12/18/24
December 31, 2002
Forecasting the sports business future.: Darren Rovell of ESPN.com makes his predictions for 2003 regarding the sports industry, which include an increase in variable ticket pricing, more ethnic marketing and more action sports. What are your sports business predictions for 2003 and beyond?
I think the growth of it will dwarf the big four (or five) in the next few years. Of course by then the so-called "extreme sports" will be more corporate than ever. No wait, the "extreme sports" already are. Tony Hawk is a whore and a sell out, how extreme can you be once you try sell bagel bites? How extreme when your whole sport is owned ESPN and is nothing more than a marketing gimmick? You gotta love it when the only thing extreme about extreme sports is extreme greed. I'm sticking to baseball, football, basketball and Italian soccer; at least those players are honest about why they play. Nevertheless, extreme sports will get bigger as more and more (mostly white and affluent) suburban youths feel they must rebel by buying into a corporate owned and operated sport and buying youth oriented clothes and food. Watching the X Games is like shopping at the mall for a Marilyn Manson t-shirt, let’s all rebel to help some stuffed shirt company profit. I love irony...skateboarding: brought to you by old foggies.
posted by Bag Man at 07:13 PM on January 01, 2003
I think #5 on the list...that extreme sports will continue to grow...is the big one. I see alot more interest in skateboarding and snowboarding amongst the kids around me than I do for the other team sports. And now that the X-Games and the Tony Hawk tour have given these kids either a mechanism to follow their sport in a competitive manner as well as a professional league to shoot for I think the growth of it will dwarf the big four (or five) in the next few years.