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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

It is ok if you don't like sports (which is obvious from your comments about Tokyo, London, and Paris which all have notably big sports cultures), but you don't have to pretend that other people don't find value in it.

A city with a sports team benefits in numerous intangible ways. These teams serve as marketing for a city, both internationally and externally. It is a marker of quality for a city, a stamp of approval. They help contribute to a public identity of a city. There is value in having a communal identity. It unites people and helps them work together on more serious problems.

People also love following the local sports team. Yes, this is entertainment similar to other forms, but it can often be free. You don't need to buy tickets to a game to enjoy it. For example, every soldout NFL game is broadcast for free over-the-air in their local market. Marvel movies don't premier for free on the TV in my home.

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> It is ok if you don't like sports (which is obvious from your comments about Tokyo, London, and Paris which all have notably big sports cultures)

It's amazing how twisted adult mindsets about sports are. Notice how not caring about watching pro sports teams is, in your mind, "not liking sports." As if the primary function of "sports" is to be watched, rather than, y'know, played.

> It is a marker of quality for a city, a stamp of approval.

I really don't think so. It's more likely that causation works the other way: cities that are successful tend to attract sports teams to take advantage of the local market.

Take Seattle: lost its NBA team, lost its NHL team until very recently. Was just found to be the most desirable city for new college grads anyway. Nobody's been thinking that Seattle sucks because they only had two of the four major US pro sports present in the region.

We are talking about the context of publicly funded professional sports stadiums. Unless you are a professional athlete, we are talking about watching and not participating in sports.

You didn't say "It is ok if you don't like watching sports."

The way people frame and phrase things is quite revealing.

Seriously, this is what you are focusing on in my comments? I tried to engage with you in a constructive conversation about this issue, but I guess forget that because I wasn't 100% explicit that when talking about funding professional sports stadiums that we are talking about watching rather than participating in sports.

> Seriously, this is what you are focusing on in my comments?

What are you talking about? I responded with multiple points. Look at the comment chain.

You responded with multiple points. I responded with multiple points. Then you responded with only the comment about watching/playing sports. You then edited in the point about Seattle after I already responded. Now you are acting like I am the one focusing too much on this semantics issue. This is genuinely weird behavior and I'm done with it.

I edited it in immediately after posting the comment, I tend to review what I initially wrote after replying and then extend or refactor the comment. But you're still not responding to it.

I don't like adding more noise to the comments, but since you seem to have a serious question as to why:

> It is ok if you don't like sports (which is obvious from your comments about Tokyo, London, and Paris which all have notably big sports cultures), but you don't have to pretend that other people don't find value in it.

Your comment would have been sooo much better if it hadn't started with a personal insult.

I am also not convinced about your argument there. I have no idea about what teams or even what kinds of sports teams those cities have, yet to me those cities are famous. I see little connection with a city's fame and sports in general except for rare circumstances. I may know for some cities that there also are sports teams, but I doubt those cities' fame was much changed by having them. I'm sure there's one or the other anecdote where a city became significantly more famous because of some team, but I doubt that this is even close to significant. For example, I think the German founder of SAP sponsored a local soccer team which let them buy a lot of to players, and with it he made an unknown town (and an unknown local team) kind of famous. That's not exactly the norm. Usually even such magnates prefer already well-known cities for their pet teams.

I wouldn't consider "It is ok if you don't like sports" to be an insult and I certainly didn't intend it that way. I apologize if that came off too hostile. It was simply meant as a recognition of the obvious, that this person did not see any value in professional sports.

I'm not saying Tokyo, London, and Paris are famous only because of sports. That would be ridiculous. I am saying that sports is a part of their cultural identity. It provides unity to those cities. It helps attract people to those cities. Those cities are also historic. This effect is more prominent in cities with less history. For example, Buffalo and Rochester are two metro areas in New York of roughly equal size. I would bet that many Americans could tell you a lot more about Buffalo than Rochester and that is likely because of Buffalo's two professional sports teams.

This is definitely true to an extent, and sports absolutely help with recognition. However, as native Rochesterian, and unashamed Bills and Sabres fan, with close ties to Buffalo, although the population numbers are similar, now, Buffalo was once a much larger city than Rochester, and still feels significantly larger. This probably accounts for some of Buffalo being a much more recognizable place than Rochester, too.

> Nobody's been thinking that Seattle sucks because they only had two of the four major US pro sports present in the region.

A part of the reason why I live where I live is good access to live sports I'm interested in. Even within the city where I currently live, I chose the area in the city based on good transit options to the stadiums or decently close geographic distances. While it wouldn't be a deal breaker to move to a place where I don't have access to those live sports, it would be a part of the considerations on my move. And then its not even just the sports but also all the other events which go on at such stadiums and venues.

I wouldn't say Seattle sucks because they didn't have an NHL team, but it absolutely would have impacted my math on moving at least some amount and would have affected where I would have decided to live in Seattle or the surrounding area. Now that they are soon to have an NHL team again, I'm more likely to find it agreeable to move there. I wouldn't even consider myself a major sports fanatic.

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