Sports

One of Epstein’s major complaints was that the NFLPA and the NFL treated domestic violence as a public relations problem rather than what she sees as a “plague.” She is not wrong in this, but, all told, the league and the players association might not be either. For all the anger about abusive players, it should be noted that professional athletes are involved in domestic violence disputes at a far lower rate than the general population of men aged 25 to 29. (They actually commit far fewer crimes altogether, at a rate of only 13 percent of the national population of similarly aged men, though their domestic violence rates are higher than other crimes.) The acceptable number of domestic violence incidents is zero, of course, but the idea that professional athletes are somehow more prone to this than regular citizens is untrue and, at the end of the day, probably not indicative of a “plague.” That doesn’t mean that players involved in domestic violence … [Read more...] about The Sports World Needs Its #MeToo Moment

Last year, the NFL brought in revenues of more than $17 billion, and Major League Baseball earned more than $10 billion, records for both sports. An increasingly small percentage of all that revenue came from attendance. The NFL attributes most of its 2017 improvement to a new Thursday Night Football television package and increased media payments from other properties. MLB’s numbers, which grew even more the year before (when its Advanced Media arm spun off into its own company and was sold for $2.58 billion to Disney), came from expanded partnerships, local television ratings, and its own media-rights deals. Attendance has been down each of last seven years in MLB, and MLB’s revenue has been up every single season. Knowing that, how much would you sweat attendance numbers? … [Read more...] about Nobody’s Going to Sports in Person Anymore. And No One Seems to Care.

First off, there will of course be the ads. FanDuel is going to be even more deputized to invade your television screens this fall now that it has been bought by Paddy Power Betfair, the U.K.-based online gambling juggernaut. The deal went down within a matter of days after the Supreme Court decision and may have saved the struggling FanDuel from going under entirely (Paddy Power took on a large part of FanDuel’s $78 million debt). If you think FanDuel was incentivized to spend to make sure you used their platform for the relatively complicated game of daily fantasy, wait until you can simply wager on the winner of the Jets game you’re about to sit down to watch. (FanDuel and DraftKings have predictably dropped their legal argument that daily fantasy was a “game of skill” now that gambling is legal.) FanDuel is adding sports wagering to its app by the start of the NFL season — it already has opened a sports book in New Jersey — and have no doubt they … [Read more...] about Welcome to Our New Gambling Hell, Sports Fans

-- With Garoppolo injured last season, the 49ers won just four games. They are the third team to go from four wins in one season to a Super Bowl the next, joining the Rams (1999) and Bengals (1988). … [Read more...] about Need to know: NFC champion 49ers

“We had up to 12 stops in a row at one point,” Cronin said. “Getting better. Look, in fairness to Mark, they’re in rebuilding mode. They’ve got a young team. They missed some open shots, just like we did. Shooting changes a lot.” … [Read more...] about Smith scores 17 as UCLA beats Cal 50-40