2020 Vision for Professional Sports in Today's New York Times

Today's (January 3) New York Times carries this piece entitled 2020 Vision. Microsoft held a forum on what leading sports executives and thinkers about sports thought would be different about sports in 2020. The article didn't seem to reach any particular conclusion except that professional (and I suppose they would include Division 1 college sports as well) will have to come to grips with how to deal with digitization of content especially because the up-and-coming generation believes anything worth doing is digitized or digitizable.

I was surprised and pleased that two prominent futurists Nat Irvin and Glen Hiemstra were quoted in the article. Perhaps this is a sign that the sports industry like many others now recognizes that its future may very well not be much like its past.

Since professional and top college "amateur" sports compete for the public's money and leisure time. To me, the key questions the sports industry needs to answer are:

1. Are its current big money economics sustainable? In an age of relative scarcity, will the public keep paying very high ticket and seat license prices to attend games they can see better on TV? Will TV, radio and Internet providers keep paying the high fees professional teams and leagues demand and get for broadcast and Internet rights? Will corporations keep paying multi-million dollar sponsorship fees just to get their names on stadiums and player equipment? Will colleges and universities continue to pay multi-million dollar coaches salaries, build expensive stadiums and arenas, and construct lavish training facilities? The current recession has revealed weaknesses in sports economics, and I think pro sports will have to fundamentally rethink their business models or they will be in for some nasty surprises in this new decade and the next one. We'll see how much they are thinking about this in the coming labor negotiations in the 4 major U.S. professional sports. I think they'll have to cut into players' salaries. I also expect colleges and universities to question more the high prices they are paying to maintain athletic (especially football and basketball) programs.

2. Will professional sports continue to be able to compete for the public's leisure time? There are plenty of trends promoting what I call the "bottom up" sports culture. This is the one most people (i.e., those of us who are not elite athletes) participate in. In my opinion, the biggest trend in favor of participating in the bottom up sports culture is the medical community's strongly advocating more exercise for most people. Data I have seen shows the public may not always follow this advice. In fact, most Americans do not exercise enough for good health, but they believe they should even if they don't. In our busy 24/7 world, people who use their leisure time for the exercise they need may not have enough left to attend professional sports events in person or even watch them regularly on TV. Professional sports should see the challenge they face in competing against exercise and sports available to the average person at no or low cost for the average person's leisure time. I am not certain they see that yet.