A timely and eye-opening look at the current and future landscape of sports.
An account of how professional sports is now “driven by data.”
Schoenfeld, the author of The Match and The Last Serious Thing, chronicles how high-tech, public relations–savvy, cutthroat entrepreneurs have turned professional sports into engines of profit. The author admits his debt to Michael Lewis’ 2003 bestseller, Moneyball, which tells the story of how the manager of an underfunded Major League Baseball team hired a mathematical analyst to mine the game’s vast statistics and tease out player attributes that won games without showing up in conventional metrics. For several years, he enjoyed spectacular success until other teams caught on. Having followed how analytics affected the game, Schoenfeld turns his attention to the franchises themselves. For decades, rich business owners bought teams like they bought yachts or racehorses. “You didn’t buy a sports team to make money,” writes the author, “you did it because you had money and wanted to do something fun with it.” Galvanized by the Moneyball story, a new generation of owners and front-office experts has turned teams into superefficient mega-corporations resembling those in which the owners had originally made their fortunes. Winning remains important, but many devoted fans will note that strictly following the numbers takes away much of the thrill. As dynamic agents of capitalism, modern sports franchises seem obsessed with keeping fans engaged (i.e., spending money) rather than entertained. Formerly verboten, sports betting has exploded, and franchises have expanded into real estate, fashion, concessions, and digital content. Combining in-depth research and illuminating interviews, Schoenfeld describes the transformation of a dozen organizations, emphasizing baseball and basketball but casting his net widely. He shows clearly how soccer, the world’s most popular game, has become the poster child for the transformation of professional sports—and the rebellion of dissatisfied fans. Read Moneyball first and then turn to this one.
A timely and eye-opening look at the current and future landscape of sports.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780393531688
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.
Prolific writer Benedict has long blended two interests—sports and business—and the Patriots are emblematic of both. Founded in 1959 as the Boston Patriots, the team built a strategic home field between that city and Providence. When original owner Billy Sullivan sold the flailing team in 1988, it was $126 million in the hole, a condition so dire that “Sullivan had to beg the NFL to release emergency funds so he could pay his players.” Victor Kiam, the razor magnate, bought the long since renamed New England Patriots, but rival Robert Kraft bought first the parking lots and then the stadium—and “it rankled Kiam that he bore all the risk as the owner of the team but virtually all of the revenue that the team generated went to Kraft.” Check and mate. Kraft finally took over the team in 1994. Kraft inherited coach Bill Parcells, who in turn brought in star quarterback Drew Bledsoe, “the Patriots’ most prized player.” However, as the book’s nimbly constructed opening recounts, in 2001, Bledsoe got smeared in a hit “so violent that players along the Patriots sideline compared the sound of the collision to a car crash.” After that, it was backup Tom Brady’s team. Gridiron nerds will debate whether Brady is the greatest QB and Bill Belichick the greatest coach the game has ever known, but certainly they’ve had their share of controversy. The infamous “Deflategate” incident of 2015 takes up plenty of space in the late pages of the narrative, and depending on how you read between the lines, Brady was either an accomplice or an unwitting beneficiary. Still, as the author writes, by that point Brady “had started in 223 straight regular-season games,” an enviable record on a team that itself has racked up impressive stats.
Smart, engaging sportswriting—good reading for organization builders as well as Pats fans.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982134-10-5
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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