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  • Writer's pictureJose Pablo Rivera

Safe Bet?



No matter the sport or the era, it is safe to imply that very few things are consistent in the sports industry. Nowadays, the sports market has expanded in such a rapid fashion that players are getting traded just months after signing with a team, franchise players are missing the entirety of a season due to injury, and even coaches are getting fired at a record-breaking rate. All of the factors alluded-- along with many others-- make the sports industry such an inconsistent yet entertaining market. However, an exception to this tendency seems to lie in what most people call competition. Whether you’re a sports fan or not, it is almost instinctive that people assimilate sports with competition. This is logical due to the fact that most athletes crave the winning feeling and joy that being victorious actually implies; in other words, in sports, competition is the effect of wanting to win. So, how exactly do we measure competition in sports? Commonly, people tend to associate the competitiveness of a league or tournament to the number of teams holding good records or in other terms, the number of good teams in a league. This is to say that as the number of good teams increases, so does competitiveness in the league. The reason being that with this phenomenon, the probability of winning a championship is rather diverse and not concentrated solely on one or two teams. Most recently, however, uptake in competitiveness in leagues around the sports world has been evident. So, what does this uptake in competitiveness mean for the sports world? Is it a good or bad thing?


One of the leagues which have recently seen a huge uptake in competitiveness has been the NBA. If you were to say that the 2020-2021 NBA finals would be held by the Milwaukee Bucks and the Phoenix Suns before the season began, most people would think that you were out of your mind. In fact, the Phoenix Suns were less likely to make it to the NBA finals heading into the season than teams like the Portland Trail Blazers, Golden States Warriors, and Toronto Raptors who barely even made it to the playoffs according to statistics from basketballreference.com. To add it up, the Phoenix Suns were not even considered to make the playoffs by most analysts and had a betting number of + 4,000 (positive betting number- means that betting odds are against the team) which in itself, makes the fact that they managed to make it all the way to the NBA finals even more absurd.

Why is this important? Other than demonstrating the diversity and spread of NBA glory throughout the league, this feat also explicitly leads to an uptake in competitiveness in sports. In fact, the Phoenix Suns making it to the NBA finals as the 15th team holding the best odds to win the championship had never actually happened in more than 70 years of NBA basketball. What makes it even harder to believe is the fact that in the 2020-2021 NBA season, only three teams managed to win more than 50 games in the whole league. In addition, the standings were also much more likely to be separated by one or two games compared to ten teams having won at least 50 games back in the 2014-2105 NBA season. This effectively comes as a result of the uptake in competitiveness evident in the league, leading to less of an advantage to a few select teams (according to stats from basketballreference.com).


As proven by the statistics above, an uptake in competition in the NBA is clear and evident; yet how does this uptake in competitiveness translate to the rest of the sports world? According to data, the 2020 and 2021 NBA finals had the lowest TV rating in the history of the league compared to the 2016 finals (which featured the rivalry between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors) having the second-highest TV rating at 33.2 million viewers nationally. The data above effectively leads to the conclusion that in spite of the entertainment and diversity it leads to, competition doesn’t correspond to NBA success in the long term (as viewerships sink and money decreases proportionally).


Other than basketball, sports such as tennis have seen a proportional uptake in competitiveness. Just recently, Emma Raducanu surprised everyone when she won the U.S Open at just 18 years. She also broke history by becoming the first unranked tennis player entering the tournament, to win it in just her first time participating. She did this while having to win 10 matches instead of the 7 many of the players usually have to win in order to become champions. In that same tournament, Daniil Medvedev won his first Men’s U.S Open against the great Novak Djokovic. Unlike the NBA however, in this case, T.V ratings of the tournament actually peaked at 12.3 million viewers worldwide during both finals, respectively. Surprisingly, this adds a positive perspective towards competition in sports compared to the negative one depicted in the NBA which was rather evident through lower T.V ratings.


It is safe to say that as much as we love competition and diversity in the sports we watch, it has the power to impact them in different ways. The way in which competition is viewed by NBA spectators compared to sports such as tennis adds basis to this idea; while at the same time demonstrating the way in which the perception of competition changes according to the sport. However, as a new generation of athletes surges and rises to the top the same way Emma Raducanau did in the U.S Open, there is no doubt that competition will go nowhere in sports for the foreseeable future.



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