You've asked a lot of questions in this one, but I'll try to answer them all with a overarching answer.

Simplicity

Sports binds people together because it fuels our tribal nature. Belonging to a sports team provides enthusiasts with a common goal (beat the other guy), common enemies (yeah, I hate that team too!) and it's very simple (you don't have to run through hoops or get a Master's degree to be a [some random team] fan).

We desire simplicity in life, and we don't get it in today's complex, modern world. Sports gives us that simplicity, and it's comforting. It's highly categorized, has simple rules (compared to geo-politics or economics) and has very accessible, easy to understand data (as opposed to the taxes that show up on your cell phone bill).

Belonging

We feel stronger and more powerful when we are connected to a larger body of others. Belonging to a sports team, sharing of colors and brands, sharing a common enemy and knowledge of shared data is a very powerful binding force. The more one gets involved, the more information acquired and the more enthusiastic, the stronger the bond, so it has a very powerful and obvious feedback mechanism.

We feel vulnerable when alone, we crave to belong and we desire commonalities. Sport gives us all of that with relative ease, so it also relieves our anxieties, stress and fears, it's simple, easy to understand and has a low entry point. This all makes for a very powerful force, and why it's common throughout all cultures.

I hope that answers your question.

Why do people have national pride? Why do motorcyclists wave to each-other on the road (most do)? Why such strong product allegiance (apple/Microsoft)? Belonging & Self-attribution

Belonging - People desperately want to be apart of something. It's for the high-fives with the random stranger, talk over the cooler and the sense of purpose. Most people don't want to be left out.

Self-Attribution - Fans ride on the success of their players and attribute that success to themselves. For instance, when Michael Phelps wins a Gold Medal at the Olympics, Americans now get to somehow claim that they are better than everyone else because Michael Phelps is American. Likened to the patented "That's my son" (which is actually justifiable self-attribution), fans are essentially saying "That's my country" "That's my team" "That's my college"

As an intellectual (I guess: I teach university), I think I can answer why I dislike, almost despise sports.

1. It glorifies games. They are just games. Games are supposed to be fun, for free time, a lark, a diversion. But people make them into the most serious, crucial thing in life.
2. Team sports turn otherwise normal people into total jerks. In school, I hated sports for this reason. I was not all that bad at sports, but if I happened to miss a shot or a goal, all the other guys would get so angry and spiteful, call me names, yell, hit the wall, threaten me, etc. This is animalistic behavior.
3. Most sports fans do not actually play the sports! Rather, they sit on their sofas and watch other people play the sports. Can you see the significance in this? They are passive observers of life. They sit like zombies, bulldozing fatty, fried food and terrible light beer into their giant mouth-holes, watching other people play sports for them.
4. The people playing the sports for the fans, do not know the fans, have no idea that they exist, do not care about them, and literally have absolutely nothing to do with them. It is about watching a bunch of strangers throwing balls around!
5. Sports fans tend to become maniacal about their sports. During their “season”, they literally shut friends and family out of their lives. They miss important events, ignore their own spouses (usually wives), and ignore really important issues of life, just to watch other people throw balls around.
6. The names of sports teams are puerile and silly. “Raaaawr! I’m a tiger!” “Oh yeah? Well, Caaaaaaaw! I’m a raven!” “Wait, wait guys! Roooaaarr! I’m a lion!” It is like a bunch of damn 7 year old children playing around.
7. Sports focus on the body, but not on the mind. Intellectuals, by nature, like to focus on the mind.
8. College sports change the entire purpose of university from academics, to throwing balls. Sports programs at universities receive millions of dollars in funding, while those same universities do things like eliminate their Philosophy departments! This really happened in my hometown! And remember, the entire reason that universities were created in the Middle Ages was to study and teach philosophy!
9. Discussing sports takes the place of political or academic discourse among adult American men. At work after a big game, all the guys can talk about is how this or that guy who has nothing to do with them, threw a ball really well, to another man who has nothing to do with them. Forget debating the future of our republic, or trying to solve mankind’s greatest challenges, or exploring the wonders of the depths of history and humanism: no, let’s talk about a guy who threw a damn ball!
10. Sports fans tend to become very nationalist, tribal, and jingoistic about their teams. I am from X city, and my team is the best! All people who happened to live in Y city, who may or may not be good people just living their lives, are horrible! Let’s boo them and hate them and, if we drink enough crappy light beer, actually physically assault them, because their group of guys who have nothing to do with them, threw balls around with our group of guys who have nothing to do with us! We are superior human beings because our group of guys who have no idea we even exist, happens to throw balls around better than their group of guys who have no idea they exist!
11. As an adult, American man, I am often shamed or insulted if I admit that I do not like sports. I am treated as if there is something fundamentally wrong with me (despite what other life accomplishments I may or may not have), because I am not literally obsessed with groups of men who have nothing to do with me, throwing balls around to one another.
12. Sports figures are paid millions and made into idols and demigods, while people who achieve great scientific or humanitarian goals are often poor and unknown. Yes, yes, I know all about the free market and Capitalism, blah blah blah. But it says something about our society as a whole, that most of us glorify a ball thrower, but ignore someone who, say, finds a way for people in a starving part of the world to grow a new crop and thrive, or someone whose mathematical theory expands our knowledge of the universe and even reality.

I could go on, but I think 12 points of my bloviating ranting is enough to bore even the most avid intellectual.

In my experience, a lot of sports people are ignorant asshats and they act like they’re better than everyone else. Starting way back in middle and high school I remember of course how they were “the stars of the school” and even after that, in college and into adult life, we treat these people like gods and put them on a high and mighty pedestal. It’s pretty sickening honestly. Also like somebody in here posted before, I myself am not good at them anyway, I don’t care to be. People actually cry or act up if their team loses or wins, like holy crap it’s not that big of a deal. I just hope one day that people will stop acting like they’re the best all the time. It especially pisses me off that they get paid millions, but people who protect us and educate us barely get a quarter of that pay. Something has to change.

Glen puts it very well and concisely. It's drama.

I find that watching a sport (I only watch soccer) is very much like watching a story unfold. They sometimes call the playing field the Theatre of Dreams. Not unlike the Valley, you are watching superstars in their element doing what they do best with a solid goal of becoming champions. Not unlike ourselves in the Valley.

Each player is a character with their own story of success, failure, falling off, getting back on, etc. I find this phenomenon to be far more appealing in soccer because you can see the players' faces and style, as opposed to most other sports where the players identities are covered by equipment.

There are several reasons one might start supporting a team, it could be passed on from a father to son, or it could be developed out of one's own interest (possibly to fill the voids in one's life). For whatever reason it happens, one usually invests a lot of time and pride in it.

Excerpts from this brilliant article: http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/05/19/fanboyism-and-brand-loyalty/

"Add this sort of loyalty to something expensive, or a hobby which demands a large investment of time and money, and you get a fanboy. They defend their favorite stuff and ridicule the competition, ignoring facts if they contradict their emotional connection."

So you started supporting a team, you spent so much your time following their games, you spent your money buying their expensive jersey, you lobbied for your team in front of friends, you attached your pride with the team. Don't you think you've a lot riding on that team ?

"Sunk Cost can creep up on you too. Maybe you’ve been a subscriber to something for a long time and you realize it costs too much, but you don’t end your subscription because of all the money you’ve invested in the service so far."

This can explain what happens when your team isn't performing well, but you still can't let go of it. You had to put on a brave face and go down with it, since you're not a hoochie who jumps the ship as it goes down, you go down with it. There's some kind of a masochistic pride in it.

Finally, I don't think its related to just sports teams, fanboyism can happen for anything (like iphone vs android), provided one invests sufficiently into it.

I hate sports. Let me try to think why:

1. Well, I was really useless (and uninterested ) in sports at school. Always picked last for team. Always sneered at by classmates and teachers (weird how kids who are weak at academic subjects don’t get abuse, only sport.) So left school determined to NEVER do any sport ever again.
2. It’s such a dreadful waste of time! I like to ACHIEVE something in spare time- make something, learn something. My husband spends whole life playing golf and it’s so totally pointless (who CARES if you get a hole in one? And if you do you have to start again from scratch tomorrow… I’m just unble to watch a football match. Tedium!
3. I do get that it’s a harmless little hobby and if it floats your boat and keeps you out of mischief, fair play to you. But i get irritated by sportspeople on TV who talk about it so seriously as if it MATTERS. As if ‘we must get more people into sport.’ WHY? I love knitting, books, country walks. If you want to try these hobbies, great. But I would never suggest everyone else should get into them. If they bore you and you havent tried them before, then you absolutely shouldnt!

Personally for me, its identifying myself with the principles, winning mentality, familiarity & some of the behavior like never say die attitude these teams showed. Both English Premier League and Formula 1 were somewhat alien or did not have much coverage during the late 90s here in India.

Having played football during schooldays and winning something in the last year school despite being good team performers the choice was unanimously one team - Arsenal :) and this since 1998. They play best football (#willIgettrolledforthis :), their philosophy, principles, the way they broke the dominance of ManU, the players like Henry, Bergkamp and Kanu (the guy with the hole in his heart) etc it all adds up. The very few things I try not to miss on TV are when Arsenal are playing.

I have similar interests in Formula 1 with allegiance towards McLaren. Their history, the drivers, fairness to drivers, no team orders, innovation etc

Probably a lot of it were influenced during college days too when we could brag about our favorite teams and the bonding it brought among the similar minded folks...

Now why would I enjoy watching sports?

1. The “team” isn’t a representation of me. The players are not from my region (Tom Brady is from California for example). Additionally the plays can be traded across the country at any moment. The team does not represent me or my region.
2. The team winning is not me winning. A lot of fans like to say “we won the game” but no, you did not “win the game” and athlete won the game. You simply watched them win.
3. The “plot” of the game is the same every single time. The rules are always the same, the maneuvers are all the same, and the stats are all the same. After watching a couple games you have basically watched them all. At least with a TV show there is an actual plot.

The real question is why anyone would like watching sports. You are literally just watching a bunch of people exercise. The only people that like sports are those that are living vicariously through these athletes or feel an insatiable desire to fit in with what ever everyone else is doing.

I used to pretend i liked sports… I actually thought i did care about sports. My family always followed the same football and baseball teams and i would wear the colors and go to the parties until one day i realized that was the only thing i liked about sports: the colors and the parties. The thought of actually sitting through an entire football game is tiresome. They’re simply not entertaining. Most sports games are way too long and are not interesting enough to hold my attention. I think people who become hysterical over their team’s win or loss are completely crazy! How can someone let something so trivial and does not actually affect their life at all control their time emotions so much? There are also only two possible outcomes to any sports game: win or lose. Therefore it becomes boring and monotonous because every game is basically the same thing. It’s not like a new episode of my favorite show because i know the outcome will be that one team wins and one team loses and because i grew up in a state that does not have any of its own professional sports teams, my family always just hopped on the bandwagon of the teams in the neighboring state that were popular and i felt no personal affiliation with the teams. The only thing that would make me interested in watching sports or rooting for a specific team is if I personally knew someone on the team.

Do a little thought exercise. Flip this around. Imagine that you just find sports to be mind-numbingly boring. You tried and tried to find one you could get into, but none of them appeal to you. You like playing some sports with friends, and you might even have fun going to an actual game once in a while, and even going to a party with a bunch of people to watch “the big game” might be nice if it’s in the company of people you like. But, in the end, you don’t actually like the sports, themselves. You like the physical activity and competition with friends, you like the festival atmosphere, expensive beer, and letting yourself get swept up in the crowd while sitting in a stadium, and you like hanging out, eating junk food, and getting drunk with your friends.

But you don’t actually have any interest in the games, themselves. If anything, you really only tolerate the games to enjoy the other aspects of these activities. When you take all the atmosphere and related activities away, you just find the core games to be tedious. Watching or listening to a game is so boring to you that you usually only catch the first half of it before waking up 3 hours after it ended. You think that it’s pointless to arbitrarily choose a team full of people who are drafted from all corners of the country (or beyond) and then get so emotionally invested in the success or failure of a group of athletes who aren’t even really representing wherever you’re from. You think that keeping up on how your team is doing in the season, learning about all the players, and how your team fares each game just feels like homework. It’s just not fun for you. Even if you tried, you just couldn’t get into it.

Then you come into work each day and what happened in the sports game makes up 90% of what everyone fucking talks about.

“Did you see the game?”

“Can you believe that call?”

“[Player] sure did fuck up real bad last night, huh?”

“I don’t really follow sports.”

“Oh, but you must know about…”

“I don’t, sorry. Just not really into it.”

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And then they stare at you like there’s something morally wrong with you. To be fair, most people don’t act that bad, but the number of people who do actually react as if you’ve personally insulted them because you don’t share their interest in sports can be disconcerting. And then a lot of people will then just… proceed to talk to you about the game as if you had watched it and were completely up-to-date on the current season, anyway. Or, even worse, they’ll sit there and try to give you a play-by-play recounting of whatever it was that happened. As if they think that I’m just ignorant of the existence of this particular sport/ player/ team and that if they explain it to me then I’ll get hooked. Look, this might be a valid strategy if the person they were talking to was, like, foreign or grew up in a community that was isolated from sports or was a child, but nobody who was born and raised in the United States could possibly make it to adulthood without having already been thoroughly exposed to at least baseball, football, and basketball (Hockey, too, more up north). Though, I have to say, the most rabid sports fans are always football fans, which makes this even stupider because football is omnipresent during the season, and still talked about during the off-seasons, and it would require impossible godlike powers mixed with hyper-advanced alien technology for a human being in this country to avoid the topic of football for even a single year, let along an entire fucking lifetime.

So you try to get through your day and the only fucking thing anyone will talk about is something you have zero interest in. The responses you get are mostly just people who say, “oh, ok.” But you will have plenty of people get on your case for not fucking liking something. And then whenever there is a group of people, the conversation will inevitably come back around to sports, and these conversations tend to drag on and on. It’s not like every group conversation needs to be about something you like, but at the same time it’s frustrating because you have absolutely nothing to add to the conversation but you also wind up looking like an anti-social douche because you just wind up standing there for several minutes patiently waiting for the topic to change, if it does, at all. And, to top it all off, there are people like OP who legitimately think that it actually is an antisocial gesture to not have an interest in sports.

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tl;dr: Some people just don’t like the games, themselves. Keeping up with a team’s ranking each season feels like work, they don’t enjoy watching the games on TV, they don’t like following the players, and they generally just find that long conversations about “who moved the ball” are pointless and grating, especially the 300th day in a row they’ve had to wait for that topic to pass. Most people who “hate sports” don’t actually hate sports, they just get frustrated by sports dominating so much of everyday conversation. It hogs all the oxygen in so many conversations that other topics they might actually know about and want to discuss wind up getting snuffed out before they can even start because sports not only have a tendency to just keep popping up over and over and over again, even in the same conversation, but they also tend to be conversations that drag on forever.

I consider myself an intellectual person who's fervently obsessed with football, but I never watched sports until I was a senior in high school. Here is why I disparaged sports for the first 17 years of my life:

It's not the game, it's what the game's associated with:

Even if you've never watched a football game in your life, there are other ways sports can permeate into your life. I never went to a high school game, but each day I would have to watch commercials that tied in football to beer, rabid fans, sexy cheerleaders, macho spokesmen, and pretty much every kind of junk food on the market. Being a somewhat reserved person who didn't party as a kid, I didn't see the point of a lot of the hoopla, and pictures like the ones below didn't encourage me to hang out with die hard fans either.

Ambassadors of the Sport are Powerful Influences:

Let's look past what the advertisers are forcing on us and instead examine the people directly connected to the game.

We have Rob Gronkowski hanging out with a porn star.

Here's Aaron Hernandez being arrested for first degree murder

And Big Ben stalking his future prey...

The media plays a big part in this, but unless you follow sports regularly, you'll rarely hear about pro-athletes unless they've done something super-controversial. This might involve drugs, crimes, or just being the public idiot on twitter, but you'll never see a pro-athlete make the front page of the mainstream news for anything less than a colossal blunder. The integrity of many athletes is overshadowed by the controversies of a small minority. This causes everyone, not just intellectuals, to disparage on athletes all the more.

Even if you don't have access to the Internet, you probably had athletes at your local school. I knew there were football players in my school, but in my four years of high school, I had class with just 1 football player. He was something like this:

Couple that with the jock stereotype, and intellectual people can get the idea that most athletes are knuckleheads who couldn't care less about their education. As a person who values learning highly, I convinced myself that if they didn't care at all about what I valued most, then we probably didn't have many if any common interests. My 15-year old thought process: If you're not interested in my thing, why would I be interested in your thing?

Sports is much more strategic and complex than an Intellectual would imagine (and would like to admit):

Let's say you look past the sport's ambassadors and the advertisers and you choose to watch a football game. I don't know if you've watched football before, but for a first-time viewer, it's incredibly chaotic. A bunch of 300 pound men destroy each other while fans cheer. Eventually they get up, move down the field, and melee repeats itself. People start throwing out all these terms you've never heard of, point out all these little details you never observed, and get hyped up when you have no idea what the hell is going on.

If you're an intellectual who disparages sports, you probably had the impression that football was a contest of brawn, where the strongest always win and overpowering your opponent is the only way to succeed. Not many people expect the first-down system, the 15+ distinct positions, the multiple defensive schemes, and all the different kinds of penalties. The truth is, football's much more intricate than meets the eye, and unless you understand those intricacies, all you'll see are grown men falling over each other.

Meanwhile, everyone else seems to understand it. All those crazy fans with painted faces, those jocks who slept in class, and those pro-athletes who need an English lesson -- it makes sense to them. They're able to appreciate the game so much that they sacrifice their weekends to watch it.

You could appreciate it too: just go on wikipedia, read up on defensive schemes, find out what each position does, follow a team and learn about their history. After 2 months of intense research and watching games, I felt I knew as much football as fans who had watched games since their childhood.

But then I looked at the people who follow this game. Most of them have nothing in common with me; they holler at TV Screens, paint their faces, party till the brink of dawn, and look nothing like intellectuals. It's much easier to convince yourself that whatever these people appreciate about the game, it's probably something that would bore you and definitely isn't worth the trouble. Since I couldn't understand the game, I convinced myself that it wasn't worth understanding.

Once I came to this conclusion, it was difficult to change my mind. This is what I believed about sports and was likely to believe for the rest of my life.

So What Changed?

My family has no sports background and the only sporting event I watched regularly as a child was the Super Bowl. I began watching the NFL as a senior in high school, but it wasn't until I got to college and watched college football that I got the bug.

Going to a college that's had a lot of recent success (in CFB) definitely helps, but in my freshman year at Stanford, our team went 12-1 and finished as the Orange Bowl Champions (the #4 team in the country). People like to give Stanford a bad-rep for attendance, but I attended every game with my friends and the student section was always filled. The game-day atmosphere is exhilarating, and the school spirit felt in the stadium was something I never had part of before.

Intellectual pig-headedness was what initially prevented me from learning about sports, but if Stanford Stadium was being filled every week, then there HAD to something special about it. My friends talked about football at length, and I didn't want to be left out of the loop.

When I researched the sport in depth and understood the rules, a lot of themes appealed to me as an intellectual. Football's as much about mental toughness and mental acuity as it is about physical prowess. The entire thought process an elite receiver goes through when running routes or the quarterback makes reads is more akin to the thought process of a musician than that of a manual laborer. Football soon became a tactical game of war instead of mindless wrestling.

Most of all, the work ethic, dedication, and commitment required by professional athletes really resonated with me. At a time when I realized that my intellect alone wasn't enough to achieve success, I developed a whole new respect for athletes who push themselves to brink day in and day out to prepare for games.

Finally, whether you're an intellectual or not, overcoming adversity is something all people have to deal with. In sports, there's no shortage of athletes who've lifted themselves out of poverty line due to sheer persistence and determination. Everyone needs inspiration and the stories that some of these athletes have to share are truly breathtaking. Unlike intellectual pursuits, these stories touched me on a more human level.

That's probably way more than you wanted, but that's my story of why I used to disparage sports. This probably doesn't explain everyone's disdain, but if you haven't already, you should try and give sports a real chance.

My opinion is it a social thing to be involved in. Back in ancient Rome the Christians were thrown to the lions at the Colosseum. The crowds went wild to see the blood thirsty action. People today get very excited to see their team win the game, or a single player win some tournament. Money is exchanged for all kinds of merchandise and this helps to promote the sport to get fans to part with their cash. It seems to me that most people feel they need to belong to a type of group that they can identify with, someone they can cheer on and get involved with. Some like to boast that they follow a certain team or follow Formula One because it gives them a sense of pride.

1. Professional athletes are a lot more talented than my friends. They can do things that we can only dream of.
2. In most professional leagues, teams are pretty evenly matched. One thing the Stastny brothers said about moving to the NHL from the non-professional leagues is that they had to remember that the last place team in the NHL had a good chance of beating them that night. In the Eastern European leagues, playing the last place team was merely a matter of showing up and wondering how big the win would be.
3. People get attached to professional teams (and even some non-professional teams). We keep rooting for the teams we grew up with.
4. Professional leagues keep getting better. Guys who can barely hang on in the NHL today still have a slap shot as good as Bobby Hull's was in the 1960s.
5. It's easy to follow your professional team on TV now. Finding time with your friends is a lot tougher.
6. At my age, trying to play sports full out is merely an invitation to get a serious injury.

The 2018 Winter Olympics are currently underway, so I’m sure you’re hearing/seeing many people chatting about it. Professional sports, like the Olympics, are comprised of the cream of the crop; those competing are the best of the best, so it’s only natural that so many people would be interested - we’re getting to see the highest level of competition in the world. It’s not everyday that you get to see dozens of the best skiers, snowboarders, skaters, and more fighting for the top spot. Perhaps it’s the adrenaline rush, or maybe the idea that people have spent their entire lives leading up to this moment and we get to share and revel in it with them. On the other hand, maybe it’s the artistry and technique put into each performance.

I don’t think there is just one explanation or motivation behind why people are invested in professional sports, but there’s no denying that billions across the world enjoy watching.

Watching games is enjoyable for those who like watching games. Basketball, Tennis, Baseball games, Boxing, etc. All are famous games many are watching. They make good followers of these games. It is evident, people enjoy watching. Games are emotion-driven thrills, because you liked the game, you became a follower. One became passionate to watch. They love the thrill.

Notice that if one has not developed the habit of watching games, passion for it has not also developed. Like television series, if you began watching, you were able to make a followup of the story. And you want to know what is the next thing to happen. Until it becomes a mental and emotional habit. If you watch, you develop the hang of it. You wanted a followup, until you become a follower. Everything in the psychological world began as an attraction or curiosity.

If you began to address your curiosity, the next move is to make a follow-up. From there began a habit. You always remember it, and so you want continuity. You willreach the point when your frequent experience of watching could instill a kind of emotion to it everytime you watch. You know, like a habit that you cannot stop because you get a thrill out of it. And because watching games are a collaborative teamwork, that makes it more exciting. A follower knows the people who are players in the game. They become like iconinc figures in the minds of watchers. They become celebrities, too. And people wanted celebrities. People love a champion. They fulfill your habit, which later became a need for you. And so, they fulfill your need. Your need to become like them even if it was your imagination, and so on and so forth.

Credits : pixabay.com

First, you have to like baseball.

For all of the reasons why detractors do not like baseball are usually the reasons why the rest of us love baseball.

Then, there is the quality of baseball that MLB provides.

I enjoy baseball so much I try and see at least one minor league game a year along with any MLB games I can catch during my travels. No matter how bad a MLB club is, they certainly are much better than those in the minors. That is not to say minor league games are bad, but they are a different form of entertainment.

Lastly, there is the schedule. With a grand total of 82 regular season home games, there are plenty of opportunities to see a quality baseball game for $15 per ticket.

Fenway Park - Boston

Coors Field - Denver

White Sox Park in Chicago when it was US Cellular

Progressive Field - Cleveland

Beacause its everything for us
Its not just a Jersey,its our skin
It's not just a stadium,its our home
We are not 11 players,we are family
Its not just a logo,its our heart
Well to describe why we are crazy and passionate is kind of very difficult
But when we start supporting a club its like we have found ourselves somewhere in it,we feel like a family member
If our team wins it just makes our day,we can't stop dreaming about the game many a times we have to wait till 2-3 am for match to start but it is worth it
If team loses we feel very bad,lost,dejected and there is always a hope that our team will win the next match and eventually there will be smile to our faces

I worked on the sale of a major sports team. I was responsible for running the numbers, looking at the team and determining if it was valuable to the enterprise that owned it, determining that it was not only unprofitable, but it was not possible to turn it around. So we decided to put the team up for sale.This team was an NBA team.

The only potential profit in a sports team is in owning it for a very long time and selling it for a profit. Year over year many teams lose a tremendous amount of money. The most profitable model is when you have a regional sports network and the rights are valuable, because the national deals by the big networks such as ESPN are split up by everyone in the league and so that doesn't really put you ahead. There is also limited profitability based on the stadium lease deal or ownership. There can be increased profitability if you own two teams and the arena so you can maximize attendance.

Let's look at the revenues for sports teams:
1) National TV/Cable rights
2) Regional Cable rights
3) Local TV rights
4( radio rights ( not very profitable)
5) sponsorship and advertising
6) tickets ( attendance)
7) Merchandise
8) concessions
9) suites, and external arena revenue ( from concerts, outside shows, etc.)

Okay-that's pretty much it. So as you can imagine, teams that are in smaller markets that are more susceptible to economic swings or that have poorly performing teams, in small markets do nothave anywhere near the chance to make the same amount of money as larger teams. Gate receipts are less, merchandising is non-existent, and local TV rights are low.

I remember the parade of wannabe owners that came through to purchase the teams. And with the exception of one major sports enthusiast, they were 1000% ego purchases. Big ego dudes trying to be cooler than they could ever hope to be by owning a cool sports franchise. They saw all the financials, they saw all the expensive contracts on bad players, they saw all the low average gate receipts, they saw all the sponsorship revenue that had to be split with the networks that they were not acquiring and yet they still wanted to buy the teams. So I came to the conclusion that when it comes to buying sports teams, with the exception of a few of the most profitable teams, there is one great commonality among the wanna be potential and eventual owners.

There's always a greater fool.

Sports fans are passionate because they are a part of something bigger than themselves.

Part of it is momentum. Growing up, you see your family, friends, and city go wild when a goal is scored or a game is won. So, it’s natural to follow other’s excitement and cheer for your local teams. But there’s also an element of tribalism. People often attach their geographic location and community to their identity. So, when your country wins a game in the World Cup (especially if you’re from a smaller country), you feel like you’ve won too. You feel that you and your country are finally receiving some well-earned recognition.

But I believe the passion runs deeper than that. Sport is the only form of entertainment where the outcome is truly unknown to everyone involved. Everyone stops to enjoy the spectacle of top-end athletes testing each other’s skillsets and knowledge. So, people become obsessed with the complexity and nuance of their respective sport. The more you expose yourself to any game, the more beautiful it becomes because you see more. You understand the tactics. You follow movement off the ball. You appreciate every single flash of skillful creativity.

And let’s face it. Sometimes it’s just fun to check out from reality and go wild. It’s like everyone getting drunk at a concert and singing their hearts out. Modern life has become more cautious and reserved. People need to express that pent-up energy in one way or another.

I spent most of my life playing and watching sports. Only recently, would I refer to myself as an intellectual, as I now spend significant time in intellectual pursuits, and only in the last several years have my interests not only shifted away from sports, but I have noticed myself becoming more openly critical of them. I can think of only a few reasons for this:

1. Economic disparity. It is difficult to stomach the multi-millions of dollars that are lavished on athletes for being exceptionally good in highly specific domain, and ultimately something that is only a game. There are few areas in society where so few are so heavily enriched at the expense of so many, and sports is one of them. Perhaps we would see the same the same if we looked at CEO compensation, or in the likes of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and others, but at least in the case of the entrepreneur, something tangible, and incredibly lucrative has been delivered to society as a whole, and has moved it forward in some way. Yes, Steve Jobs became uber-rich off of Apple's success, but we all got iPhones in the process. Sports delivers none of these values, yet its stars are given lucrative contracts, endorsement deals, and experience the highest levels of success and fame that we can imagine as a people. It becomes a bit nauseating once you've seen it long enough.
2. The Mindset of the Fanatic. Most intellectuals that I know are highly independent, opinionated people who place a high value on originality. They tend to avoid, even abhor conventional thinking when they see it in themselves and in others. To be a fan (fanatic) requires almost the opposite of this. It requires that you throw in with the mob, and cheer on the team. Being a fan has the elements of mass movement and hero-worship that intellectuals tend to resist and fight against. I attended the Seahawk's Superbowl parade after they won Superbowl XLVIII, and I was taken aback by the level of adoration and worship that people reserve for these athletes. I am not saying it is wrong. Simply that it goes against the intellectual mindset that values independence, self-sufficiency, and power of mind.
3. Luck. Sports do include all of the things mentioned: Strategy, preparation, practice, and dedication. They also include a high degree of luck/genetic giftedness that is suitable, again, to a highly specific domain. For instance, while Lebron James certainly worked his ass off through the years to become the player that he is, and while he is probably highly strategic, and continues to practice immensely to this day, he also benefited from abnormal genetics, and other advantages (such as growing up in a society that places a high value on his sport of choice) that gave him the height and stature necessary to excel at the game of basketball. While the hard-work and dedication is often spoken of by athletes and the media, the element of luck rarely is. Furthermore, when you look at Lebron James, you are only seeing the one who made it. You are not seeing all of the others who were equally strategic, worked equally hard, but for whatever reason could not put it all together to make a successful career in the sport. It is a highly competitive system, with winner-take-all effects, and where the losers are buried, and never heard of again. While there was much that had to be done on the part of the athlete in terms of conditioning and preparation to get to the most elite level there are also huge elements of luck (I believe Malcolm Gladwell addressed this with his discussion of hockey players in Canada in his book, Outliers: The Story of Success). When the payouts for excelling are so high, it would be nice if luck were not such a part of the equation, and when it is, if it were at least acknowledged as so. See Lenny Cooke:
   

1. An endless debating of minutia. Sports dominates the public dialogue in the U.S. on a level that only celebrity gossip and politics can match. The most minute details are debated from the national to the local levels. A popular show such as Pardon the Interruption, or Around the Horn will discuss with vigor such topics as an athlete's groin injury, contract extensions/disputes, whether the shot clock in college basketball should be reduced from 35 seconds to 30 seconds, or maybe even to 24 (gasp!), and whether Tiger Woods' recent slump is mental or physical, and whether he'll ever be the same after his highly publicized infidelities. All of this amounts to entertaining television, but also, an enormous consumption of public dialogue, and intellect. Local coverage is hardly any better, and may in fact be worse, as a the microphone is tuned into more of the noise in the neighborhood. My favorite endlessly repeating sports discussion of all is the discuss of who is the best, who is elite, or some variation of this, because it is highly subjective, sure to be opinionated, and may in fact be unanswerable. Certainly, it is irrelevant.

These are four reasons that come to mind for why I have shifted away from sports as I have become older and more engaged in intellectual pursuits. I am sure there are others, but these are the ones that come up on a repeated basis when I do decide to tune in to ESPN, Monday Night Football, or my local sports radio station.

In these thoughts, I've been heavily influenced by the writings of Nassim Taleb, Malcolm Gladwell, and Eric Hoffer, particularly his book, The True Believer, which deals with the psychology of mass-movements, of which I think sports in America should certainly be considered.

Although I'm probably not able to defend myself in a full discussion on the topic, a fifth reason may be the high level of hypocrisy and corruption that is present in professional/NCAA athletics in the United States. For instance, the NFL enjoys monopoly status in all of the major cities in America, but also functions as a not for profit organization. The NCAA similarly markets itself as amateur athletics, yet reaps millions in profits every year. None of which goes to the athletes responsible for the on-the-field performances. This is a problem that has received plenty of attention in recent years, and I'm sure will continue to do so until better alternatives are reached. While important, it's not the one that I feel particularly turned-off by, at least not as much as the others I've mentioned above.

If they are boring then don't watch them. At least we have that problem solved.
For those of us who love sports it is much more than the sport itself. It is the strategy, skill, fantasy of our being there competing, sharing the experience with others during and after the game, etc. What little kid didn't dream of scoring the winning point in the world championship of whatever it is. When I was a boy my father would give me a new baseball every year on my birthday. I can close my eyes and still smell the horsehide leather of a new baseball. It is a sweet memory of my youth. I am too old to throw anymore but while in Florida two years ago I had some time to waste as my wife was shopping. I happened into a sporting goods store that had 1,000 baseball mitts. I spent over an hour trying them on and punching my fist into each one. That was the best memory of the whole trip!
History shows us that humans need to compete physically. Isn't it better to see man compete on the field of sport rather than on the field of war?