I think the NFL is going to be shocked that a number of fans won’t come back even when all this nonsense ends. People are finding other stuff to do - and enjoying it. The NFL will be tainted for a long time. Years ago, I had season tickets to the local MLB team. After baseball players went on strike, I lost interest and stopped going to games altogether. Sometimes I’ll get interested in the World Series games, but that’s it for me and baseball.
Traditions are nice but sometimes they run their course. Things change. Isn’t that what they’re always telling us? Maybe one day MLB will lose its monopoly and there can be local and semipro leagues again.
If all the players and owners involved gave sincere apologies AND if they not only promised to stand in the traditional manner (none of this locked arm bs) AND if they announced that for the next month, rather than soloists, the PLAYERS would lead the fans in singing the national anthem ...THEN maybe they’d have a chance at getting the disgusted fans to come back.
I think pro-football....probably by the end of the 1980s...had turned into a pyramid-type scheme. They used hyped-up video pieces, sports journalists and trends to entice people to go a notch or two.
The typical fan is middle-class, and willing to pay $200 a year for fan paraphernalia. The same guy has no problem in paying $80 for a ticket, and spend near $100 on beer and food for a game. All of this was coming out of the working-class guy’s pocket. I don’t think the players, the union, or the NFL management ever understood that. If just 25-percent of the fan base walk away permanently...everyone down the line will have to take a paycut in the next twelve months. If you owned a billion-dollar franchise and wanted to sell? You’d have to discount the sell-price by 10-percent now.