A discerning demographic

Could young men finally be getting fed up with sports?

With all the other dreadful things happening in the sports world, I hate to be the one to inform you of the latest calamity. But here is the awful truth: Young men are turning away from watching games. Yes, in the latest news from the ratings front, young men have even deserted that current television darling, NASCAR. Its ratings are down a huge 22 percent with that desirable crowd. But, then, this year there is hardly a sport or an event -- including the Super Bowl itself -- which hasn't suffered a loss of young eyeballs.

Specifically, this is that cohort of males from ages 18 to 34 -- always referred to as the "key demographic." In this technological world, we don't have generations anymore. We just have demographics.

And the 18 to 34 demographic is key, because young men are still malleable enough to be influenced by advertising. Once they get into their dotage at 35 or 40, they are, it seems, set in their ways and just buy the same old products forever. Advertisers must capture them between high school and age 34. As much as 75 percent of all sports advertising is bought only for this bunch of high-testosterone males.

You see, there's only two known ways to reach young men. One is through young women and the other is through sports. Figure it out. If the key demographic is tuning out sports, advertisers are in a terrible quandary, because the only other way to deliver messages to their target audience is through young women, and young women traditionally have their own agenda and aren't interested in delivering somebody else's messages to young men.

Oh my, what to do? Sports, it seems, is a house of cards that will collapse altogether without advertisers paying huge rights fees to reach those desirable young men sitting on the couch, drinking beer and watching games. Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal even made this budding catastrophe its lead story last week, trotting out experts with various ideas to account for this sacriligious desertion of sports.

First, there was the radical suggestion that the key demographic might, since September 11th, actually be more interested in real news than sports. Or because of the collapse of tech stocks, the key demographic is so discombobulated that it doesn't dare give its affection to a sports team that might break its heart as easily as the NASDAQ did. Better to play some sports video game yourself than to join the crowd and cheer on distant heroes.

Of course, I hate to mention this, but maybe it's simpler. Maybe the key demographic is turning away from watching sports just because it's sick of them. Doubters have been asking for years how we could continue to care about so many games played by so many unattractive players who make so much money and treat us so cavalierly in so many leagues run by so many off-putting owners who raise ticket prices and then demand that we build them new stadiums, too. Maybe a lot of the young men who are not quite old enough to have sports flowing through their bloodstreams have decided that they just don't want to invest their emotions in an institution that has grown so cold and so overextended and so commercial.

It has come to this. During prime time more adult males watch Lifetime --the channel crowned "television for women" -- than watch ESPN2. No, this doesn't mean that all sports are going to fold up their tents like the XFL. But the key demographic might just be signalling us that sports can't take us for granted anymore.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is available now at bookstores everywhere.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer

 

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