Sunday marks the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics, and while the games themselves have run pretty smoothly (besides being overshadowed by the Ryan Lochte scandal), television ratings haven’t been near as successful. Overall, ratings for NBC’s coverage have dropped by 17%, with a 25% decrease in the ages 18-49…
Reigning Olympic golf champion George Lyon won’t be back to defend his title in Rio. The reasoning is simple: if Lyon were still alive, he’d be 158 years old. It’s safe to say golf has changed greatly since the 1904 Summer Games, where 74 golfers from the United States and…
In the summer of 2014, ESPN made a radical change to its programming with the goal of revolutionizing the way society views sports: they began broadcasting Esports. ESPN hasn’t slowed down on its gambit, based on research showing tens of millions of worldwide Esports players, and instead has increased their…
This is the second part of “The Burden of Information”. To read the first part, which discusses how the use of statistics has led to the popularity of football, basketball, and baseball in the United States, click here: Part 1: Why Some Sports are More Popular than Others. We live…
In the United States, three major sports have long dominated the media: football, basketball, and baseball. However, there are many other sports with their own stars and fans, and while some such as hockey, soccer, golf, and tennis still frequently make headlines, many others are left in the darkness, without most people knowing…
The atmosphere surrounding the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro has largely consisted of fear and uncertainty, and for good reason. A smorgasbord of issues including Brazil’s recent outbreak of the Zika Virus, water pollution, political corruption, high crime rates, and poor infrastructure has dominated media coverage, leaving the…
One of the greatest problems in professional sports has been repeatedly brought in the spotlight with the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympic Games: doping. It began with the ban of the Russian track and field team resulting from a government-sponsored doping scheme which nearly resulted in the disqualification of the entire…
“Timofey Mozgov’s agent must be the greatest negotiator of all-time.” That was my first impression of the Russian center’s new four-year, $64 million dollar contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, the first reported deal of the NBA’s 2016 Free Agency. Mozgov will be 30 years old by the beginning of…
Through a variety of platforms including television, websites, and social media, the sports media has flourished in recent years, providing more information, analysis, and feature stories than ever before. However, with this expansion have arisen issues which I believe are damaging the quality of the industry. These problems will be…
The group stages have trimmed the starting field of 24 nations at the 2016 UEFA European Championships down to 16, and while the world has seen the last of Zlatan Ibrahimovic playing for Sweden, there are many other big names and intriguing matchups to highlight the knockout stages. Interestingly enough,…