I’d like to suggest we stop calling sports “escape”

It’s the opposite. It’s engagement. Sports fans aren’t running away from the negative, they are running toward the positive.

This all assumes that we even know what sports show for casual fan even looks like?

And a more important point: implied is the idea that this is the way to move casual fans down the avidity funnel… which it is not.

Is there a world where a casual fan stumbles upon a “casual fan oriented Sports Center” and doesn’t immediately flip away? Sure. It’s that a likelihood that a company should invest in? Absolutely not.

It’s a fair point and the analogy ain’t perfect… but I feel like the industry has gone down this road before, and it’s never worked because casual fans don’t watch this sort of content

Just what people not all that interested in sports want… a sports show.

Just put the same idea in a different context to get a sense of how silly this is… a chocolate bar for people who don’t love chocolate. Brilliant!