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The following article, written by James J. Patterson, appeared in issue 7 of SportsFan Magazine.
All sports need their Die-Hard Fans, no exceptions.
We love informal polls here at SFM, and an informal poll at our offices has turned up what should be a staggering fact: 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 30 years of attending games of all kinds, I actually have a difficult time putting even a rounded number to the amount of first-timers I have dragged to sporting events great and small. But 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, Sweet Sixteen, 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, and educating. There’s nothing quite like the enjoyment of sharing the fan experiences we’ve known to be so rewarding over many years of watching and cheering with someone for whom the fan experience 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, it’s a fan who isn’t fan-atical, but nonetheless keeps his or her 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 timing is just right. There’s a casual ambiance to the enjoyment of what is essentially a leisure activity. And that’s as it should be.
But the feeling here is that corporations who have taken on the business of selling sports view the "casual fan" somewhat differently. It’s becoming obvious that the networks, as well as their copycats in the lower media, are most interested, not in the casual fan mentioned above, but in a mass audience of what would more appropriately be termed window shoppers.
So it’s gotta 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. Oliver was responding to the bickering that ensued during the `02 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. On ESPN’s Mike & Mike radio show, she explained that the network feels the presence of "reporters" like herself on the sidelines is necessary to keep the interest of casual fans. She went on to explain what TV talking heads have been telling us for years — that since Die-Hard Fans are here to stay, the money is in the casual fan. Make the games appealing to the channel-hopping band-waggoner, this myth states, and you can realize extra ratings, higher ad revenues, and a larger market share. Sounds smart, doesn’t it?
But are the Die-Hard Fans really here to stay?
I believe that, unless there is a dramatic change in the way the suits at the networks view the fans, this philosophy will eventually doom the big leagues. In fact, I think it’s happening already.
Replace the phrase Die–Hard Fan with the phrase Regular Customer, and tell me if you don’t see my point right away.
You can take a peek at the future of big league sports by, first, turning off your television. (Remember, the networks and other media are now partnered with the leagues to "bring" you the contests. They only pretend to "cover" the games as reporters. No real journalist can claim any professional objectivity or integrity when his or her employer is partnered with the entity being covered. Nor would self-respecting reporters allow themselves to get as close as so-called sports reporters do to the subject at hand.) Viewership is down, even in the mighty NFL where networks shelling out billions of dollars for broadcast rights are losing their shirts.
You see, what Oliver calls the casual fans are here today, gone this evening. Like window shoppers, they’re only peeking at something they don’t really intend to buy into, a curiosity. As soon as they find something better to do, they’re outta there. Consequently, if you relentlessly tweak the rules and remake the games to appeal to those who don’t really care in the first place, where does that leave your regular customers? And how badly are you taking them for granted?
The NHL is different, of course. It’s the last professional league that still depends on the fan at the gate for the bulk of its revenue. Therefore, the spectacle at the arena is still aimed primarily at the fan in the stands rather than the fan on the couch. NHL owners, traditionally, won’t even sacrifice seats for better TV camera vantage-points. But this won’t last, either. Sooner or later, the current regime will figure out exactly what compromise will get them on the free, national airwaves, and they’ll be no better than the other three when it comes to rendering the paying customer an insignificant extra in their TV show.
We hear all the time that greed has taken over the big leagues these days, and it’s hard to argue against that view. And maybe the suits are right. Maybe the Die-Hard fan like myself is antiquated, obsolete, a thing of the past. Maybe the Unholy Trinity of Players’ Unions, Big Media, and Ownership have created a marketing combine so sophisticated that they can keep the window shoppers turning over in such numbers and with such constancy that those things we used to value about sports — the traditions, the values, and the memories from one generation to the next — no longer matter to the health of their business. With corporate naming rights, they’ve figured out how to get advertisements into the body and content of "news" stories, both print and broadcast media, with nary a peep of protest from their lap-dogs in the sporting press. Perhaps, by abandoning the Die-Hard Fan, the suits are telling us that they don’t even care about their own survival, so long as there’s a big payoff now, and for as long as they can make it last. When the house of cards falls, they’ll take their profits and leave our games in a state of ruin.
But make no mistake, it’s the Die-Hard Fans who keep the games alive. They’re the ones who buy the tickets, who watch and listen to the media broadcasts of the games, who follow the boxes in the papers, who purchase gear and, most importantly, who get their friends, the more casual fans, to start going to the games.
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