Also an exaggerated sense of self-regard. I guess this is an ad for a tennis match?
I don’t know any of the people featured, and am not interested in learning more. I suddenly find myself even less interested in tennis than I was before.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I gave up on all sports long ago, when pro players became overpaid celebrities and the college football and basketball draft system became a nursery for uneducated, tattooed future sports heroes longing for the mega bucks. My disenchantment started when university coaches began getting paid millions when their underpaid faculty counterparts struggled to keep their jobs.
Far worse than “Sports organizations have way too much money”, it’s “totalitarian oil monarchies have way too much money”. This is Saudi Arabia sportswashing its awful human rights record. As well as this “6 male tennis players in search of cash” competition, the official Women’s Tennis Association is holding a tournament there in November.
I can’t think of anything positive about professional sport. Sport should be for fun and exercise.
Blood money.
I’m no expert on this kind of thing, but the video alone must have cost a couple of million to produce.
All the players are Europeans. Basically 4 of the top 5 plus two others (one of whom is an old champion about to retire).
Every business has too much money. Once it gets big enough, the money just gets bigger.
I don’t know what can be done about it.
Pro sports are part of the Entertainment Industry, with all the concomitant evils that capitalism encourages, with the added nastiness of often-hostile tribalism. The wealth of the top earners among the practitioners is just the most visible part of the grift (it’s perhaps worth noting that Placido Domingo’s net worth is comparable to that of David Beckham).
That said, there are many of us who appreciate the virtuosity of people who have devoted their lives to their pursuit. I loved playing football, and I love watching it played at the highest level. I never played music seriously, but I also love listening to music composed and/or played by dedicated professionals. That can be a dilemma, as it’s hard to avoid contributing to the status quo.
Of course, it’s easy for people who don’t care for a particular pursuit to insist it shouldn’t be professional at all. Opera singing should just be for fun! Tell that to the fanatics.
On the contrary, opera singing should be banned altogether!
Seriously, professional sport is inseparable from corruption, child abuse, toxic nationalism, toxic masculinity and the “sportswashing” of tyrannies. All those things have got far worse during my lifetime, as the shamateurism of the Olympics of tennis in my youth has been replaced by overt professionalism, which was supposed to improve things by getting rid of a layer of dishonesty, but did nothing of the kind. None of this is in any way new – the original Olympics were hotbeds of corruption, and violence between partisans of the “Blues” and the “Greens” in Constantinopolitan chariot-racing led to thousands of deaths. Justifying it by “People enjoy watching it” could apply to bear-baiting and for that matter, feeding criminals to the lions.
@8: Olympics and tennis.
How is saying there can be a dilemma justifying anything?
Not sure where the virtuosity is in bear-baiting, but eyes of the beholder, I guess.
PS My partial solution to the dilemma is to refuse paying for the streaming services which air English Premier League and Champions League matches. Fortunately for my habit, the major international tournaments are still carried by mainstream TV channels.
Haters gonna hate.
Rob Grigjanis@10,
It’s obvious you are justifying professional sport, whether you want to admit it or not.
Of course there’s virtuosity in bear-baiting! Both from particularly brave and skilful dogs, and from their trainers.
KG @13: Thanks for sharing what you find obvious. It has been noted and filed appropriately.
But, sporks is important to the sheople! It is one of the most important elements of the panem et circenses that sustains most of this society! We must all provide obscene amounts of money to sporks, just like we do to the xtian terrorist rtwingnut maga crowd!
(is that sarcastic enough?)
Welcome to the united states, entertaining ourselves to death
Money and blood drenched LIV golf anyone? Krooked Kushner is plotting with prince bonesaw again, WTF.
Basically what Rob wrote; professional sports are just part of the entertainment industry.
No different to singing and dancing and acting.
(Were there no money in it, it would not allow for professionalism)
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Also, it can’t be an ad for a tennis match, since there are 6 competitors and only 1 winner.
<clickety-click>
Obs, it’s a tournament, made up of multiple matches.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6_Kings_Slam)
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PS I did not watch the video.
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“I suddenly find myself even less interested in tennis than I was before.”
Ah well, better than no interest at all, then. :)
shermanj:
Um. “in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia”, which is not the United States (of America — there are also united states of Mexico).
(You might be entertaining ourselves to death, but clearly PZ is not)
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Point being, it’s not all about the USA, solipsistic as USAnians might be.
I was amazed that during the mass slander of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting, all the people who pretended to care about “women’s safety” and “protecting the children” had no objection to women and girls participating in a sport where they have a very high probability of suffering permanent brain injuries.
I went to shadow jail because I was (falsely) accused of thinking about self-harm. No one had actually accused me of self-harm or attempting suicide: merely of thinking about hypothetically doing it, and that was enough to get me incarcerated (and charged a medical bill for it). Why aren’t all professional boxers being arrested for “active boxing ideation?”
And then there’s thoroughbred horse racing, a sport that’s as dangerous for the athletes as boxing, except that none of the athletes get any say in whether they participate.
Where are you where you got imprisoned for thoughtcrime?!
Bekenstein Bound #20
Who are you addressing?
Wow, a VERY overlong advert that looked like “Assassins’ Creed” with touches of “X-Men Apocalypse”, “His Dark Materials”, and lots of other references to things that had sod-all to do with Tennis or Saudi Arabia or…anything else here on Earth for that matter. I guess it’s advertising a season of tennis matches in Riyadh. And I also guess they have lots of money to burn to make outlandish ads like this, now that they’ve admitted their Neom fantasy isn’t going to happen.
I also have to admit that these guys (pretty sure it’s not women calling the shots here) did a better job than the hacks doing all the NFL’s flashy video hype.
And what’s the deal with the Viking crew cowering in a testudo and getting sunk before their hero manages to hit the ball-of-fury? Was that a dig at White people? Or am I overthinking what may have been a mindless random assemblage of images and montages by a mindless random bunch of CGI artists?
Point being, it’s not all about the USA, solipsistic as USAnians might be.
Maybe not, but this particular ad had a good bit of English text, and background mood-noises that sounded like American rap/hip-hop. Not to mention the sort of over-the-top video effects I’ve seen in TV ads for Las Vegas casinos and on-line betting. So I’m guessing this ad is largely, though probably not exclusively, aimed at Americans.
I suddenly find myself even less interested in tennis than I was before.
Good point — once you’ve seen and ad like this, why would you want to watch a game that you know won’t be nearly as flashy or interesting as the outrageous spectacle you just saw? Not sure this ad is going to have the intended effect…
Raging Bee @22: “I guess it’s advertising a season of tennis matches in Riyadh.”
Me right now: had you read #17, you would not have to guess.
Ah, right. If it’s in English, it’s perforce USAnian.
Well, nobody could possibly dispute your prowess at guessing.
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Anyway, the money is from a very wealthy petrostate, not from the sports organisations.
(They are the recipients of the money, not the providers)
PS
Heh. A slightly different take to mine @17.
(Again, one cannot have less interest unless one previously had at least some interest)
Personally, I like sports and I think if people are going to do tribalism, it is better they pay people to do it and watch (and shake hands at the end) rather than practice it like they do in the Middle East. Is Russia being banned from international sport improving their behaviour or worsening it (isolation breeding paranoia).
Of course, I don’t like bad actors trying to buy themselves respectability. But this is not inherent in sports, or even in professional sport. Governments could prevent this if they were determined enough. They drove tobacco advertising out of sport, they can do it with other bad actors.
#18 John Morales
You like to be precise. So, just for funsies:
CIA World Factbook says the name in English is just Mexico. If you translate it out (and Mexican-Americans here in Los Angeles agree with me, I know you are originally from Spain so maybe it’s different in castellano?), it’s United Mexian States.
Seachange, I do appreciate precision; even so, “Welcome to the united states, entertaining ourselves to death” does not obviously exclude the United Mexian States.
BTW, when I was a lad in school in Spain in the 60s and very early 70s, we called it ‘Mejico” and pronounced it ‘Mejico’. The ‘x’ as a ‘j’ was seen as an archaism. Or so I recall.
@20
Every U.S. state mandates incarceration for “suicidal ideation” or some synonym. They sometimes use euphemisms like “involuntary committal.” People with certain jobs, including medical doctors, are required to report you if they believe you have such thoughts.
(I don’t think it’s quite accurate to equate it with “thoughtcrime” from 1984, because in that book the government has the power to actually read your thoughts, whereas in the real world, you can only be punished for thinking about suicide if you make someone else aware you are thinking about it, either through words or actions.)
Back on topic, the sports organizations I interact with the most are university sports teams. I don’t mind that they exist, in the same way other extracurricular activities on campus exist. I do, however, mind that they are given far more funding than other extracurricular and even academics.
183231bcb, you are mistaken.
“I don’t think it’s quite accurate to equate it with “thoughtcrime” from 1984, because in that book the government has the power to actually read your thoughts” is an entirely false claim.
There was no such power in the book, it was entirely informants and surveillance and suspicion.
(The thought police were basically the Stasi on steroids)
(Perhaps you’re thinking of that silly movie with whatshisname)
183231bcb@30:
So, the US thinks the best thing to do with suicidal people is to make their lives even worse? Also, you have very strong guarantees of freedom of speech, but there are illegal thoughts?
Let me guess, this was lobbied for by the for-profit medical industry to ensure some captive customers — literally.
Meanwhile, it looks like my time of being utterly disinterested in tennis is coming to a middle.
Bekenstein Bound, you should really take that claim about being committed if a doctor even suspects you have such thoughts with a bit of caution.
As for the guessing game, heh. Guess away.
(It’s always regulatory capture, no?)
Table tennis is a form of tennis.
Well, nobody could possibly dispute your prowess at guessing.
Nor could anyone dispute your prowess at cherry-picking sentences to pretend you can refute.