F#@% the Fans...
The tried and true mantra for building sports television empires has endured for decades, but will Dallas Mavericks' fans finally be the group to hold a team and a league to account?
“We have all the power, but never ever use it. And they know we never will use it.” - RS
When Roone Arledge, the preeminent modern sports producing icon, launched “Monday Night Football” in September of 1970, he had a headful of new ideas that would set new sports broadcasting standards, and modes of producing live sports telecasts we still use today.
He was a revolutionary and transcendent figure.
There was his “bring the fan to the stadium” notion - that saw Arledge add and use replay, crowd cameras, sideline microphones, on-site interviews with dignitaries, and many other technical innovations that started a new wave of how this was gonna look.
He was adamant about wrapping his telecasts around - “The SHOW, not the CONTEST” notion for all sports he produced, but this was especially true of how he presented MNF. (Here’s the space where I say I wish he had worked in the NHL…)
Arledge believed that fans would respond to the emotional and visceral images and personal stories, that the Play-by-play broadcaster was a straight man to set up entertaining analysts, that color and pageantry should rule the day, and that the game was secondary to the show. He wanted to accentuate conflict, celebrate drama, get close, get closer, entertain and not get bogged down in arcane minutia.
These notions alone changed sports television forever.
But perhaps his biggest contribution to sports television was an observation that turned into philosophy, and now a truism that has yet to be proven false.
“Fuck the fans…”
Don’t go crazy just yet - it’s a gruff and plain way to put it - but he’s not wrong about the concept, and worse, the model continues to thrive.
The notion here is that core fans don’t leave. They just don’t. They bitch and scream and yell and write letters and emails and post on social media and scream into the void, but they don’t leave. You don’t leave.
The core will buy all the new merch, have some level of participation with regular attendance at games, watch most or all others on TV, tend to their facebook fan groups, and live and die with it.
I’m a Vikings fan. I haven’t left. I won’t leave. I’m a Stars fan. I won’t leave. There’s nothing they can do… (they’ve tried…)
We don’t leave - despite a million great reasons - and new opportunities every week to vacate the premisses.
And now YOU have that power. Will you use it?
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