American past times like baseball and basketball used to be a leisure that could be enjoyed by everyone in a community, regardless of your political beliefs. That is until players decided to use the stage as a place to make a political statement. When politics get introduced to the sports arena, we see what happens. People tune out.
The players have every right to protest, after all, this is America. What they must take into consideration is how people who believe differently will view (or not view) their beliefs. Just as they have the right to use their role in society as their stage, the people paying their salaries, mainly the fans, have the right to use their role to defund them.
This country is split on many issues. Using a televised game as a way to show where you stand might not be such a good idea. The damage has been done. Now what? Would it be funny if the leagues broke into political party conferences. Instead of the National League and the American League, you could have the American league and the Communist, er, Democrat League. People might find more of a reason to tune in. The teams could change their names to non-racist names like the Tampa Bay Trumps or the Pittsburgh Pelosis. Just a thought.
Whatever they do, they better do it quick, or our grandchildren could be asking us one day what it was like to watch sports.
As for the opening games, Outkick reported that the return of the NBA on TNT saw the following numbers:
Lakers-Clippers: 3.4 million Pelicans-Jazz: 2.1 million
ESPN’s MLB return numbers were also underwhelming:
Yankees-Nationals: 4.0 million Dodgers-Giants: 2.8 million
MLB (last Friday, ESPN) Mets-Braves (4p) – 922K Brewers-Cubs(7p) – 1.0M Angels-As (10p) – 797K
NBA (last night ESPN) (July 31) Celtics-Bucks (6:30p) – 1.3M Mavs-Rockets (9p)- 1.7M