When Professional and College sports return....will fans be waiting?

[adkindo]

I continue to hear people in different media forms suggest when sports return (post COVID-19), the ratings will be way up for every form of competitive sports. I get many of us are looking forward to professional and college sports returning but I think logic and history suggests ratings/consumption may be lower initially. Every week that passes, all of us are forming new habits and utilizing our time in different ways than we did before the pandemic. Each week some of those activities have to become more normalized in our daily life, and not all of the activities will likely just cease the day sports returns to our lives. For example, if many people have began to take a bike ride each evening in recent weeks, partially in place of the time they would usually consume sports on television, and continue to enjoy that bike ride for a month or two months, eventually that bike ride becomes an important activity/habit in their daily life. It is unlikely the day sports returns everyone will simply cease taking that daily bike ride, and there is a finite amount of free time in everyone's life. This suggests to me the longer our daily lives are altered without sports, the more likely it will take time for high television ratings to return for many sports. Of course many die hard fans will return instantly, but most televised sports events need much more than die hard fans to reach normal profits. Will the casual fans be there on Day 1? Day 15? Day 30?

Just trying to get a feel on what others expect.....

[Redsfaithful]

Those are good points on new habits, but I think it'll be offset by the deep desire for normalcy we're all going to have developed by the time this is done.

[adkindo]

Those are good points on new habits, but I think it'll be offset by the deep desire for normalcy we're all going to have developed by the time this is done.

maybe you are correct....I know I will be waiting. That said, I recall after one of the baseball strikes hearing analysis on the slow recovery from fans, and it was pointed out the hard core fans came back quick, but the millions of casual fans took years to return. It also claimed it was not about being "angry" over the strike which was often put forward in the media, but mostly related to they found other ways to utilize their time during the stop in play.

[Sea Ray]

I think ratings will be great. It'll benefit from the novelty factor and we'll appreciate it a little more. As for baseball, it'll make all the games more important.

[OldRightHander]

I'll be back, and I'll never take it for granted again.