Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [44]
The Myth of the
Casual Fan
All sports need their Die-Hard Fans, no exceptions. Over the course of an average Die-Hard Fan’s fandom, he or she could be personally accountable for bringing hundreds, if not thousands, of “casual fans” to a sport. Creating converts, if you will.
As for myself, when I look back at the last thirty years of attending games of all kinds, I actually have a difficult time putting a round number to the amount of first-timers I have dragged to sporting events great and small. The number is huge, I can assure you. And this number doesn’t include the casual fans I have invited to my home for World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, World Cup, or simply Big Game parties. At those gatherings, real fans were forged and a lifetime involvement with sports begun. One of the greatest joys of fandom is turning on a friend to a sport—recruiting, training, explaining, educating. There’s nothing quite like the enjoyment of sharing the fan experience with someone for whom it is a new thing. I don’t know a single Die-Hard Fan who doesn’t have similar stories to tell.
What is a casual fan?
Well, here in the real world, casual fans are ones who aren’t fanatical, but nonetheless keep their eye on a particular sport, and when a team or player that excites them comes to town, or their favorite team is playing well, or a friend shows up with tickets, they are more than ready to jump in and go see a game. Such a fan might even own a team cap or jersey, sported whenever the time is right. And that’s as it should be.
But corporations that have taken on the business of selling sports have a rather different view of the casual fan. It’s becoming obvious that the networks, as well as their copycats in the lower media, are most interested, not in the kind of casual fan described above, brought into the game on a personal, one-on-one basis, but in a mass audience of what would more appropriately be termed “window shoppers.”
So it’s got to hurt Die-Hards like me, who have spent a lifetime bringing new fans to the sports we love, when a big media mouthpiece like Fox TV’s Pam Oliver explains the current network dogma pertaining to fans. Responding to the bickering that ensued during the 2002 NFL season when, reporting from the sidelines during a Packers vs. Bears game, she told her viewers about a brouhaha between a Bears defenseman and the Bears offensive coordinator. Oliver explained that the network feels the presence of “reporters” like herself on the sidelines is necessary to keep the interest of casual fans. Speaking on ESPN’s Mike & Mike in the Morning radio show, she went on to explain what TV talking heads have been telling us for years—that since Die-Hard Fans will watch anyway, the money for the networks is in the casual fan. Make the games appealing to the channel-hopping bandwagoner, this myth states, and you can realize extra ratings, higher ad revenues, and a larger market share.
Sounds smart, doesn’t it? But there are a few glaring flaws in that argument. First off, the games aren’t “covered” by reporters. They’re “brought” to you by the networks and other media in partnership with the leagues. No real, self-respecting journalist can claim any professional objectivity or integrity when his or her employer is partnered with the entity being covered.
Second, what Oliver calls casual fans are actually only curiosity-seekers, novelty hounds. They’re peering at something they don’t really intend to buy (into). Like window shoppers, as soon as they find something better to do, they’re out of here.
But what the three-headed beast of Sports League, Sports Union, and Sports Media is doing is relentlessly tweaking the rules and remaking the games to appeal to these window shoppers, who don’t really care in the first place, by freighting the rules in favor of offense and sensational plays and neutering defenses, by altering the outcome of games by some unseen and unnamed judge up in the booth, during the last two minutes of each