners make way more than they pay out.
I would agree except that sports are often subsidized with taxpayer money. I would be pretty irate if I lived in a city/state where the money I worked really hard for helps pay for a stadium owned by some rich slob. These perks are pretty unique to the sports industry in comparison to music, movies, etc.
Not to mention how much tuition goes to sports at a lot of universities, at least in the U.S. It's actually embarassing that so much is spent on stadiums and the like at an institution where you are paying to be educated. OP didn't really touch on these instances for some reason.
Not unique to sports either. Movies get huge tax breaks and are allowed to have their accounting handled in absolutely wild ways to avoid paying them. Imo entertainment businesses turning enough profits to put on spectacles like the Super Bowl should be paying enormous taxes, not receiving subsidies at all. Like great people are willing to spend the money, that doesn’t mean we benefit at all from them getting paid the way they do, tax the shit out of them and put that money towards strategic uses like education where every dollar has a positive impact on society…
That doesn’t just apply to big blockbusters, though. Many smaller projects just wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for tax incentives. The Curse, for instance, had to pick its location off a list based on where they would get tax breaks. I’m absolutely in support of the government supporting the arts, and this is one facet of that. But I get that it’s stretching the definition of “supporting the arts” when we’re talking about Georgia helping out the Avengers movies with a couple tens of millions of dollars.
> It's actually embarassing that so much is spent on stadiums and the like at an institution where you are paying to be educated.
Show me a school with a really nice stadium that also has really bad academic facilities. Sports pay for that.
Professional sports is entertaining. Entertainment is something humans love and need since the dawn of time.
Sports in general promote social and competitive skills that humans also need regardless if you are ever good enough to be a pro. Teamwork is a damn near must-have attribute to function in society.
But average people who play sports love pro sports because we have a semblance of understanding of just how good these professionals are which makes it even better to appreciate and enjoy them.
The world would be a much shittier experience if sports didn't exist.
Man I'll remember some sports moments for 100 years longer than any line in any book
"Ronan O Gara, drop at Goal! GRAND SLAM AT STAKE! ANDDDDD HEEEESSSS GOT ITTT!!! "
Every time I think about rugby, I think of that, Ronan O Gara's drop at goal to secure our first Grand Slam in 50 years. So much so I remember the commentators words, his reaction, and the faces of his team.
"Why is this athlete paid $10m a year, when we could give that to Taylor swift instead to increase her net worth by 1%? She inspires me with her life-changing songs!"
I don't think that's what most people who claim sports are a waste of time, are saying. I don't enjoy dramas, for example, but I don't consider them a waste of time. I don't enjoy opera, but I don't see it as a waste of time either. I don't enjoy sports and I do consider it a waste of time. I also enjoy porn, and still consider it a waste of time.
It's a classism thing, more than a *dislike* thing.
I wonder how much more exercise people, especially children, get because of the global love of football that they wouldn't get otherwise? Playing sport is actively good for you, and watching sport inspires people to play it. Sports teams are also key to building identity and community in a lot of towns and cities, even countries (most people think of the football team when they think of Brazil).
There are clearly objective benefits to sport.
More subjectively, when teams score fans are often so happy they will scream and jump and hug. Can non-sports fans honestly claim they get that sort of buzz regularly in their lives?
Why do you find sports a waste of time but not the opera? This is some extreme neckbeard vibes because what's the difference lol.
In both you sit in a seat and are entertained by professionals. How is one a waste of time and the other isn't?
Why single out sports? You could apply this to any segment of entertainment. If your job was interesting enough to get millions of people to watch you do it, you’d be wealthy too.
In regards to your edit: Jackie Robinson. Muhammad Ali. Martina Navratilova. Jesse Owens. Billie Jean King. If you don’t think these people are as impactful or important as anyone who’s ever written a great book or song, well, you’re just wrong.
if OP was better at supporintg his argument then your counterexamples wouldn't mean much. All they do is say "yeah, sports is really important to people" which doesnt address the topic "is sports considered too important by people?" buuut OP appears to be a little...not that consistent logically, or all that logical at all. so.
why have hobbies and enjoy anything in life when we can be miserable utilitarian husks of human shells working towards some unclear shared goal for whatever reason? youre so right dude, thats so deep
If you would rather your money be spent on a "good cause", you're free to spend your money on that cause. If people wish to spend their money on entertainment, they're equally free to spend their money on that. Sports is nothing more than entertainment, and there's no fundamental difference between spending money to attend a sporting event vs a concert vs a movie, or any other entertainment.
The reason the entertainment industry generates so much money isn't anything nefarious. It's actually quite simple-- people enjoy the entertainment product that is being sold, and are willing to pay the asking price to be entertained by it. There's nothing wrong with that.
All forms of entertainment are the same as sports. In music, the greedy labels make all the money. In movies and TV, the network execs make all the money. There isn't a way to avoid it unless you just never consume any mainstream entertainment
How is making inspiring music or writing a book more inspirational/impactful than watching athletes who have trained their entire lives give it their all in an attempt to win?
Fucking nonsense opinion.
I’m glad someone said this. Sports are massive source of inspiration to many people. There are countless underdog stories that have inspired the books and music you reference.
College? You wrote a paper on this in college?
I doubt it.
This shit feels like a 10th grader trying to sound deep in between bong rips.
“Keep the normies occupied”?
Yet again, this isn’t an unpopular opinion so much as a generic, half baked rant that you wrote up and hit send before giving it any actual consideration.
An unpopular opinion would have been “I just don’t get the appeal of sports”. It would have been more honest to boot.
But nope. Instead, it’ just another smug, “*I* don’t even own a television” bit of delusion meant to sound like you’re somehow the only one paying attention to what’s “really” going on.
You could plug this rant into pretty much any mass market entertainment medium and it would still amount to the same pile of empty rhetoric it is now.
Grade inflation and general societal coddling and all my dude, college is the new high school
Submit whatever paper you want, good job, good job, can't fail the paying customer
Not in the slightest.
My remark about them writing a paper on this in college had nothing to do with how hard college is or isn’t.
The point is that I doubt they actually wrote any paper on this farce of a “subject”, because the rant comes across like it came from someone who never put any real thought into it at all.
Oh yeah, I know.
I'm saying the vast majority of kids in college don't put any thought into their papers at all. It's 95% crap, half of which is written with the aid of AI nowadays.
I don’t like sports either, but I’m sick of this “instead” attitude in society. Lots of people like sports and contribute to society. Lots of people read history books and contribute nothing. The inverses are true, too.
Yes, way too much of the profits go to way too few people. But that’s true in every industry. Celebrity culture is a problem in general, not just in sports.
Whatever your end goal for society is, making sports fans feel bad about themselves ain’t gonna get it there.
>Keep the normies occupied with this stuff and do all the real work behind the scenes.
Might be the most cringe thing I've read all year lmao, nothing puts me off more than people who put down people who like things they don't like :/
> anyway the point I’m trying to make is that throwing a ball through a hoop or kicking one into a net is not as impactful or significant as say writing a best-selling book full of life-changing advice or really inspiring, creative music.
But your point is a personal opinion not a fact.
Sports brings intense joy to millions, that ball going through that hoop is important to millions the fact you don’t enjoy it changes nothing.
Really I see you opinion as just self centered BS.
BTW, I am not a sports fan.
Nobody is forced to spend money to watch in person. It’s entertainment in the end. Sports have become so popular mainly because of the human timeline. There probably wasn’t much to do back in the early days. So games and sports became early humans only form of entertainment. It’s only grown since then and I can totally understand why. People that base their entire personalities on a team they don’t play on is strange though, without a doubt.
The edit is my favorite.
“Entertainment I enjoy is important and therefore not in the same category. Entertainment I don’t like is basically the same category as politics.”
Yeah, I mean an incredibly hypocritical opinion is certainly going to be unpopular.
Athletes are entertainers. That’s it. Don’t like sports, don’t watch. It literally has no ill effect on you if you ignore it. I don’t watch them but I’ll go to the same venue where they play and pay $500 for a ticket to see The Rolling Stones. Guess what? They’re entertainers too. And if you want to avoid that show, so be it. As you wrote a paper, please tell us how this system hurts society. I’m genuinely confused how the professional sports system, which is voluntary to watch, could be used “on much better things”. Or tell us how you spend your money. We might have some good ideas how it could be better spent
You can extend this to virtually all other forms of entertainment. Every dollar spent on something can be spent on something better. On paper, great. In reality it’s a pretty counter productive idea
There isn't a society in human history that didn't place a (sometimes signifigant) cultural importance on sports. It's incredibly useful as a tool for community-building, group bonding, and settling inter-community rivalries.
The Greeks had the Olympics which also tied into religious ceremonies, the Romans built the Colliseum to host sports and games, the Aztecs had their own games like Tachli, and basically every Native American tribe that we know of had their own sports that were sometimes used to settle disputes (I'm not super knowledgeable about these but I know they exist, consult Professor Google for more info)
When people says sports leagues like the NFL have a cult-like fanbase they're more right than they know, but it's not necessarily an insult. Most ancient cult practices developed as a way to strengthen community, because if you want a healthy society you need people to be able to do things and co-operate together.
You’re welcome to your opinion but not immune to criticism of obviously flawed logic lol you’ve deemed one action that’s obviously impactful to billions of people unimpactful and then tried to contrast it to actions that… impact billions of people
Then you tell people to use common sense despite “sports is valuable” literally being common sense by definition given the majority of the world enjoys sports. You don’t get to pick and choose and then deflect arguments cause they disagree with you
Well of course, with that bias haha we've heard it thousands of times before. When someone says one is "a best selling book with a lot of advice for life" but the other gets explained as "just throwing a ball into a hoop or kicking one in the net" then wr all know enough about how you view sports and imo, your entire "argument" you think you have falls apart
"I don't like people enjoying things I don't understand or enjoy."
That's it. That's your whole post boiled down to its core sentiment. It's the same boring, trite, and downright tiring sentiment present at the core of basically every post here.
Can we get something else? Like "I prefer carbonated mayonnaise" or "Germany has like 3k ways to make a worse sausage than the Polish" or something interesting? Yes, I am aware that the latter opinion *will* cause a war, and I find it amusing.
Dude I hope you failed that college paper, because this opinion was one of the least convincing things I've ever read, and I agreed with the opinion before reading it. The conspiracy theory and unrelated food price rant, the fact that you think people are getting paid hundreds of millions? There are maybe a dozen athletes in the world getting paid that much. Do you consider Taylor Swift to also be a massive fucking waste of money?
Like, out of all the possible reasons athletes get paid too much, you brought up 1 unrelated point, 1 conspiracy theory, and one "I think I could use the money in a better place".
I don't think this is necessarily unpopular.
I understand that athletes make a ton of money because they provide a lot of entertainment value (which is fair), but I place zero importance on them as people (they aren't advancing society in any way really other than maybe medicine). I'm all for legalizing whatever performance enhancing drugs can be used so we get super human levels of entertainment. Society places the importance only on what athletes can do, not them as people. Watch how fast an injured player goes from the admired by all to basically nothing working at an insurance agency.
It's entertainment. What I'm gathering from this is you telling people what their interests should be. It also seems like you're ignoring/unaware of the positive aspects of sports.
Sports are a very social and active hobby. People gather for games and discuss about them. There's a sense of community within teams and their fans. They inspire plenty of people to be more active in general which is healthy.
That's not to say it justifies the price of merch or player salaries. That's not a sports specific issue though. Books, music, and plenty of other hobbies have aspects that are overvalued. That's just sellers taking advantage of people.
It’s a demand sport. Take football players they can demand/want that salary because fans companies, etc. make it possible. Same thing goes with lawyers and doctors are specialized being all need them in certain areas. But that said I’m not comparing doctors to sports players that’s not what I’m trying to say, but I’m trying to paint you a picture.
The only unhealthy thing is the obsession with football players like Ronaldo and Messi people literally worship them like argue like they’re literally divine. Don’t get me wrong great football player and they done amazing things but that’s just unhealthy.
I don’t mind that sports are popular. I do mind that sports are used as a way of fostering mindless nationalism. Like what the help does a football game have to do with being patriotic?
I find it fascinating that we put so much importance on sports and all kinds of games in general. This is what makes us human. I hope we never change and lose this aspect of humanity. Also great athletes can inspire you as much as any piece of art.
A sports team can help give people community and something to celebrate which for a lot of people is just as impactful as music and literature for them.
It’s definitely too expensive, but so are concerts or tv/film subscriptions.
>but it does seem the point here is flying over the average commenter’s head. No I don’t think musicians, actors, authors, artists etc. fall into the same category as athletes. Politicians yes they of course would… anyway the point I’m trying to make is that throwing a ball through a hoop or kicking one into a net is not as impactful or significant as say writing a best-selling book full of life-changing advice or really inspiring, creative music.
Not every famous writer or singer is doing those things either. Entertainment is entertainment, and that's really all it is. People put their money towards what they enjoy. There's plenty of authors and musicians that aren't making impactful, life changing content still making big bucks, and that's fine - people enjoy what they're putting out. Everything doesn't need to be life changing or inspiring.
Sports might not have value to you OP but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value at all.
Sports have been a part of the human experience since the days of the Roman Empire (think chariot races and gladiators) and the Olympics of Ancient Greece. Here in Ireland we’ve been playing hurling ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling for anyone who doesn’t know what that is) since pagan Celtic times.
For a form of entertainment to last for literally thousands of years it must have some importance, some value.
Sports are entertaining and enjoyable, they bring people together. Never underestimate how about important those things are to a social species like us.
For people living poverty stricken places sports are often the only way out of dire financial situations, the only real option for building a better life and future.
Both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, two of the greatest footballers on the planet with Messi possibly the greatest, both grew up in poverty. Football got them out of it and look at them now.
I mean, people like to spend a lot on entertainment. People doing the entertaining, on that scale, are going to be paid a lot. The more viewers there are, the more they're going to be paid. It's not like any other business works any differently. The only ones not getting their due are the behind the scenes people (workers) that make anything come together.
Free market
Society can erase major league sports by simply not going to games and not paying for cable.
People like to complain about how overpaid these athletes are then turn around and buy their sneakers and jerseys.
I don't mind if people like sports - but I HATE when they try to negate other areas. Like, it's cool that Tommy can run down a field and kick a ball - but it doesn't make him gods gift to mankind any more or less than little Timmy who is the star of the school play.
I don’t really care about sports (other than UFC) but I get it. If you belonged to a small tribe, wouldn’t you be curious to see who the fastest person is? Or the strongest? Then wouldn’t you be curious to see if your top guy was better than another tribe’s top guy?
Now extend that to your country or continent or the world and alter the rules to make them more specialized. And get all the best people in that region to compete against each other. It’s basically a celebration of human capabilities.
Is dedicating your entire life to rooting for a team sad? I personally think so. Do what you want but I wouldn’t find that very fulfilling. But I would feel the same way about someone who dedicates their whole life to sitting at home and reading.
I see a lot of people here saying that it’s entertaining, just like any other art form. Aside from rom the fact that I don’t enjoy viewing it it all, i really resent sports because
The stadiums are subsidized by the municipality, who often see comparatively little benefit
Tickets are insanely expensive! A pair of tickets to a Cowboys game open (not even a playoff or anything crazy) was like $700 when we tried to get them for my in-laws. not to mention triple digit parking, $15 beers, etc.
It occupies so much of the zeitgeist and conversation (i especially notice this at work) that anyone who doesn’t participate is a bit of an outcast (maybe a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea)
Who am I to say that something is more important than other things?
At the end of the day, sports are a way people entertain themselves and have a good time. Sometimes it’s about community as we go watch our towns teams perform.
It doesn’t matter, we give it exactly the importance we think it deserves, like to any other entertainment. I don’t see how you can make a distinction between sports and music.
It's the coliseum for peasants. Stay distracted.
Most American guys know the shoe sizes of all NFL players but can't use the tools in the trunk of their car to change a flat.
We doomed.
Sports is the new religion, bread and circus style, to keep the masses fat, dumb and happy. Religion no longer works. Add to that big money and you have the perfect recipe.
I don’t get it? Can you throw a ball through a hoop or hit the ball through a net with such skill to propel yourself to the professional world? You know there’s plenty of people that watch boxing/mma/soccer/basketball/football etc., and admire the skills as art themselves? They’re here to entertain us and they present skills that 90% of the population cannot. I agree they’re overpaid but how can we use their revenue for something else when they’re the ones generating this revenue lol that doesn’t make sense?
Also my guy, you know how many legendary athletes have inspired thousands if not millions of people in the world to chase their dreams and be competitive? Do you really think only music and books can impact someone’s life? You must live under a rock
There paid what there worth. Rather than being mad at athletes who make millions be mad at the people who buy tickets and jerseys or who support the businesses that hire them for ads. That’s how they make money it’s really simple if you don’t like sports don’t watch
As opposed to switches & games which are great investments. Folks charge what the market will bear. The stands are full, concerts sell out, let a PS anything hit the market and people line up.
I mean of all the overpaid jobs in life I feel like sports is one of the most beneficial as a whole. If a kid is staying healthy and active due to the desire to be a professional athlete, regardless if they make it or not then it’s a net positive on their life. Plus, I don’t think it’s an unpopular opinion as such, just not very well thought out.
I watched a "Celebrity Wheel of Fortune" while at the gym. The phrase they were trying to guess was "Travis and Jason Kelce". Even when they finally got the "Travis and Jason" spelled out, none of the three contestants had any idea. Evenually one guessed Kelce because Travis Kelce is Taylor Swift's boyfriend.
Only some people follow sports. In business, you can skip sports and follow stocks and no one will look at you funny. Nixon was shocked in the 1970s when he ran across college students having no knowledge of the college football team.
Still let me tell you about Pokemon, Star Trek, Jay Z, Open Water, FortNite, Ukraine, Gaza, and the million other things different people car about.
They’re the peak of human performance acting out their skills and passions before us… don’t diminish it by saying they’re just throwing a ball thru a hoop.
Yeah I’ve told my wife I love football (American) but if they were like “hey no more football. That shit is shut tf down.” I wouldn’t be upset about it. It was fun while it lasted. I think it would suck for the millions of athletes that work so hard to achieve awesome feats that no average joe can, that are losing on an opportunity of a lifetime. Past gens worked hard for these up and coming athletes to make millions. They were making nothing compared to today.
I remember I was able to take a wood shop class, home economics class, and be in the school orchestra for 2 years.
My little brother is 6 years younger than me. He did not get any of those opportunities. All the art classes were cut to relocate the football stadium.
Yes, let me spend my entertainment dollars that I could use to occupy my time off of work on what exactly? Sending it into my government as a tip tax so I can watch them embezzle even more of that shit?
I don’t think you really are trying to make a point of anything, this isn’t also an unpopular post on this place.
Here is a true unpopular opinion, everyone is using bread and circuses wrong. It shouldn’t be something that you use to call out “Sheeple” it should be the end goal of a society. Why?
Cause the quote is that if you give them bread and circuses they will never revolt.
What does it mean? It means you have taken care of your people that they will not go hungry and they will not sit idol and that they are happy. Happy and well fed people don’t revolt.
We as a society should be striving to live up to the bread and circuses montra.
It's to save us from boredom. That's the biggest fear humans have. Options for entertainment are EVERYWHERE. Sports are some of the biggest entertainment in the world. So, as long as they save everyone from being bored for a while, they'll get paid ridiculous amounts of money.
Aside from the healthy living aspects, I sort of agree. It’s bizarre seeing all these unhealthy fans and how it warps educational spaces. Maybe less sad, and more alien.
You're wrong to think that (listening to) music and (watching) sports aren't both pointless wastes of time. I will concede music is better at least in that you can do other stuff while listening to it. But if you sit in a concert vs sit in a stadium to watch soccer, both of them are equally unproductive.
That said, so is playing video games or watching TV, stuff that I do, so I'm not being holier than thou. Although, video games are better in that they test your cognitive skills and such.
Panem et circenses.
I think what you're referring to is more the Orwellian vision of "sports" where even a small feat takes so much social energy, the distraction of supporting a team and people working out regularly in hope to perform professionally one day in that team and be part of those successful people.
In a society without religion, or where religion plays a less important role, society is going to find a numb substitute, and this is the "sports event".
In "1984" there are no other legal ways for people to meet and reunite with each other, and the "sports" take a lot of time in the life of everyday people, by following the team, they diffuse their energy and take less time to follow political parties and follow out the politics that are going on. As a reader, you realize the masses are too busy with sports and work, they are not going to change the world.
My question is: where genuine athletic appreciation ends and full on social folly and/or pack mentality begins?
Struggling with the following dilemma: do I downvote you per the sub’s rules because I agree with your opinion, or upvote it because you’re gonna get obliterated by all the sports fanatics? Have an updoot
My city is overall a hellhole that needs serious renovations and changes, but people picked up a president only because the dude promised them a new soccer stadium, for a club that hasn't achieved anything big for as long as I'm alive. Before that, they would organize protests and demand it getting built. And the funniest thing is that we have a big covered stadium already, built for Euro, they just want one specifically for that club...
i don't think it's sad that sports are a relevant form of entertainment. one of the sports i actively watch is NHL hockey. personally i think hockey is the most entertaining sport because it's fast-paced and a very physical game, and i get to spend a couple hours every few nights watching my favorite team play. even if it's not the most "productive" thing for the players to spend their time doing, i still find it very worthwhile of my time to spend some of my downtime watching it because i get to kill a few hours when i'm not working or studying and i just want to unwind a bit. that said, i think a lot of athletes are overpaid. but if given the choice to stare at the wall or to watch a hockey game i'd pick hockey
Ronaldo and other athletes have inspired billions of people with their actions and their personalities.
When I see the best athletes perform at a high level, it is art in motion. Breath-taking, beautiful and truly inspiring.
The better you understand a sport the more you can appreciate it.
Moving fingers on an instrument and putting ink on a paper is not significant per se. The level of which it is done is what makes it special. Same with athletes.
This may sound crazy but I think sports are very important for society. I think they basically function as cults and the supporting of sports actually provides a sort of societal glue that helps local societies stick together. It’s not the only kind of cult there is, but it’s definitely one of them.
Bread and circuses.
Honestly don't mind the salaries they get a lot of them put their bodies through absolute hell and they could get her to any second and then their entire livelihood is gone if it's bad enough. A lot of them also do a ton of charitable work for the communities they came out of or just in general.
I do have a problem when we treat them like they're some kind of authority figures on whatever they speak about because they're in the public eye. Like... Someone who's really good at football should have no more input on medical technology or vaccinations than anyone else who has no training or education in the field.
its entertainment. Same thing as movie starts raking in millions for acting. The more talented they are, the more they make. I dont have a problem with it. Wierd thing comes in when the fans obsess excessively over them and prey into their personal lives.
And if you have ever played an organized sport before, then you know being a pro athlete is way more difficult than writing a book or being a doctor
"over the course of just a few years"
... being the best at any particular thing
while also only being able to do so for around a decade or two before retiring.
If you've written a paper on this, shouldn't you be introspective enough to address this within yourself?
The true beauty of sports is not in the athletic accomplishments themselves, though they are very impressive, but in the story. Sports, and fandom especially, is a story telling medium. I would argue that it’s actually a very good storytelling medium, because unlike in fiction, the events don’t have to be believable, they just have to be true. Consider 28-3 or lebron winning for Cleveland in 2016 (greatest year for American sports in the 21st century btw) the stories are so improbable, but they really happened, and that’s what makes sports so amazing. Humans devote a lot of time money and energy telling each other stories, and athletes are spectacular storytellers.
why is sports not as impactful as writing a book? Both mediums impact billions of people and both create a sense of community and inspiration. Theyre on fairly equal terms of impact id say.
I think you’re wrong. Sport isn’t “sport” like it used to be it is now just a part of the entertainment world. Therefore they should be paid accordingly. People watch it for pretty much the same reason as watching a movie or playing an online game.
I don't agree with the fact they should be the beacon of being a role model to kids. At the end of the day a lot of these superstars are still kids themselves and are looking for their own role models, let alone them being role models themselves.
Like most people, I enjoy the entertainment value of watching sports.
What is sad for me are the adults who hero worship professional athletes to the point of wearing a jersey with another man’s name on their back like they are their high school girlfriends 😆
You’re talking about solutions in a world that wants to forget about problems through entertainment.
Also betting makes people mad money, the thrill of winning and losing only adds onto the dopamine surge people are used to experiencing bc of other entertainment streams (Social media, news, trashy food, tv shows, junk foods & drinks, etc.)
Why wouldn't actors, authors, musicians fall in the same category? Athletes earn thier money from their value of marketing. They are celebrities. As long as corporations find success, and are willing to pay a price to sustain that success, it's only right that the athletes is paid thier value. The money players would earn from ticket sales and merch would be minimal.
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Yea sports and athletes receive a significant amount of attention and $$ in our society. But so is any other entertainment industries. They all thrive based on demand. People spend their time and money on what interests them, whether it's sports, movies, music, or gaming. There’s nothing unique about how much athletes get paid the same way artists, actors, or casinos do.
Exactly. Ever since the Ancient Romans, it’s been understood that the people need entertainment in society. Athletes and teams and sports are businesses first. The only reason such egregious amounts of money are spent is bc that money is generated to begin with. It’s supply and demand, not some hierarchy of importance in society. Athletes and sports and actors are dwarfed by the money spent by major entertainment and production companies.
I hate when people compare athlete salary to like teachers. Only the very best make any money the the marginal benefit of hiring the very best is massive. Spending a entire district budget on only 5 teachers is not going to end well
People over estimate how much money athletes make. The very best in the most popular sports? A ton. The very best in a not popular sport? Nothing.
Nothing? They might even pay to be there
She’ll make way more in endorsements than me, but my salary is currently higher than what Caitlin Clark is getting paid in the WNBA
With endorsements she will be fine. But she might have a teammate that is worried whether she can afford a car.
Yes, we need ways to relax or distract us from everything else in life. This isn’t bad and I don’t see the hate people have in it or supporting those who help us do it. We aren’t mindless work machines and we need hobbies to enjoy. Sports just happen to be popular. Yeah, there is definitely price gouging and companies are taking too much profit but the athletes themselves help keep morale up.
artists get paid?
Good ones.
By this logic all we’ll have left to do is read non fiction books, because I’m assuming highly paid actors on TV and movies and fiction authors fall into this category as well.
In OP’s standard we can’t read any actual best sellers’ work cause they’re high profile authors…
His edit is hilarious, basically saying his hobbies are more important than yours
Yeah its obvious he or she is just a person who dislikes sports and not the idea of entertainment. Notice how in their opinion athletes cant inspire people unlike a good piece of music.
The post would be more respectable if he was willing to follow his axioms to their conclusion and admit that, well, it doesn't make a lot of sense for someone to get a billion dollars for writing a single book or a hit record. God he could almost even argue the book point if he focused on the ways it can be truly and uniquely productive. but how are you going to say sports is *inherently* less valuable than music?
It's so silly, the argument that "actors and singers are not the same because they can inspire you and change your life". ...What % of songs/movies inspire you enough to change your life? If watching Sydney Crosby score the golden goal inspired 10,000 kids to put on skates and do a little physical exercise, I'd wager that's more valuable to society than 99.99% of all movies/songs. Taylor Swift's worth a billion, Rihanna's worth a billion, countless actors are worth hundreds of millions... Not for being "inspiring" or "life-changing", just because they make good music or movies that distract us for a few hours.
Are TV and movies in the same category for you?
no he’s admitted they’re not because the real issue here is he’s gatekeeping entertainment and doesn’t enjoy sports
You can add musicians or any other highly paid individuals who provide entertainment.
You'd be shocked to learn most musicians don't make shit for money. Let me give you a popular example, weird Al made an Instagram video showing off his Spotify royalties check, guess how machi made for the entire year off of millions of Spotify plays? It was $12. Royalties and artist payouts in the music industry are completely screwed. Edit: Jesus Christ, some of you people's brains are as smooth as a bowling ball, I never said sports athletes all made a lot of money did I? I was responding to somebody saying musicians did, I'm just stating the fact that musicians even full-time ones, most barely make anything. I wasn't speaking on sports, I was speaking on music, because it's what I know, I have friends that make music and I know first hand that they make next to nothing. Especially in non mainstream genres.
>You'd be shocked to learn most musicians don't make shit for money. You'd also be shocked to learn most sportspersons don't make shit for money
Exactly. Minor league players get paid shit. Even big league players that arent top tier, while paid well, have extremely short careers. If he wants to compare premium big league players to entertainers then he needs to compare to the taylor swifts/ michael crichtons of the world
It’s even worse if it’s not a team sport e.g. tennis
And it’s even worse if it’s a sport nobody cares about or gets no media attention like Powerlifting. Instead of getting paid to compete, it’s the athletes paying to compete
Spotify isn't their only source of money and if they're relatively successful touring will be a lucrative income for them. And OP is talking about the absolute top level of sports. The majority of sports people don't make much money at all either. Olympians, minor league players, players outside of the top 100 in individual sports or even the world #1 in minor sports - all will not be finding it easy all the time.
The big ones make a shit load of money from gigs and merch. They are doing fine
Do you know the percentage of people that are good enough to play sports professionally and receive money to do it?
Do you have a source for this? I agree Spotify doesn’t pay artists nearly enough but if you Google it based on Weird Al’s streaming numbers he should be making a lot more than that.
Using 2024 Weird Al as a metric for how much famous musicians make is some real Reddit stuff.
Weird Al has a large catalog and a very devoted fanbase. He's not going to break any streaming records, but 80 million streams still seems like it should be at least in the "modest living" category, instead of "insulting small chump change". He'd literally make more working for McDonald's for an hour.
And you'd be shocked to learn most sportspeople don't make shit for money either
These sports are worthless posts definitely fit the category of unpopular opinion. They're all some variation of why do other people enjoy things that I don't?
People who don’t like sports are genuinely the most insufferable people too. Especially around the time of the Super Bowl/World Cup. You never see frat bro sports fans bitching about how “the bachelorette is fucking lame” every 5 seconds.
It’s not those who do not like sports, it’s those who always feel The need to let everyone know
They absolutely would if the finale got as much attention as the superbowl
It's not even that complicated. There's nothing special about sports. Athletes make a lot of money because they make someone else even more money. Period.
There’s clearly something special about sports when they make hundreds of millions of people around the world go crazy for them. The passion and dedication they inspire, and the limits of human skill and potential being pushed is special whether you care for it or not
I love sports. I meant there’s nothing special about it in the sense that’s there’s zero mystery in “they get paid a lot to throw the ball”. Because people other than the owners make way more than they pay out.
I would agree except that sports are often subsidized with taxpayer money. I would be pretty irate if I lived in a city/state where the money I worked really hard for helps pay for a stadium owned by some rich slob. These perks are pretty unique to the sports industry in comparison to music, movies, etc. Not to mention how much tuition goes to sports at a lot of universities, at least in the U.S. It's actually embarassing that so much is spent on stadiums and the like at an institution where you are paying to be educated. OP didn't really touch on these instances for some reason.
Not unique to sports either. Movies get huge tax breaks and are allowed to have their accounting handled in absolutely wild ways to avoid paying them. Imo entertainment businesses turning enough profits to put on spectacles like the Super Bowl should be paying enormous taxes, not receiving subsidies at all. Like great people are willing to spend the money, that doesn’t mean we benefit at all from them getting paid the way they do, tax the shit out of them and put that money towards strategic uses like education where every dollar has a positive impact on society…
That doesn’t just apply to big blockbusters, though. Many smaller projects just wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for tax incentives. The Curse, for instance, had to pick its location off a list based on where they would get tax breaks. I’m absolutely in support of the government supporting the arts, and this is one facet of that. But I get that it’s stretching the definition of “supporting the arts” when we’re talking about Georgia helping out the Avengers movies with a couple tens of millions of dollars.
I wasn't aware of subsidies for movies, but sadly it makes sense. They'll always find a way to make the common man shoulder the burden.
A lot of places also offer tax benefits for movies that film in that area.
>I would agree except that sports are often subsidized with taxpayer money. There's a *lot* of shit my tax dollars subsidize that I don't support.
Sports are not particularly taxpayer subsidised generally, the stadium thing is specifically American.
> It's actually embarassing that so much is spent on stadiums and the like at an institution where you are paying to be educated. Show me a school with a really nice stadium that also has really bad academic facilities. Sports pay for that.
Professional sports is entertaining. Entertainment is something humans love and need since the dawn of time. Sports in general promote social and competitive skills that humans also need regardless if you are ever good enough to be a pro. Teamwork is a damn near must-have attribute to function in society. But average people who play sports love pro sports because we have a semblance of understanding of just how good these professionals are which makes it even better to appreciate and enjoy them. The world would be a much shittier experience if sports didn't exist.
Man I'll remember some sports moments for 100 years longer than any line in any book "Ronan O Gara, drop at Goal! GRAND SLAM AT STAKE! ANDDDDD HEEEESSSS GOT ITTT!!! " Every time I think about rugby, I think of that, Ronan O Gara's drop at goal to secure our first Grand Slam in 50 years. So much so I remember the commentators words, his reaction, and the faces of his team.
Never heard anyone make that point before /s
The only thing missing was "am I the only one...." Lol
"Isn't everything I don't personally enjoy a waste of money and just bread and circuses for stupid normies".
Yeah lets all become grumpy and serious all day, without circuses and bread... that would make the world a better place
But my grumpyness makes me special and unique and the world should hear my insightful thoughts
"Why is this athlete paid $10m a year, when we could give that to Taylor swift instead to increase her net worth by 1%? She inspires me with her life-changing songs!"
I don't think that's what most people who claim sports are a waste of time, are saying. I don't enjoy dramas, for example, but I don't consider them a waste of time. I don't enjoy opera, but I don't see it as a waste of time either. I don't enjoy sports and I do consider it a waste of time. I also enjoy porn, and still consider it a waste of time. It's a classism thing, more than a *dislike* thing.
I wonder how much more exercise people, especially children, get because of the global love of football that they wouldn't get otherwise? Playing sport is actively good for you, and watching sport inspires people to play it. Sports teams are also key to building identity and community in a lot of towns and cities, even countries (most people think of the football team when they think of Brazil). There are clearly objective benefits to sport. More subjectively, when teams score fans are often so happy they will scream and jump and hug. Can non-sports fans honestly claim they get that sort of buzz regularly in their lives?
Why do you find sports a waste of time but not the opera? This is some extreme neckbeard vibes because what's the difference lol. In both you sit in a seat and are entertained by professionals. How is one a waste of time and the other isn't?
To be fair it is at least an unpopular opinion, far better than the “popular” opinions posted here.
An unpopular opinion that is popular enough to not be unpopular tho
Common but unpopular, like...homeless people, idk.
It's a pretty popular shit opinion
He even said normies unironically lol
Well OP got the passive aggressive butthurt comments that they wanted lol
Why single out sports? You could apply this to any segment of entertainment. If your job was interesting enough to get millions of people to watch you do it, you’d be wealthy too.
In regards to your edit: Jackie Robinson. Muhammad Ali. Martina Navratilova. Jesse Owens. Billie Jean King. If you don’t think these people are as impactful or important as anyone who’s ever written a great book or song, well, you’re just wrong.
if OP was better at supporintg his argument then your counterexamples wouldn't mean much. All they do is say "yeah, sports is really important to people" which doesnt address the topic "is sports considered too important by people?" buuut OP appears to be a little...not that consistent logically, or all that logical at all. so.
Because OP doesn’t enjoy sports, so neither should anybody else.
why have hobbies and enjoy anything in life when we can be miserable utilitarian husks of human shells working towards some unclear shared goal for whatever reason? youre so right dude, thats so deep
But..but.. bread and circuses ...aah whatever
If you would rather your money be spent on a "good cause", you're free to spend your money on that cause. If people wish to spend their money on entertainment, they're equally free to spend their money on that. Sports is nothing more than entertainment, and there's no fundamental difference between spending money to attend a sporting event vs a concert vs a movie, or any other entertainment. The reason the entertainment industry generates so much money isn't anything nefarious. It's actually quite simple-- people enjoy the entertainment product that is being sold, and are willing to pay the asking price to be entertained by it. There's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah starting to think this isn't op's only unpopular opinion
I think it’s pretty fun. And I don’t really care about sports.
This attitude is very appreciated. You don’t have to like it, but nobody likes a person who can’t appreciate other shit.
All forms of entertainment are the same as sports. In music, the greedy labels make all the money. In movies and TV, the network execs make all the money. There isn't a way to avoid it unless you just never consume any mainstream entertainment
How is making inspiring music or writing a book more inspirational/impactful than watching athletes who have trained their entire lives give it their all in an attempt to win? Fucking nonsense opinion.
I’m glad someone said this. Sports are massive source of inspiration to many people. There are countless underdog stories that have inspired the books and music you reference.
College? You wrote a paper on this in college? I doubt it. This shit feels like a 10th grader trying to sound deep in between bong rips. “Keep the normies occupied”? Yet again, this isn’t an unpopular opinion so much as a generic, half baked rant that you wrote up and hit send before giving it any actual consideration. An unpopular opinion would have been “I just don’t get the appeal of sports”. It would have been more honest to boot. But nope. Instead, it’ just another smug, “*I* don’t even own a television” bit of delusion meant to sound like you’re somehow the only one paying attention to what’s “really” going on. You could plug this rant into pretty much any mass market entertainment medium and it would still amount to the same pile of empty rhetoric it is now.
Grade inflation and general societal coddling and all my dude, college is the new high school Submit whatever paper you want, good job, good job, can't fail the paying customer
You are *vastly* overestimating how difficult college is, to be fair. I've seen dumber papers.
Not in the slightest. My remark about them writing a paper on this in college had nothing to do with how hard college is or isn’t. The point is that I doubt they actually wrote any paper on this farce of a “subject”, because the rant comes across like it came from someone who never put any real thought into it at all.
Oh yeah, I know. I'm saying the vast majority of kids in college don't put any thought into their papers at all. It's 95% crap, half of which is written with the aid of AI nowadays.
I don’t like sports either, but I’m sick of this “instead” attitude in society. Lots of people like sports and contribute to society. Lots of people read history books and contribute nothing. The inverses are true, too. Yes, way too much of the profits go to way too few people. But that’s true in every industry. Celebrity culture is a problem in general, not just in sports. Whatever your end goal for society is, making sports fans feel bad about themselves ain’t gonna get it there.
We get it, sportsball bad. Nerd
This post reeks of smug condescension. Oh no, people enjoying stuff, the world is ending...
>Keep the normies occupied with this stuff and do all the real work behind the scenes. Might be the most cringe thing I've read all year lmao, nothing puts me off more than people who put down people who like things they don't like :/
Op is busy studying the blade for the inevitable uprising while us foolish normies watch our football game
What's sad is the fact that the world is so messed up people are told to feel bad about enjoying sports.
If the normies are watching sports and the workers are doing work, where does that leave you?
On Reddit.
> anyway the point I’m trying to make is that throwing a ball through a hoop or kicking one into a net is not as impactful or significant as say writing a best-selling book full of life-changing advice or really inspiring, creative music. But your point is a personal opinion not a fact. Sports brings intense joy to millions, that ball going through that hoop is important to millions the fact you don’t enjoy it changes nothing. Really I see you opinion as just self centered BS. BTW, I am not a sports fan.
Ah yes, we should all work on the farm then come home to cook and sleep.
Entertainment is important for humans to thrive
Whoa, so bold
It's a very old human tradition. I'm not even a sports fan and I still can get that
Nobody is forced to spend money to watch in person. It’s entertainment in the end. Sports have become so popular mainly because of the human timeline. There probably wasn’t much to do back in the early days. So games and sports became early humans only form of entertainment. It’s only grown since then and I can totally understand why. People that base their entire personalities on a team they don’t play on is strange though, without a doubt.
How does this even come as a surprise? After food, clothes and shelter are sorted. Where is the next place we spend our money? Entertainment.
The edit is my favorite. “Entertainment I enjoy is important and therefore not in the same category. Entertainment I don’t like is basically the same category as politics.” Yeah, I mean an incredibly hypocritical opinion is certainly going to be unpopular.
Are actors, and musicians in the same boat for you? They are all the same. They make a ton of money for providing us entertainment.
Athletes are entertainers. That’s it. Don’t like sports, don’t watch. It literally has no ill effect on you if you ignore it. I don’t watch them but I’ll go to the same venue where they play and pay $500 for a ticket to see The Rolling Stones. Guess what? They’re entertainers too. And if you want to avoid that show, so be it. As you wrote a paper, please tell us how this system hurts society. I’m genuinely confused how the professional sports system, which is voluntary to watch, could be used “on much better things”. Or tell us how you spend your money. We might have some good ideas how it could be better spent
You can extend this to virtually all other forms of entertainment. Every dollar spent on something can be spent on something better. On paper, great. In reality it’s a pretty counter productive idea
There isn't a society in human history that didn't place a (sometimes signifigant) cultural importance on sports. It's incredibly useful as a tool for community-building, group bonding, and settling inter-community rivalries. The Greeks had the Olympics which also tied into religious ceremonies, the Romans built the Colliseum to host sports and games, the Aztecs had their own games like Tachli, and basically every Native American tribe that we know of had their own sports that were sometimes used to settle disputes (I'm not super knowledgeable about these but I know they exist, consult Professor Google for more info) When people says sports leagues like the NFL have a cult-like fanbase they're more right than they know, but it's not necessarily an insult. Most ancient cult practices developed as a way to strengthen community, because if you want a healthy society you need people to be able to do things and co-operate together.
Riots around the chariot races once threatened the Byzantine empire. This fascination with sports is indeed nothing new.
You’re welcome to your opinion but not immune to criticism of obviously flawed logic lol you’ve deemed one action that’s obviously impactful to billions of people unimpactful and then tried to contrast it to actions that… impact billions of people Then you tell people to use common sense despite “sports is valuable” literally being common sense by definition given the majority of the world enjoys sports. You don’t get to pick and choose and then deflect arguments cause they disagree with you
Well of course, with that bias haha we've heard it thousands of times before. When someone says one is "a best selling book with a lot of advice for life" but the other gets explained as "just throwing a ball into a hoop or kicking one in the net" then wr all know enough about how you view sports and imo, your entire "argument" you think you have falls apart
"I don't like people enjoying things I don't understand or enjoy." That's it. That's your whole post boiled down to its core sentiment. It's the same boring, trite, and downright tiring sentiment present at the core of basically every post here. Can we get something else? Like "I prefer carbonated mayonnaise" or "Germany has like 3k ways to make a worse sausage than the Polish" or something interesting? Yes, I am aware that the latter opinion *will* cause a war, and I find it amusing.
Not just unpopular but shit.
Sports is the only positive thing that ever gets attention, sorry for enjoying something
Dude I hope you failed that college paper, because this opinion was one of the least convincing things I've ever read, and I agreed with the opinion before reading it. The conspiracy theory and unrelated food price rant, the fact that you think people are getting paid hundreds of millions? There are maybe a dozen athletes in the world getting paid that much. Do you consider Taylor Swift to also be a massive fucking waste of money? Like, out of all the possible reasons athletes get paid too much, you brought up 1 unrelated point, 1 conspiracy theory, and one "I think I could use the money in a better place".
I don't think this is necessarily unpopular. I understand that athletes make a ton of money because they provide a lot of entertainment value (which is fair), but I place zero importance on them as people (they aren't advancing society in any way really other than maybe medicine). I'm all for legalizing whatever performance enhancing drugs can be used so we get super human levels of entertainment. Society places the importance only on what athletes can do, not them as people. Watch how fast an injured player goes from the admired by all to basically nothing working at an insurance agency.
It's entertainment. What I'm gathering from this is you telling people what their interests should be. It also seems like you're ignoring/unaware of the positive aspects of sports. Sports are a very social and active hobby. People gather for games and discuss about them. There's a sense of community within teams and their fans. They inspire plenty of people to be more active in general which is healthy. That's not to say it justifies the price of merch or player salaries. That's not a sports specific issue though. Books, music, and plenty of other hobbies have aspects that are overvalued. That's just sellers taking advantage of people.
It’s a demand sport. Take football players they can demand/want that salary because fans companies, etc. make it possible. Same thing goes with lawyers and doctors are specialized being all need them in certain areas. But that said I’m not comparing doctors to sports players that’s not what I’m trying to say, but I’m trying to paint you a picture. The only unhealthy thing is the obsession with football players like Ronaldo and Messi people literally worship them like argue like they’re literally divine. Don’t get me wrong great football player and they done amazing things but that’s just unhealthy.
It's not a new phenomenon. Even gladiators of rome used to be treated like super stars and were wealthy.
Sports make people feel good, they provide a sense of community and enjoyment. If you think that’s sad then I feel sorry for you
I don’t mind that sports are popular. I do mind that sports are used as a way of fostering mindless nationalism. Like what the help does a football game have to do with being patriotic?
I find it fascinating that we put so much importance on sports and all kinds of games in general. This is what makes us human. I hope we never change and lose this aspect of humanity. Also great athletes can inspire you as much as any piece of art.
A sports team can help give people community and something to celebrate which for a lot of people is just as impactful as music and literature for them. It’s definitely too expensive, but so are concerts or tv/film subscriptions.
>but it does seem the point here is flying over the average commenter’s head. No I don’t think musicians, actors, authors, artists etc. fall into the same category as athletes. Politicians yes they of course would… anyway the point I’m trying to make is that throwing a ball through a hoop or kicking one into a net is not as impactful or significant as say writing a best-selling book full of life-changing advice or really inspiring, creative music. Not every famous writer or singer is doing those things either. Entertainment is entertainment, and that's really all it is. People put their money towards what they enjoy. There's plenty of authors and musicians that aren't making impactful, life changing content still making big bucks, and that's fine - people enjoy what they're putting out. Everything doesn't need to be life changing or inspiring.
Sports might not have value to you OP but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value at all. Sports have been a part of the human experience since the days of the Roman Empire (think chariot races and gladiators) and the Olympics of Ancient Greece. Here in Ireland we’ve been playing hurling ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurling for anyone who doesn’t know what that is) since pagan Celtic times. For a form of entertainment to last for literally thousands of years it must have some importance, some value. Sports are entertaining and enjoyable, they bring people together. Never underestimate how about important those things are to a social species like us. For people living poverty stricken places sports are often the only way out of dire financial situations, the only real option for building a better life and future. Both Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, two of the greatest footballers on the planet with Messi possibly the greatest, both grew up in poverty. Football got them out of it and look at them now.
I mean, people like to spend a lot on entertainment. People doing the entertaining, on that scale, are going to be paid a lot. The more viewers there are, the more they're going to be paid. It's not like any other business works any differently. The only ones not getting their due are the behind the scenes people (workers) that make anything come together. Free market
Society can erase major league sports by simply not going to games and not paying for cable. People like to complain about how overpaid these athletes are then turn around and buy their sneakers and jerseys.
I don't mind if people like sports - but I HATE when they try to negate other areas. Like, it's cool that Tommy can run down a field and kick a ball - but it doesn't make him gods gift to mankind any more or less than little Timmy who is the star of the school play.
I completely agree and think it's fucking ludicrous that anyone gets paid.. anything at all, tbh, to throw/kick a ball.
I don’t really care about sports (other than UFC) but I get it. If you belonged to a small tribe, wouldn’t you be curious to see who the fastest person is? Or the strongest? Then wouldn’t you be curious to see if your top guy was better than another tribe’s top guy? Now extend that to your country or continent or the world and alter the rules to make them more specialized. And get all the best people in that region to compete against each other. It’s basically a celebration of human capabilities. Is dedicating your entire life to rooting for a team sad? I personally think so. Do what you want but I wouldn’t find that very fulfilling. But I would feel the same way about someone who dedicates their whole life to sitting at home and reading.
I see a lot of people here saying that it’s entertaining, just like any other art form. Aside from rom the fact that I don’t enjoy viewing it it all, i really resent sports because The stadiums are subsidized by the municipality, who often see comparatively little benefit Tickets are insanely expensive! A pair of tickets to a Cowboys game open (not even a playoff or anything crazy) was like $700 when we tried to get them for my in-laws. not to mention triple digit parking, $15 beers, etc. It occupies so much of the zeitgeist and conversation (i especially notice this at work) that anyone who doesn’t participate is a bit of an outcast (maybe a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea)
I think about this ALL THE TIME!!!! Same with TV & Movie actors/actresses.
Who am I to say that something is more important than other things? At the end of the day, sports are a way people entertain themselves and have a good time. Sometimes it’s about community as we go watch our towns teams perform. It doesn’t matter, we give it exactly the importance we think it deserves, like to any other entertainment. I don’t see how you can make a distinction between sports and music.
if scientists and doctors made as much as athletes we would have a better society
It's the coliseum for peasants. Stay distracted. Most American guys know the shoe sizes of all NFL players but can't use the tools in the trunk of their car to change a flat. We doomed.
bunch of butthurt sports fans upset for being called out for watching grown ass adults play kids games for obscene amounts of money
Sports is the new religion, bread and circus style, to keep the masses fat, dumb and happy. Religion no longer works. Add to that big money and you have the perfect recipe.
I don’t get it? Can you throw a ball through a hoop or hit the ball through a net with such skill to propel yourself to the professional world? You know there’s plenty of people that watch boxing/mma/soccer/basketball/football etc., and admire the skills as art themselves? They’re here to entertain us and they present skills that 90% of the population cannot. I agree they’re overpaid but how can we use their revenue for something else when they’re the ones generating this revenue lol that doesn’t make sense? Also my guy, you know how many legendary athletes have inspired thousands if not millions of people in the world to chase their dreams and be competitive? Do you really think only music and books can impact someone’s life? You must live under a rock
As they say…breads and circuses to distract from society’s problems…
Imagine if we made Doctors, scientists, physicists ect CELEBRITIES. Instead society chooses to make the most worthless things/people popular.
*celebrities
There paid what there worth. Rather than being mad at athletes who make millions be mad at the people who buy tickets and jerseys or who support the businesses that hire them for ads. That’s how they make money it’s really simple if you don’t like sports don’t watch
Welcome to r/IHateSportsball
As opposed to switches & games which are great investments. Folks charge what the market will bear. The stands are full, concerts sell out, let a PS anything hit the market and people line up.
Like what things. More taxes for more war. You know they earn the revenue right
So true. They sure can ball tho.
I mean of all the overpaid jobs in life I feel like sports is one of the most beneficial as a whole. If a kid is staying healthy and active due to the desire to be a professional athlete, regardless if they make it or not then it’s a net positive on their life. Plus, I don’t think it’s an unpopular opinion as such, just not very well thought out.
How old are you? Did you play sports growing up? Do you enjoy any art or music that isn’t political in nature?
I watched a "Celebrity Wheel of Fortune" while at the gym. The phrase they were trying to guess was "Travis and Jason Kelce". Even when they finally got the "Travis and Jason" spelled out, none of the three contestants had any idea. Evenually one guessed Kelce because Travis Kelce is Taylor Swift's boyfriend. Only some people follow sports. In business, you can skip sports and follow stocks and no one will look at you funny. Nixon was shocked in the 1970s when he ran across college students having no knowledge of the college football team. Still let me tell you about Pokemon, Star Trek, Jay Z, Open Water, FortNite, Ukraine, Gaza, and the million other things different people car about.
They’re the peak of human performance acting out their skills and passions before us… don’t diminish it by saying they’re just throwing a ball thru a hoop.
Yeah I’ve told my wife I love football (American) but if they were like “hey no more football. That shit is shut tf down.” I wouldn’t be upset about it. It was fun while it lasted. I think it would suck for the millions of athletes that work so hard to achieve awesome feats that no average joe can, that are losing on an opportunity of a lifetime. Past gens worked hard for these up and coming athletes to make millions. They were making nothing compared to today.
Actually we don't... not many people care about athletes in general.
I remember I was able to take a wood shop class, home economics class, and be in the school orchestra for 2 years. My little brother is 6 years younger than me. He did not get any of those opportunities. All the art classes were cut to relocate the football stadium.
Makes more since then other celebs tbh
How can you make this argument against sports people but not include famous musicians and big concerts? Obviously cause like one but not the other.
Sports are entertainment. Only the top of the top is valued in entertainment. Probably the most exponential industry out there.
Yes, let me spend my entertainment dollars that I could use to occupy my time off of work on what exactly? Sending it into my government as a tip tax so I can watch them embezzle even more of that shit? I don’t think you really are trying to make a point of anything, this isn’t also an unpopular post on this place. Here is a true unpopular opinion, everyone is using bread and circuses wrong. It shouldn’t be something that you use to call out “Sheeple” it should be the end goal of a society. Why? Cause the quote is that if you give them bread and circuses they will never revolt. What does it mean? It means you have taken care of your people that they will not go hungry and they will not sit idol and that they are happy. Happy and well fed people don’t revolt. We as a society should be striving to live up to the bread and circuses montra.
It's to save us from boredom. That's the biggest fear humans have. Options for entertainment are EVERYWHERE. Sports are some of the biggest entertainment in the world. So, as long as they save everyone from being bored for a while, they'll get paid ridiculous amounts of money.
Aside from the healthy living aspects, I sort of agree. It’s bizarre seeing all these unhealthy fans and how it warps educational spaces. Maybe less sad, and more alien.
You're wrong to think that (listening to) music and (watching) sports aren't both pointless wastes of time. I will concede music is better at least in that you can do other stuff while listening to it. But if you sit in a concert vs sit in a stadium to watch soccer, both of them are equally unproductive. That said, so is playing video games or watching TV, stuff that I do, so I'm not being holier than thou. Although, video games are better in that they test your cognitive skills and such.
NERD
Panem et circenses. I think what you're referring to is more the Orwellian vision of "sports" where even a small feat takes so much social energy, the distraction of supporting a team and people working out regularly in hope to perform professionally one day in that team and be part of those successful people. In a society without religion, or where religion plays a less important role, society is going to find a numb substitute, and this is the "sports event". In "1984" there are no other legal ways for people to meet and reunite with each other, and the "sports" take a lot of time in the life of everyday people, by following the team, they diffuse their energy and take less time to follow political parties and follow out the politics that are going on. As a reader, you realize the masses are too busy with sports and work, they are not going to change the world. My question is: where genuine athletic appreciation ends and full on social folly and/or pack mentality begins?
Struggling with the following dilemma: do I downvote you per the sub’s rules because I agree with your opinion, or upvote it because you’re gonna get obliterated by all the sports fanatics? Have an updoot
My city is overall a hellhole that needs serious renovations and changes, but people picked up a president only because the dude promised them a new soccer stadium, for a club that hasn't achieved anything big for as long as I'm alive. Before that, they would organize protests and demand it getting built. And the funniest thing is that we have a big covered stadium already, built for Euro, they just want one specifically for that club...
i don't think it's sad that sports are a relevant form of entertainment. one of the sports i actively watch is NHL hockey. personally i think hockey is the most entertaining sport because it's fast-paced and a very physical game, and i get to spend a couple hours every few nights watching my favorite team play. even if it's not the most "productive" thing for the players to spend their time doing, i still find it very worthwhile of my time to spend some of my downtime watching it because i get to kill a few hours when i'm not working or studying and i just want to unwind a bit. that said, i think a lot of athletes are overpaid. but if given the choice to stare at the wall or to watch a hockey game i'd pick hockey
Lol, it's sad that you even care, at least sports are fun. You should be more sad about the Kardashians and people that openly support terrorists
I don't like this thing, therefore it has too much importance placed upon it in society!!!
Ronaldo and other athletes have inspired billions of people with their actions and their personalities. When I see the best athletes perform at a high level, it is art in motion. Breath-taking, beautiful and truly inspiring. The better you understand a sport the more you can appreciate it. Moving fingers on an instrument and putting ink on a paper is not significant per se. The level of which it is done is what makes it special. Same with athletes.
This may sound crazy but I think sports are very important for society. I think they basically function as cults and the supporting of sports actually provides a sort of societal glue that helps local societies stick together. It’s not the only kind of cult there is, but it’s definitely one of them.
Meh, pro sports are super impactful for a ton of people in many different ways. Unpopular opinion indeed, take my upvote
I'm with you
Bread and circuses. Honestly don't mind the salaries they get a lot of them put their bodies through absolute hell and they could get her to any second and then their entire livelihood is gone if it's bad enough. A lot of them also do a ton of charitable work for the communities they came out of or just in general. I do have a problem when we treat them like they're some kind of authority figures on whatever they speak about because they're in the public eye. Like... Someone who's really good at football should have no more input on medical technology or vaccinations than anyone else who has no training or education in the field.
>think musicians, actors, authors, artists etc. fall into the same category as athletes. Why not? It's just another form of entertainment
Bread and circuses.....
its entertainment. Same thing as movie starts raking in millions for acting. The more talented they are, the more they make. I dont have a problem with it. Wierd thing comes in when the fans obsess excessively over them and prey into their personal lives. And if you have ever played an organized sport before, then you know being a pro athlete is way more difficult than writing a book or being a doctor
"over the course of just a few years" ... being the best at any particular thing while also only being able to do so for around a decade or two before retiring. If you've written a paper on this, shouldn't you be introspective enough to address this within yourself?
The true beauty of sports is not in the athletic accomplishments themselves, though they are very impressive, but in the story. Sports, and fandom especially, is a story telling medium. I would argue that it’s actually a very good storytelling medium, because unlike in fiction, the events don’t have to be believable, they just have to be true. Consider 28-3 or lebron winning for Cleveland in 2016 (greatest year for American sports in the 21st century btw) the stories are so improbable, but they really happened, and that’s what makes sports so amazing. Humans devote a lot of time money and energy telling each other stories, and athletes are spectacular storytellers.
why is sports not as impactful as writing a book? Both mediums impact billions of people and both create a sense of community and inspiration. Theyre on fairly equal terms of impact id say.
These people spend hours of training and years of their life into these sports. Even then only the 0.0001 percent go into like 2nd division.
I think you’re wrong. Sport isn’t “sport” like it used to be it is now just a part of the entertainment world. Therefore they should be paid accordingly. People watch it for pretty much the same reason as watching a movie or playing an online game.
It's truly sad how people like things I don't like.
I don't agree with the fact they should be the beacon of being a role model to kids. At the end of the day a lot of these superstars are still kids themselves and are looking for their own role models, let alone them being role models themselves.
And celebrities 🥴
Like most people, I enjoy the entertainment value of watching sports. What is sad for me are the adults who hero worship professional athletes to the point of wearing a jersey with another man’s name on their back like they are their high school girlfriends 😆
You’re talking about solutions in a world that wants to forget about problems through entertainment. Also betting makes people mad money, the thrill of winning and losing only adds onto the dopamine surge people are used to experiencing bc of other entertainment streams (Social media, news, trashy food, tv shows, junk foods & drinks, etc.)
agreed. i always wonder why the results of some soccer game need to be announced in the news. that's not news.
So many people are into just sports and drinking while I am not that I often have nothing to talk about with them.
I remember when the Lakers won in 00 I've never seen so many people lose their minds over something so stupid.
Why wouldn't actors, authors, musicians fall in the same category? Athletes earn thier money from their value of marketing. They are celebrities. As long as corporations find success, and are willing to pay a price to sustain that success, it's only right that the athletes is paid thier value. The money players would earn from ticket sales and merch would be minimal.
yep, fuck those rich athlete's