It is not possible for me to care less about sports. I maybe gave half a shit here and there over the years, but now the world burns. Sports are just overpriced bread and circuses.

Jays fan, so it was an interesting year. quite the finish, very entertaining

but holy fuck do I ever hate SportsNet for having such a shitty fucking streaming service. and jesus fucking christ the gambling ads.

I doubt I’ll pay them next year - I only did this year because of how well the Jays were doing at the end of the year. last year I canceled mid year I think because I was sick of how shitty their fucking app was. also, what happened to the 2 minute 5 minute and 10 minute recaps? that shit was great, perfect for sitting down to eat breakfast or lunch and catch up on last night’s game. I fucking loved those things in 2024 but this year they just didn’t do it or something.

Would it be weird to say that I don’t feel anything about it at all?

It all went wrong when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. The Curse was there for a reason and breaking it shifted us into an unstable configuration of possibility space. More and more unlikely and incomprehensible things will keep happening unless the timeline is corrected. I’m not saying we need to rewrite history… but I’m not saying it’s not worth a try, either.

I play sport near-daily but I don’t follow professional sports, and I honestly think ideally it should be abolished. It’s exploitative entertainment.

• Athletes often end up with horrible overwork injuries. I remember an interview where a range of former Olympians were asked “Was it worth it?” and the overwhelming answer was no, they now had life-long injury from training.
• Sport doesn’t need to be professional to be enjoyable to play and watch at a high-level.
• Like OP has said, it’s a business. They are parasocial and don’t care to truly involve you. They will platform advertisers who foster addiction, to make money. And I feel disgust every time I see a stadium absolutely covered with ads and uniforms covered in sponsorships. It might as well be a billboard with a patch of grass on it.

I’m obviously not against either sports or high-level competition, but as a profession? No way.

While many existing sports develop some useful life skills (physical skills, communication, decision making, strategy, … ) I have an interest in alternative games that emphasise these. Two of my favorites at the moment are Firefigher’s Olympics and Three-Sided Football.

Sportsball.

So much wasted money and effort.

Play your games but stop acting like they’re the most important things on the planet.

There is so much money involved. I would almost say that there is too much money involved to leave the results up to the athletes.

How much corruption is there that never gets publicized or even discovered?

I don’t follow pro sports, sometimes watch the college teams or the international gymnastics amateur competitions. Occasionally a soccer (football) match of our not top division but good local team but not often. Just not into watching men play games usually. But stuff like gymnastics and ice skating is so entertaining to watch. Competitive dance too.

There really isn’t any value past entertaining you, right? If it’s not entertaining you anymore, the value is gone.

Oh I guess I forgot rugby. I do not follow it at all but find it fun to watch. And the college used to put the basketball games on their TV channel with all the timeouts, halftime, everything taken out so it was just st gameplay and I always enjoyed those too. So sometimes I do like watching men play games if they are all action and not too long.

I used to watch as much sport as I could find. Now I can’t find any unless I revert to paid, or questionable, streaming sites.

I started as a foundation member of my local A-League club and remained for over 12 years, my seat never changed, but they would classify my seat differently from silver to gold to platinum, this substantially increased the cost, now it’s not affordable.

I get far more enjoyment watching the 1st team of my son’s soccer club – it’s cheaper and I’m happy to volunteer my time around the club.

It used to be that they’d put baseball games on broadcast TV.

Now you basically need a subscription to watch the team in my area. It’s like they don’t want anyone to see the games.

Capitalism has a price and enshittification is the consequence.

I had many of the same revelations when I got out of the military. I worked nights and Armed Forces Network played literally every game. I watched so much football on my last deployment. Once I got out, I realized how hard it was to follow football. Once I stared a family I gave up completely.

I’m with you. Professional sports have gone downhill. I used to be a diehard Denver Broncos fan. I had DirectTV specifically so I could get every NFL game. During football season, I’d watch every game I could. If I were to do that now, I’d need a number of different streaming services. Apart from that, I began watching less and less a few years ago when every other commercial, and every commentation, became about betting. Draft Kings, Fan Dual, MGM, and whatever else there was. It stopped being about watching the game and became more about gambling.

With baseball, they’re digitally putting ads on the pitcher’s mound. A couple years ago, they added advertising patches to the damn uniforms. It’s disgusting. People don’t play for a team anymore, they play for a brand.

Yet, even with all the additional ad revenue, ticket and concession prices have skyrocketed. It used to be that you could take a family of four to a game and not break the bank. Now, a single game is the cost of a full vacation. With four tickets, concession, and parking, you’re paying at least $500. And that’s without any sort of souvenirs. To make it worse, every team is wanting a new stadium and they are forcing the cities and states to pay for it through taxes. It’s greed on top of greed on top of greed.

I can’t stand watching professional sports anymore. On the plus side, I now have a lot more time to do other things that are a more fun and give a better sense of accomplishment than, “Hey, my team won.”

I’ve stopped caring about physical sports and their broadcast literal decades ago. I only occasionally watch relatively niche sports during the Olympics (climbing for example), but that’s it.

What I do watch is eSports. More exciting than watching a bunch of people run over a field repeatedly, trying to get a ball into a things or whatever.

You should try following Sumo. Its -extremely- traditional, so the commercialism has a hard time sneaking in. Only the top two divisions are pro. There’s a major tournament starting today (Sunday 9th nov) for the next two weeks. You can easily catch replays on youtube.