Commercialism's grip on professional sports

• Published April 17, 2009

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from Brendan Funtek

This is the final part of a five-part series.

In the beginning... At some point, our advertising society went from commercials of kids merrily singing "I want to be like Mike" to kids saying in flat, threating tones "I AM Tiger Woods." In between these two epochs of commercialism, the professional sports world embraced advertising to an unparalleled degree. What once seemed innocuous ("Look, Joe Namath in pantyhose!" "Isn't O.J. a great car rental spokesman?") became ubiquitous and annoying ("Wait: I'm confused. Is it Enron Field or Minute Maid Park?" "How many TV timeouts can they possibly squeeze in?!")

The problem with commercialism in professional sports is how dependent the leagues became on advertising in the last two decades. (Even though I won't bother discussing it here, commercialism singlehandedly ruined an entire sport -- college football -- preventing it from such fundamental necessities like declaring a rightful national champion. The collective choices of conference commissioners and university presidents keep dashing bewildered fans� dreams with each new long-term television contract.)

It's difficult at this point in our ad-riddled lives to even imagine a professional sports world without the prolific presence of advertising. To complicate matters, we rely on commercialism to do the simple things in life like take bathroom breaks during TV timeouts and financially support broadcasting the games we love to follow.

And although the beast of commercialism is largely uncontested, there remain some sacrosanct areas that the traditional professional leagues will never permit encroachment upon such as advertising on uniforms (with the exceptions of NASCAR and Major League Soccer obviously). The dignity of that decision manages to keep athletes from becoming walking billboards.

The Mustard Palace?

Yet those wise choices are vulnerable when left to an individual franchise owner. Corporate naming rights to stadiums emerged as one of the most repulsive features of commercialism. It's now considered mandatory to secure sponsorship for stadium naming rights in an owner's tyrannical pursuit. This way the city and state authorities reluctant to give their money for the construction of yet another stadium know they won't have to foot most of the bill.

It's debatable how effective stadium naming rights are. (In fact, it's debatable how useful advertising truly is as a method, a subject I'll explore soon.) I'm one of those No Logo people who rips labels off plastic bottles, avoids wearing clothing with product names on it, puts tape over logos on my bike helmet and rain jacket. So calling stadiums by their corporate name was something I've repeatedly resisted yet have lost many a conversational battle.

Here are the names of the four stadiums that hold current league champions: Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, TD Banknorth Garden in Boston, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. One is a boxer, one is a condiment company and two are regional banks (with no business in Washington state) owned by foreign countries. Fans and locals shorten the names for each to "The Joe", "The Bank", "The Garden" and according to Wikipedia, Heinz gets called "The Mustard Palace" but I'm sure most people stick with the simple monosyllabic Heinz.

Slang and lexicon trends are the biggest methods of futile resistance to combating the corporate control of stadiums but even Joe Louis gets shortened so we can't assume these populist name changes have any deep-rooted contempt of corporations. But it would be interesting to quiz any diehard follower of a particular league to name all the home stadiums by their proper corporate title. The proper names are hardly memorable or catchy thus undermining the whole corporate conquest to begin with.

Who won the office drawing for tickets?

Despite corporate advertising becoming such a support crutch for modern pro leagues, this reliance has not translated into lower event ticket prices for fans. The problem is that businesses in the metropolitan areas can easily buy 20 $45 seats and treat their employees, no matter how indifferent said employee is to the sport, to a pro game. Because of this method, owners have justified raising prices because they didn't see steady enough declines in ticket sales, impervious to any city�s economic reality. Buying tickets for the employees (occasionally "rewarded" to "good" employees as if in a daycare program) is catered for purchase by owners who put together corporate packages that offer a slight discount. You're just as likely to see those offers on a ticket purchase website as you are a family package.

The corporate employee ticket distribution has remarkably lowered the passion level of crowds at a game. Next time you go to see any high-dollar sporting event, look around at all the docile faces of people oblivious to the game or at people seemingly bored or as to why they're there. When I was younger and attending games with my father, we were both astounded by how many people would get up and leave early despite how close the game was. Now, with more knowledge as to how people come to a game, I'm assured they were given the tickets.

My mom's husband is employed at a car dealership and he once got to go with co-workers to a KeyArena luxury suite to see a Supersonics game. I was naturally excited for him when he told me about the game in retrospect.

"Oh cool! Wow, a lux-ur-ee suite. So, who were they playing?"

"Aw, hell if I know. I think it was, um, some Texas team. Dallas maybe?"

"...The Mavericks?" I said tersely. Her husband is from Texas.

"Yeah, that was them. Shoot, Brendan, no one really watched the game. We were too busy getting drunk and partying with the cute women."

This story complemented my personal experience of the time I went to a Washington-Dallas NFL game. I was seated for maximum nosebleed at the uppermost row in Texas Stadium. However, my view wasn't the highest. The luxury suite group above me notified I and my accompanying relatives with repeated outbursts of awkward profanity and topped it off by pouring beer on us from their open tinted window.

So you can imagine my disgust when I hear of owners whining about how there are a lack of luxury suites in their current stadium and why they need to build a new stadium that will hold more.

"I was there"

Another repulsive feature of commercialism is that the faulty economic model of capitalism reinforces strange decisions such as putting a professional hockey team in Atlanta, Georgia.

Any standard interpretation of capitalism falls back on how the economic model necessitates growth and holy boy, have we had growth around the country of pro leagues.

None of this would have been possible without the explosion of advertising that allowed, for example, the expansion of cable/satellite broadcasts to cater to local markets specifically. No longer would local station affiliates have the financial burden of carrying games. Now, oligopoly pay-cable networks like Fox Sports could offer exclusive coverage of a team, albeit shutting out local affiliates who cannot financially �compete�.

What�s fascinating about the current business model is the class-specific level of involvement a fan can immerse in. Lazy euphemisms you read in AP articles like �the working-class fan� insinuate someone who is priced out of season tickets or prices for good seats.

Ticket sales in particular reflect disparities in income. One strange byproduct is the authorized approval (from franchises and corporations like Ticketmaster) of season ticket holders brokering their tickets.

The economic ramifications of this are disturbing.

In the right market, if you happen to be surrounded by enough of the business elite, you might find yourself in the unusual position of purchasing a �seat license fee� that doesn�t give you a seat in the stadium but gives you the �right� or �purchasing power� to merely buy a ticket.

Owners defend this action by mentioning the cheapest priced tickets they offer that provide birdeye views of the game. Ironically, the big live-action screen available at some pricier stadiums broadcasts the game to those with poor views who just paid a bunch of money to watch the game so they could say �I was there.�

It is scenarios like this that make even sports fans question why their tax dollars are going to a system that literally distances them from the franchise they support both economically and passionately.

What it means to "be like Mike"

Commercialism has also profoundly altered the relation of how athletes are represented in pro sports.

The most magnificent representation is the permanently commodifed entity, Michael Jordan. He is both an athlete and a brand name. His existence as a professional changed how we perceive athletes. I have a lot favorite quotes from him but one of the least favorite will always remain illuminated in my mind: When asked why he doesn�t make political endorsements as a figure of overwhelming influence, Jordan replied �Republicans buy Nikes too.�

When people say that Jordan is the greatest player of all-time, I wonder by what regard they mean. His individual accomplishments are not as jaw-dropping as Wilt Chamberlain�s. He didn�t win as many titles as Bill Russell or as many MVPs as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But indisputably Michael Jordan is the most successful player ever.

Since the last three decades have spawned this peculiar societal respect for the calculated businessman as this figure to aspire toward, �success� means marketability as much as it means victories for the franchise an athlete works for.

Michael Vick, for example, was a successful football player on the field, a horribly unsuccessful person off the field due to his well-publicized affiliation and subsequent punishment for dog torture. He is now a construction worker. I don�t know how successful a construction worker. A player�s marketability (how they are perceived socially in receiving money to endorse corporate products), is now customarily discussed by media and fans alike.

Jordan was undeniable. His self-assurance and quiet charisma transfixed us all in interviews and it�s quite amusing to witness players like Kobe Bryant so influenced by Jordan that they emulate his diction and speech patterns.

When he retired from the NBA, legions of sports writers and passively initiated fans wondered how Jordan could ever be replaced. Again, the meaning of this was twofold. It wasn�t just �how will an athlete of his superior skill be replaced� but also �will the league reciprocate the advertising revenue he brought in?�

Since corporate endorsements are considered a socially acceptable lie � if Dan Marino wore gloves that weren�t Isotoner he wouldn�t offend anyone averse to juvenile pestering � the way athletes are perceived has become more ambiguous. Not only do athletes have to worry about what they say and do off the field, they have to consciously decide to market themselves at the behest of an agent.

For fans, this fundamentally distorts the perception of athletes because they aren�t sure how genuine a player is. One minute, the player�s making you laugh in some commercial, the next, he�s being charged for a DUI. Although both of these plausible moments are questionable methods to evaluate what a player means to you personally anyway, it still creates an awkward distance.

The underlying reason we can�t become personably close to athletes is due to the tremendous wealth they receive. Again, this is a direct result of how commercialism has transformed professional sports.

It�s not like Reggie Jackson was going to walk into a sports bar in Brooklyn in the 1970s to chat up the regulars anyway but now the levels of wealth create an unusual aura when you meet a millionaire athlete face-to-face.

For instance, I was a grave shift dishwasher for over a year at The Hurricane Caf�, a 24-hour downtown restaurant formerly known as The Doghouse. Occasionally, a Seattle Supersonic would walk in after a game that perked up the staff instantly.

When I was placing a cup of tap water before Rashard Lewis or Reggie Evans (a semi-frequent patron) as they were seated, a flurry of thoughts would go through my mind:

First thought: Yahoo from Animaniacs style: �Hellooooo, Reggie.� All of the Sonics were generous tippers, leaving $20 extra easily for a meal that barely hit $20. Second thought: �Why aren�t these guys at the Five-Point since wealthier people go there?� The Hurricane was a forgettable burger joint that catered to the regular crowd of punk kids and snarky, overeducated-underemployed people essential to downtown.

Although I probably watched too much of the exploitative BET in my formative years, I was nuanced enough to know that Evans doesn�t go home to rub Cristal over his chest and pour it over women after finishing his burger and fries yet I was well-aware of his income level while being around him. It�s difficult not to think of such things which is horrible because you ideally want to just think of athletes like any other person.

It was persistently amusing and charming to read stories during the Sonics final season about Kevin Durant finding young teens in his wealthy neighborhood to play video games with. He would invite them over to his house and the whole anecdote congenially contradicted the animosity many feel toward athletes due to their income level.

As I�ve indicated previously in this series, it�s disappointing to judge athletes negatively due to their income when we don�t tend to apply the same derision toward franchise owners or the corporations who choose to endorse these players. There is, to a large degree, economic benefit by birthright since athletes happened to become professionals in an economically generous era (until recently).

The house that ads built

The strangest problem about commercialism is that advertising is technically a discretionary expenditure. This means if a corporation determines they�re down to the essential �survival� costs, advertising becomes quickly superfluous.

This glaring concern should be making commissioners like David Stern and Bud Selig twist and turn in their beds nightly. Through their shortsighted greed, they�ve managed to expand their economic model to a level that�s quite vulnerable and inevitably not sustainable.

Both commissioners were widely praised by the business press and the owners under them for their ingenuity when they were simply dining off the sacrificial cash cows offered to them as byproducts of �free market� corporate welfare. Stern, in particular, maintains the odd delusion of expanding the NBA to Europe yet he is still praised for his �visionary, forward-thinking ideas� on the narrow-minded basis that the Euro is stronger than the U.S. dollar.

Since this global recession/depression is still unclear as to its permanent ramifications, one can reasonably assert that the approaching decade will force some pro leagues into uncomfortable, potentially unprecedented decisions. The historical wealth peak was clearly the 1990s when �fringe� leagues like the NHL and NASCAR reached unprecedented success.

What lies ahead

The 2010s will offer foreseeable disturbances on the horizon early on. Both NFL and NBA owners have determined athletes are now exceeding their �worth� and will likely emerge winners against capitulating player unions.

This is best expressed by both leagues� collective contempt for rookies. Reflecting a corporation�s apprehension in evaluating the marketability of an unproven young athlete, franchises are becoming weary of conceding to the demands of an ecstatic agent who�s danced around his lucrative client since the kid was in middle school.

In the NFL, the rookie contract will likely be restructured. In the NBA, despite the previous legal precedent of Spencer Haywood defeating the league in court from refusing to employ anyone that isn�t a senior in college, Stern has somehow managed to implement an unchallenged age-restriction to protect the reluctant investments of owners.

In the major leagues, the sport will likely float along on the reality of having the most affordable ticket of all the competing pro leagues despite Selig�s hideous past decisions. In the NHL, the sport will possibly have to consider what excess weight to lose after the Gretzky-driven gluttony of expansion into oblivious markets.

NASCAR will perhaps stand on the shakiest foundation built amidst a cornucopia of advertising.