isports Sports have always been a big part of society, but it wasn’t until fairly recently that sporting news became as big a draw as the sports themselves. Sports news is so popular, compared to what they were 20 years ago, that some people do not even bother to watch sporting events anymore; instead, they just watch or read the news and event highlights.
The Reason for the Popularity Increase
The major reason why sporting news has become so popular is due to advances in technology. Technology has advanced to the point where people do not even need to watch a sporting event in order to know everything that happened. Even without watching a sporting event, people can still receive a play-by-play rundown of what’s going on through the use of the Internet. Two decades ago, if people didn’t want to watch a game, but wanted a play-by-play rundown of what was going on, they had to listen to the game on the radio. Now people can just get online and see what’s going on.
Constant Sports News Coverage
There was a time when people only paid attention to sports games, now, due to technology; people are following the events of sports players even when they are not playing sports. Media is now designed to provide constant video coverage of athletes, and everything they do is reported to the media.
Decades ago, athletes had privacy once they stepped off of their respective playing fields. The privacy they had then, is now gone. Some sports leagues such as the NBA and NFL have special TV channels dedicated to covering every action in their leagues, so even athlete’s practice sessions are recorded and broadcasted to people. These TV channels have millions of subscribers, and the numbers are increasing every month.
Athlete Interaction with Fans
Athletes are using the advances in technology to interact with their fans in ways that they could never do in the past. Athletes are using social media devices to talk directly to their fans. As a result, athletes of today are more like pop stars than athletes. Many of them take pictures of themselves during their everyday travels, and they post comments at random about what they are doing. Sports news programs subscribe to the social media feeds of athletes, and they use the information for their newscast.
Sporting News with No Sporting News
A few decades ago, it would have been extremely strange for a person to go to their favorite source for sports news and not received any news related to sporting events, but times have changed. Major sporting news programs are now full of news about athletes that are not related to their professions. News programs cover athlete’s political views, legal matters and their relationships. People who are used to the way things were 20 years ago can be a little turned off by this, but many more people are not, and the unrelated news coverage has made sports news more popular. Some people view the extra coverage of athletes as bad, but there is no doubt that the extra coverage makes athletes more relatable than they used to be.
This article was written by Meredith Majors.
