Rush’s Timeless Wisdom: BLM Tanks Sports Ratings

CLAY: We had the Major League Baseball All-Star Game on Tuesday night, Buck. Monday was the Home Run Derby. The Major League Baseball All-Star Game nearly set an all-time low for viewership. Why? Because they made the decision that I think is the worst decision any commissioner’s ever made, Major League Baseball did, to move the All-Star Game out of Atlanta and lots of you out there who may be baseball fans, you chose not to watch.

Second lowest viewing for an All-Star Game that has ever existed, and it narrowly beat 2019 only because they changed the metrics by which they measure viewership to now include bars, hotel rooms, gyms, all these other places. Otherwise, it would have been substantially lower than we’ve ever seen before. This goes to my mantra, Buck, get woke, go broke. And Rush has talked about this before when it comes to sports.

RUSH: How about this, folks. “Ratings Crash for the NBA, Major League Baseball After Protest-Filled Debuts.” Who was it that predicted this was going to happen? I think it was your host. “As the NBA and Major League Baseball returned from their coronavirus-imposed hiatus, it appears that television viewers are not interested in what the increasingly woke leagues have to offer. With both baseball and basketball draped in all sorts of Black Lives Matter and social justice symbolism for their opening games, a substantially smaller number of fans tuned in to the rest of the week’s games.” The openers did okay, but after that (raspberry).

So, folks, it is clear, the American people, the majority, have no interest in watching something with BLM all over the pitcher’s mound, Black Lives Matter all over the signage in ballparks. They don’t want to tune in to watch a bunch of players kneeling during the American national anthem. They just don’t want to see it. And I hope the people in the NFL are watching this. I doubt it because I think Twitter runs American sports now. I think Twitter and Nike are running professional sports.

But I’m telling you, these ratings crashes have nothing to do with the fact that there aren’t any fans in the stadiums. The American people just don’t want to be preached to by a Marxist, pro-communist organization while they are trying to get enthused and excited about the return of major league professional sports. It’s not complicated to understand at all.

BUCK: The politicization of sports, Clay, is depressing, isn’t it? I think anybody who’s reasonable would say it was better before. It was better when everyone showed up to the ball game, whatever game we’re talking about and felt like we were all welcome, we’re all there to be entertained and inspired, and we are rooting for these players, and it was a great unifier. And now it’s just been polluted with not just politics. A lot of ignorant politics.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Let’s just be honest about it. Especially with the cop stuff and the defund and all this, it’s just madness.

CLAY: They made sports, which I believe, Buck, used to be one of the last truly unifying places, where you could go to a game, and you didn’t have to think about the race, the gender, the ethnicity, the religion, sexuality for sure, of any of the other fans around you. When your team won, that tribe was connected no matter what. And my position on this has been straightforward for years now.

The leagues are destroying their goodwill because you are alienating at least half, if not more, of your die-hard audience when you’re telling them, don’t watch because we have different political views than you. It makes no sense. You want to sell to everybody.