re: Anheuser-Busch joins Coke, Pepsi in skipping Super Bowl ads for iconic brands

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It is sort of bizarre how sports viewership is down across the board.

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Not really.

Starting in March the "powers that be" COMPLETLY shut down all sports. That included the NCAAT, the end of the NBA/beginning of playoffs, MLB opening day, etc. Thus, people were forced to go without sports for 3-4 months. More importantly, they were forced to adapt to living without sports for 3-4 months...and they did! After that they realized, maybe for the first time ever, they could live without sports.

Then, when sports returned, it wasn't the fun distraction sports fans love. It was sterile, joyless, absurdly overprotective version mixed in with a heavy dose of political/social justice messaging. Many of those same folks that had adapted to living without sports weren't terribly interested in this version so they didn't return with as much vigor as before. Some not at all.

6 months later we are still experiencing sports in the same manner. Much of the joy has been sucked out and we currently are looking no closer to returning to the experience we all knew and loved than we were 6 months ago. In person attendance is still minimal, if allowed at all and that doesn't look like it is going to change at least in the next 4 months (likely longer). As a result, apathy is setting in to more and more people.

I, like many others on here, am a huge sports fan. But 2020 is the most apathetic I have felt about sports...in my life. I was forced to live a life without sports as a big part of it and I have adapted to a large degree. It's no longer a shock to the system to not have a game to watch at night or on the weekends. The withdrawal symptoms are going away and it is almost like I'm "sobering" up from a long sports addiction. Of course, there are times where I "relapse" and I would LOVE to have the addiction take hold again once more. But right now its trending in the other direction with no real end in sight.