I’ve been thinking about my return on investment with sports and I have to say, I think it’s bad business. Of course, being a sports fan is not inherently wrong, but when you factor in the cost – combined with the limited emotional payoff of your team that never quite wins anything – your loyalty may feel less like a nice change of pace more like an expensive curse.
The odds are against you
We’re going to limit this discussion to major sports in North America – MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL – which all have about 30 teams. This means that in any given year, your team’s chance of winning a championship is approximate 3%. These are terrible odds that are only marginally better than betting on a single number in roulette (2.60%). To be fair, this doesn’t explain how good your team might be, but it also doesn’t assume your team is the Detroit Lions or the Buffalo Sabers.
To put this in perspective Use this random number generator and pretend every flick of the button to generate numbers is a year of your life as a fan – watch the player’s draft in the summer, listen to crazy podcasts, buy the latest jersey, stay up late to find one See loss of overtime.
If you are lucky enough to generate the numbers 1-3, your team has won a championship in a given year. However, if you’re cursed like me, hit this button an average of 58 times before you hit the winning numbers (based on three tries). That said, I’ll probably be dead before my team wins again. Not good.
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The losses hit you harder than the profits
We have already covered thisHowever, studies have shown that the sting of loss lasts longer than victory, and that the sadness of defeat is more palpable than the thrill of victory. (This is a well-known psychological concept in finance known as Loss aversionand it explains why passive investors tend to panic selling their holdings when their investments reach a tough point.
Worse, researchers have found that out Profits don’t feel so good when expected (measured by the betting odds before a game). That sounds right to me: my hometown, Edmonton Oilers, won a number of championships when I was young, and you know how it felt when they won? As if I just finished a really good meal, nothing else. And yet I cringe with a freshly felt trauma when I think about the fact that the team lost in the seventh game of the 2006 final as underdogs.
The costs add up
- To watch your favorite team, you have to pay for either cable TV, internet TV or streaming subscriptions direct from each league. While you might get through Around $ 25-30 for a basic cableTo make sure you get all of the games, you’ll likely need to add a sports pack that works about the same as Internet TV prices: at least $ 80 per month or $ 960 per year.
- Say you’re a loyal fan who attends at least one game a year and pays for two beers, a hot dog, and parking there. the average cost will range from $ 67- $ 157 (more expensive with baseball on the lower end and other sports).
- Season ticket costs are also a serious investment. On average, a season ticket will bring you back from anywhere $ 900 to $ 4,000 per year (again with baseball at the bottom).
- Assuming you want to buy the latest official jersey, the combined average of all four leagues suggests that you will cost another jersey $ 250.
- According to the Fantasy Sports & Gaming AssociationIf you participate in fantasy sports, the cost of joining online leagues, placing bets, and doing your research is average $ 653 per year.
The final result
Aside from all of the negatives listed above, what about the benefits of being a fan? Indeed, exercising can be a great way to socialize and make friends, especially if you are not like me and have the emotional maturity not to care whether your team wins or loses. Plus, it’s fun to go to a game every now and then, just for fun, despite the cost.
However, consider whether the intensity of your loyalty leads to falling returns. As a former sports blogger, I wrote about my hometown team for up to 20 hours a week. Then I’m just sick of it. The team sucked and I spent a lot of money looking and writing about a bad team so I quit. And guess what? The team stayed bad for many years. I still watch a game or two, but I pay much less attention to what they do overall. That way I’ve saved some money, seen fewer losses, and developed other interests. It’s a permanent asset.
