Page 13 - Sports Facts

Restaurants can’t turn on the volume if sports are playing on the TV!

Sports bars pay special fees to be able to show sports games. A restaurant would have to pay hefty fees to each league they broadcast within their building. To play an NFL game on their TV, they’d have to pay the Nation Football League a fee.

One exception is from section 110 of the copyright law: you can show the game to a big crowd, provided you’re not charging a fee for people to watch it and that when you tune in, you’re only using a single receiving apparatus of a kind commonly used in private homes.

Cable companies apparently periodically have done legal crackdowns on bars that subscribe to cable TV under a residential contract for display for patrons. The TV must be less than 55 inches to be shown at private parties.

There are actual auditors who go around and check how many people attend a bar for a game, because the special fees for broadcasting a game are partly calculated by how many will be attending.

(Source)

The American Sports industry is worth $422 billion and employs 1% of the population!

It’s almost common sense to know that the sports industry is one of the largest in America and brings in huge, billion dollar profits, but do you know just how big it actually is? It is well known that the star athletes make the headlines after being paid a couple million to play yet this still leaves billions left over after athlete’s salaries are paid. 

This is distributed between advertising, different leagues, team owners, coaches, physical therapists, and a variety of other jobs essential to the world of sports that most of us don’t consider. The total size of the American sport’s industry is believed to generate around $422 billion, with a whopping $27.8 billion spent on advertising. 

The NFL starts the list by generating around $9 billion in revenue. With 32 teams in the NFL the average team value is around $1 billion with around 66,957 spectators at each game. Next is baseball, bringing in a revenue of $7.2 billion with each team being worth an estimated $523 million.

Next is the NBA then the NHL, and NASCAR rounds out the bottom with $645.4 million. While these statistics may sound amazing, put in perspective the results are baffling. There are around 3 million American jobs invested in the sports industry, which is roughly 1% of the entire US population! To learn more about the sports breakdown, click below!

(Source)

Grunting in tennis actually gives you an advantage!

The grunt is technically a strong exhale that can be physically gratifying for the tennis player. The grunt is a psychological advantage in that some players feel they hit the ball harder when they grunt. It also serves as a powerful distraction. 

Grunting muffles the noise of the racket hitting the ball and keeps the opponent from hearing how hard the ball was struck. The ball is moving so fast, that the opponent will hear the hit before they see it. Grunting makes it nearly impossible to gauge the hit properly. It isn’t illegal to grunt, but the opponent can complain to the umpire about it.

 A study revealed the accuracy of the complaint that grunting can distract enough to affect performance. Scott Sinnett, assistant psychological professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa asked 33 undergrad tennis players to view videos of a tennis shot being hit toward them and quickly judge whether the ball would go to the left or to the right. 

After measuring their responses and accuracy, he asked them to do them same, but he covered up the hitting noise with a grunt. The students’ time and accuracy significantly decreased when they heard the grunts. 

(Source)

Baseball player Richie Ashburn hit a foul ball that struck a spectator and as they carried her away, he hit another foul ball and struck her again!

Ashburn played center field for the Philadelphia Phillies and was known by his nicknames Whitey, Putt-Putt, and The Tilden Flash. He grew up on a farm in Tilden, Nebraska. He batted left and threw right handed. During an August 17, 1957 game, Ashburn hit a foul ball into the stands that struck Alice Roth, the wife of Philadelphia Bulletin sports editor Earl Roth. It broke her nose. 

When playing resumed, Ashburn hit another foul ball that struck her again as she was being carried off on a stretcher. Ashburn and Roth were friends and remained so. Her son actually became a batboy for the Phillies in later years. The majority of Ashburn’s career was spent with the Phillies, but he went on to play for the Chicago Cubs for two years and the New York Mets for one year. He received six All Star awards and two NL batting titles.

(Source)

After the 1900 Olympics, croquet was discontinued because only 1 spectator watched the event.

A “forever alone” tale for the ages. You probably know what croquet is. At least, you probably know it’s that game where people hit balls with hammers to make them go through some things on the ground. For the purpose of this article, that’s all you need to know. The (new) Olympics, in their relatively early days, at one point decided to include croquet as a sport. 

The Olympic Committee is always adding in new sports year to year. In 1900, the Olympics were held in Paris, and France won every croquet event. Some of the first women Olympiads also competed in there. But it wasn’t that popular with the spectators. An Englishman travelled from Nice just to see this particular event. He was the only one. As a result, croquet has not come back to the Olympics. 

(Source)