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Serious question: do you think people should be forced to subsidize tennis courts for recreation? What about affordable lessons? I am not a tennis enthusiast (

by II2II 5y ago

Serious question: do you think people should be forced to subsidize tennis courts for recreation? What about affordable lessons? I am not a tennis enthusiast (actually, I hate tennis), yet I would suggest that there are good reasons to provide such funding. Encouraging participation in sport is a good thing. You don't have to agree with the particulars in order to agree with something in principle. That said, I will agree that professional tennis (or opera, or football) should not be funded. For starters, it benefits a select few rather than society as a whole. Yes, that select few includes outside businesses who may see increased revenues or the people who may find jobs near the minimum wage and seasonal end of the spectrum. Granted, I have always been more favourable to the hope provided by social welfare (even when it doesn't work) than the cynicism of corporate subsidies (even when it does work), so don't treat my opinion as unbiased.

mbg721 5y ago
The serious answer is that pop culture used to be much more uniform than it is, and so of course we would subsidize it. We're living through a historical anomaly.
- hadlock 5y ago
  I'm not sure this is an anomaly. Professional sports used to be an absolutely huge phenomenon, but viewership is way, way down from it's peak around 2000. As are music and film award ceremonies. Super Bowl and Oscar watching parties were some of the first major social events after the holidays for a lot of people. With easier access to content and information, it would appear major TV events controlled by the three main broadcast corporations have lost a lot of sway. There's still a lot of people whose social calendar is wrapped around professional sports and other media events, but you just need to look at super bowl viewership numbers to see they have plateaued and declined, particularly when compared to a growing population. Superbowl viewership started at 18 million, hit 90 million in 1994, peaked in 2015 with 114 (true east coast/west coast game) and fell way down to 100 million or less starting in 2018. Correlation isn't causation, but there has been a pretty strong uptick in streaming media, and a similar decline in professional sports viewership, which has traditionally been on broadcast TV. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/super-bowl-ratings-historical-viewership-chart-cbs-nbc-fox-abc/ https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/super-bowl-ratings-historic...
  - mbg721 5y ago
    I guess I misspoke; I agree completely. It's less an anomaly than a paradigm-shift. You're absolutely correct that the sports audiences aren't coming back, especially after baseball's latest stunt.
zeruch 5y ago
"You don't have to agree with the particulars in order to agree with something in principle." Now that is a fantastic distillation of public goods as a concept. Well goddamn done.

by II2II 5y ago

mbg721 5y ago

The serious answer is that pop culture used to be much more uniform than it is, and so of course we would subsidize it. We're living through a historical anomaly.

hadlock 5y ago
I'm not sure this is an anomaly. Professional sports used to be an absolutely huge phenomenon, but viewership is way, way down from it's peak around 2000. As are music and film award ceremonies. Super Bowl and Oscar watching parties were some of the first major social events after the holidays for a lot of people. With easier access to content and information, it would appear major TV events controlled by the three main broadcast corporations have lost a lot of sway. There's still a lot of people whose social calendar is wrapped around professional sports and other media events, but you just need to look at super bowl viewership numbers to see they have plateaued and declined, particularly when compared to a growing population. Superbowl viewership started at 18 million, hit 90 million in 1994, peaked in 2015 with 114 (true east coast/west coast game) and fell way down to 100 million or less starting in 2018. Correlation isn't causation, but there has been a pretty strong uptick in streaming media, and a similar decline in professional sports viewership, which has traditionally been on broadcast TV. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/super-bowl-ratings-historical-viewership-chart-cbs-nbc-fox-abc/ https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/super-bowl-ratings-historic...
- mbg721 5y ago
  I guess I misspoke; I agree completely. It's less an anomaly than a paradigm-shift. You're absolutely correct that the sports audiences aren't coming back, especially after baseball's latest stunt.

zeruch 5y ago

"You don't have to agree with the particulars in order to agree with something in principle." Now that is a fantastic distillation of public goods as a concept. Well goddamn done.