The Super Bowl, America's national day of prostration in front of the television set, will be played Sunday. Tickets to the game begin at $325, climbing to $400 for box and club seats. A week later, the XFL makes its debut, with thousands having ordered tickets to the made-for-TV football league.
To which I say, with all due respect, are these people out of their minds?
Let's face it, sports have become all about television, which pays most of the freight for huge star salaries via billion-dollar broadcast and cable deals. Four networks anted up $17.6 billion over eight years for the NFL's TV rights in 1998, and despite what they tell their accountants, that can't be written off as an act of charity.
Soaring ticket prices, meanwhile, have made it so that relatively few people can afford to attend games unless the company's buying. Because of the emphasis on TV, those fans who do show up watch the game on the network's schedule and become props for the broadcast--providing B-roll footage (check out that hottie in the stands or the cute kid sleeping) producers can use to add excitement and color to this televised combination of action-adventure and real-life drama.
Granted, if sports fans generally watch games on TV out of necessity, that's hardly a shabby seat these days, as technology keeps bringing new wrinkles to the way sports are viewed. From a production standpoint, computers superimpose a first-down marker across the football field, miniature cameras strapped to the referee literally provide a view from the middle of the action, and super-slow-motion replays key moments from every conceivable angle.
TV sets themselves, and other related systems, have witnessed their own marvels. The picture-in-picture feature, for example, allows viewers to watch one game and monitor another, perfect for those with short attention spans. So-called personal video recorders, such as TiVo and Replay, let viewers pause live action, meaning you never have to miss a play again just because the phone rang or nature called. And high-definition TV sets--prohibitively expensive now, but destined to become cheaper--provide crystal clarity with almost three-dimensional depth.
Staged by the World Wrestling Federation and NBC (which was pretty bitter about losing its NFL contract in the last round of negotiations), the XFL promises to take all of this a step further.
