|
June 16, 2025 
|
|
|
 | By Suein Hwang Business, Economics and Technology Editor, Opinion |
|
My husband, Mike, is a fan of the Golden State Warriors. So on game days last season, I could reliably find him in one of two places: either parked on our family room sectional, staring at our television, or parked in front of his computer, frantically clicking around and muttering to himself, because he couldn’t figure out how to watch the game.
I was a little baffled by the latter. Surely it couldn’t be that hard? It was only after I spoke with Joon Lee, a former reporter for ESPN, that I came to understand the powerful economic forces that are taking many basketball, baseball and increasingly football games away from Mike and nearly every other fan. In doing so, they are eliminating what was once a shared experience and shattering a pillar of American culture.
In a new guest essay, Lee shows us how our leagues, tempted by the riches offered by streaming platforms, chose to cash in, parceling out games and selling them to the highest bidder, leading to a reality where they jump around so often that even superfans struggle to track what is airing where. The act of being a sports fan, once an accessible activity, is becoming increasingly unaffordable, as catching many games often requires subscribing to a slate of streaming subscriptions, and tickets for the games themselves surge in price. Increasingly, only the well-off can easily afford what was one of America’s last shared experiences.
“This mess isn’t a glitch,” Lee writes. “It’s the system. The blackouts and paywalls aren’t bugs. They’re features. The leagues and their investors count on fan loyalty. That your devotion runs too deep to quit.
“Fandom isn’t being nurtured anymore. It’s being mined.”
Read the guest essay:
Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
