About 140 million people in the U.S. will attend a major-league sporting event this year, according to this NPR article.
But as the same article says, museums will draw about 850 million attendees this year.
So why do more people make trips to museums than to sports games? Well, they are obviously cheaper, and more abundant, but it may also have to do with how each experience translates onto a TV or computer screen.
Forty-one percent of sports fans surveyed by the Consumer Electronics Association and the Sports Video Group said that sports programming in HD is almost as good as the live event.
And with the likelihood of a sports recession, even more fans may be opting for televised games over expensive tickets.
Virtual museums, on the other hand, serve as teasers and actually drive people to real-life exhibits, because, as Kevin Guilfoile of the Museum of Online Museums told NPR:
Some things just inherently, aesthetically you need to be in the presence of them. … I don’t think there’s any substitute to going to a museum and looking at a Chagall.
So is HDTV a threat to live sports games, and if so, how can live sports compete?
Maybe Fenway Park, whose ticket sales for Red Sox games are falling, can take a cue from museums: Dustin Pedroia posing behind plexiglass? Or, better yet, put Plax‘s gunshot trousers on display in the new Giants Stadium?
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What Do Museums Have That Sports Games Don’t?
-Social Value
Only pro sports considered? What about college, high school, little league, etc?
The Red Sox have sold out every game for years so you should more accurately say the demand for playoff tix has dropped after 2 World Series wins in a few years.
You can learn something in a museum. Last thing I learned watching a football game was, in the immortal words of Madden: “Football is a game best played outside.” Gee, really!
So, would some smart economist like to answer a question for me? If pro-sports are so lucrative, why do teams have to get municipalities and corporations to build their facilities?
Spectator sports are a remnant of a stupider era?
We wish anyway
What does a museum have that a sports game doesn’t? Control.
When I go to a museum, I decide what to see and when I’m done. I even get to decide what order I see things in.
When I go to a sports game, I’m trapped with hundreds or thousands of other people and we have no control at all over what order things happen in or when we’ll be done. Sure, we can leave early, but we can’t make the ending of the game happen any sooner. We’re passive lumps – so why not be a passive lump at home in front of the TV?
No commercials at live events… not really at least.
I doubt many elementary schools take kids on field trips to professional football games. The cost alone would be prohibitive. My class did however, take a field trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame as a kid… but technically, that’s a museum… a very well attended museum at that.