[quacked]

The thing about sports that require advertising is that they don't need to exist in the way they do now. If I could ban advertising, and the consequence is that the highest level of sports is now a less-funded, more localized set of players, I think that would actually be a net improvement on society.

Obviously some people would disagree, but therein lies the problem; if one group of people wants to have professional sports and saturate society with ads, and the other group doesn't want to be saturated with ads, then society is saturated with ads. It's the same as the noisy neighbor problem; if one neighbor is noisy, and the other is quiet, life is perfect for the noisy neighbor and hell for the quiet neighbor.

[brokenmachine]

I find it so odd that people can be intensely vocally supportive of a particular professional team from their home area, when it's just a bunch of sportsmen from all around mixed up to come below a salary cap, and has nothing to do with their geographic location at all.

I guess it's the same as brand worship, something else that doesn't resonate with me. I've bought good products from particular brands, but the brand doesn't in itself matter to me at all, only the particular product I'm interested in.