“Sports are the opiate of the middle class” as a reframe sucked all the fun out of sports for me. Overvalued to watch in person, too many ads to watch digitally. Not to mention having sports betting rammed down my throat. Professional sports is like any other medium from my childhood, monetized into the abyss and not as fun to interact with.
I have only enjoyed those matches in person where sponsors and camera crew are missing. Everything else is just sports opera.
Of course, those local matches are something I have always loved. Local as in a few people just playing on some ground (rarely the full ICC size, which is good; otherwise, it becomes too difficult to track) - just playing for the sake of playing - with no intention or plan to show the game to anyone else, as sometimes I am the only spectator sitting near the fence. You know the ones where you are sometimes asked to join if they are short on players and they notice you are wearing sports/running shoes. At least for cricket, this happens.
I recently attended a Minor League Baseball game. It was way more enjoyable than the area's corresponding Major League Baseball games.
Probably because there was way less people (the density was only slightly less, mostly just a significantly smaller facility - so no significant traffic trying to park, enter, or leave). They also had a lot more family-friendly entertainment.
That's why the professional sports leagues are increasingly partnering with gambling companies. For a lot of sports fans if they have money riding on the game then it's more fun to watch and increases engagement. (I'm not claiming that this is a good thing, just that it's clearly happening.)
FIFA invented ticket options (they call it RTBs), a ticket derivatives market (their marketplace allowing trades and sales of RTBs), and then cross-bred that with loot boxes (random cheap “cards” that may or may not contain RTBs). I bet that with some effort, you could figure out how to short tickets given the tools they have created.
We finally found a worthy competitor to Ticketmaster in the “worst way to buy tickets to an event” competition, it seems.
Counterpoint: Such a market *technically* already existed outside of FIFA, just that it was a more underground/grey/black market.
Strictly speaking, an external market being brought into existing ticketing systems would be net-neutral, since the following pros & cons should balance each other out:
(additional visibility into ticket prices & demand (+)) + (increased assurance of "this is the one place to get a ticket" (+))
==
-( (increased competition for a ticket (-)) + (perverse incentives of platform to increase ticket prices (-)) )
But because of their reputation, the negatives are weighed more than the positives due to their existing track record.
As such, the following constructed scenario should be considered: If it was a fully automated platform external to any party that handled such ticketing systems, would such a severely negative view still hold?
You know, now that I think about it, I have seen an actual ticket short squeeze before - when the airline is overbooked and has to run a reverse auction to buy back their ticket.
They saw how much sports betting platforms and crypto exchanges were making offering parlays and leverage, and wanted in on the action. Soon you'll be able to buy a 60X leveraged perpetual option to speculate on game ticket prices.
So FIFA are shady, disreputable, immoral, greedy and unscrupulous. Nothing new here, though it's good to remember that every now and then. Like many but not all of the mega sporting bodies and club owners, they don't care about football. Just making money.
But there's one important thing the article overlooks; the fans are not owed anything. I guess that's not entirely true because sports does get support from the government. Still it's FIFA's show, they can do what they like with it. Hopefully fans will call them out on it and boycott the world cup. If that doesn't happen (it won't) it proves FIFA right; they can do whatever they can get away with, it's a free society if you don't like it don't pay.
Eh that's a weird take - The Guardian is better than most (whether that is itself good enough is going to depend on your viewpoint) main stream media sources at calling out some of the worst capitalism abuses.
They aren't a bad newspaper by the standards of what passes as our press these days.
I think their point is that "late-capitalist hellscape" is a bit breathless considering we're just talking about football tickets and not, say, insulin. (I acknowledge it's not "just" football tickets for everyone).
Exactly that's the point. I never saw the guardian blaming capitalism for genocide or war or food poisoning or major issues that cause misery to humanity.
So the criticism is empty and imo it only serves to catch the eye of the people who politically sympathise with the general opinion of "oh no capitalists have gone off the rails with some stuff, let's keep them in check"
And this is what my original comment is about. Let's keep them in check when they fiddle with our football tickets, but we don't have to name names when the worst on earth is happening.
“Sports are the opiate of the middle class” as a reframe sucked all the fun out of sports for me. Overvalued to watch in person, too many ads to watch digitally. Not to mention having sports betting rammed down my throat. Professional sports is like any other medium from my childhood, monetized into the abyss and not as fun to interact with.
I have only enjoyed those matches in person where sponsors and camera crew are missing. Everything else is just sports opera.
Of course, those local matches are something I have always loved. Local as in a few people just playing on some ground (rarely the full ICC size, which is good; otherwise, it becomes too difficult to track) - just playing for the sake of playing - with no intention or plan to show the game to anyone else, as sometimes I am the only spectator sitting near the fence. You know the ones where you are sometimes asked to join if they are short on players and they notice you are wearing sports/running shoes. At least for cricket, this happens.
I recently attended a Minor League Baseball game. It was way more enjoyable than the area's corresponding Major League Baseball games.
Probably because there was way less people (the density was only slightly less, mostly just a significantly smaller facility - so no significant traffic trying to park, enter, or leave). They also had a lot more family-friendly entertainment.
I enjoy games at my Uni: baseball games in an intimate setting, basketball by players and teams that aren't cheaters, ...
[dead]
That's why the professional sports leagues are increasingly partnering with gambling companies. For a lot of sports fans if they have money riding on the game then it's more fun to watch and increases engagement. (I'm not claiming that this is a good thing, just that it's clearly happening.)
48 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45174371
FIFA invented ticket options (they call it RTBs), a ticket derivatives market (their marketplace allowing trades and sales of RTBs), and then cross-bred that with loot boxes (random cheap “cards” that may or may not contain RTBs). I bet that with some effort, you could figure out how to short tickets given the tools they have created.
We finally found a worthy competitor to Ticketmaster in the “worst way to buy tickets to an event” competition, it seems.
Counterpoint: Such a market *technically* already existed outside of FIFA, just that it was a more underground/grey/black market.
Strictly speaking, an external market being brought into existing ticketing systems would be net-neutral, since the following pros & cons should balance each other out:
(additional visibility into ticket prices & demand (+)) + (increased assurance of "this is the one place to get a ticket" (+))
==
-( (increased competition for a ticket (-)) + (perverse incentives of platform to increase ticket prices (-)) )
But because of their reputation, the negatives are weighed more than the positives due to their existing track record.
As such, the following constructed scenario should be considered: If it was a fully automated platform external to any party that handled such ticketing systems, would such a severely negative view still hold?
You know, now that I think about it, I have seen an actual ticket short squeeze before - when the airline is overbooked and has to run a reverse auction to buy back their ticket.
So if FIFA oversells a game (which i would not put past them), we could have that here too. HA!
They saw how much sports betting platforms and crypto exchanges were making offering parlays and leverage, and wanted in on the action. Soon you'll be able to buy a 60X leveraged perpetual option to speculate on game ticket prices.
So FIFA are shady, disreputable, immoral, greedy and unscrupulous. Nothing new here, though it's good to remember that every now and then. Like many but not all of the mega sporting bodies and club owners, they don't care about football. Just making money.
But there's one important thing the article overlooks; the fans are not owed anything. I guess that's not entirely true because sports does get support from the government. Still it's FIFA's show, they can do what they like with it. Hopefully fans will call them out on it and boycott the world cup. If that doesn't happen (it won't) it proves FIFA right; they can do whatever they can get away with, it's a free society if you don't like it don't pay.
Why aren't the fans owed anything? I think everyone owes everyone decent behavior. The tragedy of the commons isn't meant as a guideline.
Capitalism commiting literal genocides, but that they can get away with. We draw the line when they fiddle with our sports tickets!
We can tackle multiple bad things at once. Enshittification needs to be documented at every stage.
I didn't see the guarding call a late-capitalism hellscape over the russian-ukrainian war nor the palestinian genocide, nor many other things.
So it looks like "we" cant tackle multiple bad things at once. Just some. And just the less importsnt ones
Eh that's a weird take - The Guardian is better than most (whether that is itself good enough is going to depend on your viewpoint) main stream media sources at calling out some of the worst capitalism abuses.
They aren't a bad newspaper by the standards of what passes as our press these days.
I think their point is that "late-capitalist hellscape" is a bit breathless considering we're just talking about football tickets and not, say, insulin. (I acknowledge it's not "just" football tickets for everyone).
Exactly that's the point. I never saw the guardian blaming capitalism for genocide or war or food poisoning or major issues that cause misery to humanity.
So the criticism is empty and imo it only serves to catch the eye of the people who politically sympathise with the general opinion of "oh no capitalists have gone off the rails with some stuff, let's keep them in check"
And this is what my original comment is about. Let's keep them in check when they fiddle with our football tickets, but we don't have to name names when the worst on earth is happening.