Late Stage Capitalism, a mollifying buzz phrase for having zero regard or concerns for customer loyalty rules sports in 2026. All the important decisions are now made by people who have never followed or cared about any player or team. Private equity has never made anything better, and now it’s investment bankers who are calling the shots, and they do not care if it drives fans away.You can see that in the fragmentation of broadcast rights, as leagues/conferences gove a piece to everybody now. And then the media corporations shift more and more of them on to streaming services.
This is why you can’t watch the Cubs or the White Sox, in the postseason, on a regular over-the-air or even a mainstream, normal paid cable channel.
However there is something about Peacock that makes it more detestable than the other streamers. While no streaming service is your friend, Peacock seems to be more of an evil genius when it comes to what content they place on it; especially so with their premium version.
They know what you need/want, and they’ll make you go and pay for it, seemingly more so than the others. Or maybe Peacock seems worse because they were a little later to the streaming party than the others, and by that point we were fatigued enough already.
We all reached the “another thing we have to buy and create an account for? Seriously?!”
It also doesn’t help that when Peacock was born, NBC made a “30 Rock Reunion Special” that was absolutely nothing but an advertorial for the service.
They destroyed the legacy of a brilliant, hilarious sitcom by producing an elongated native advertisement that no one enjoyed.
At the end of the day, all of this was a backlash against
1. the good old days when we could DVR through commercials and
2. when cord cutting actually worked and saved us money.
The leagues and the media outlets could not let that stand. Last year at this time we had YouTubeTV/Google actually dropping the sports we already paid for, and asking us to go fight their battle for them agasint Hulu/Disney/ESPN.
The leagues segmented out their broadcast rights to everybody, so that now you have to get multiple streaming services. So now it’s almost as expensive as cable, but also way more inconvenient and annoying.
And on the technology side, they made it so we now have to sit through every ad for Liberty biberty, limu emu, and various brands of boner pills.
Consider this hellscape, plus the cost of tickets/parking/concessions rising at a rate that far outpaces the rate of inflation in general (at a time when affordability is as much in crisis as its ever been) and well, in the words of Homer Simpson “and once again, us Joe 12-packs are getting the royal screw job.”
Added Moe Szylak: “yeah, we’re getting the Joan Collins special.”
Honestly, when you consider how much the fan is getting gouged (I mean look at the merch- its costs more than ever, yet the material and fabric is as cheap and flimsy as it’s ever been), there is something that can be done.
If you are running for public office and you brand yourself a Populist, run on this. Regardless of your political party, this is a winning issue.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to USA Today’s NFL Wires Network, Ratings and RG. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the Washington Post.