Football

 

 

We watch football.

 

Sometimes, as I’m watching football, I’m impressed by how big the game has gotten.  Then I marvel at all the ancillary connections to the sport.  At its most basic, football is a game that requires a few players and coaches.  Some local people might watch that game, but maybe just a few hundred.  A thousand?  A high school stadium?  Now bring in the broadcasting industry.  Radio, television, and streaming coverage.  Play-by-play announcers, the color guy, and sideline reporters to get us excited about teams and players.  No need for any of the broadcast team without the football game, but the football games would barely exist without being built up by the broadcasting either.  It is a symbiotic relationship that has driven the massive growth of both.

 

Camera people, sound people, engineers in the trucks parked at the stadiums.  Drivers, equipment people, and the people that make that equipment.  Attorneys and agents.  Million dollar, ten million dollar, and hundred million dollar packages for individual players and the economics still work; and the unimaginably rich team owners get richer.  Medical staff.  All the sports journalists reporting and projecting.  The whole refereeing cadre must be an ecosystem of its own. 

 

High school and college football programs feed into the pros.  Huge stadiums provide construction jobs for all the people that build them.  There are ticket sales and concessions at those huge stadiums.  (Let’s do some quick math.  If tickets are $100 each and attendance is 100,000 that could be ten million dollars for each home game.  Maybe it’s only half that, five million dollars.  Okay.)  (Television rights provided over 400 million dollars to each team in 2024.)  Parking.  Security.  Merchandising.  Sponsorships.  Travel packages and tailgating.  Fantasy leagues.  Sports betting.  Grounds crews.  The companies and people that make those massive jumbotrons in the ever-bigger stadiums.

 

Such an immense economic web, and now it’s gone global, with games scheduled in other countries around the world.  It’s all built up around a few people playing a game.