“I’m tired of hearing about money, money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.” -Shaquille O’Neal

The integration of sports and media has moved professional sports like baseball, basketball and hockey away from their values of triumph through struggle and towards commercialization and profit.

After a recent Chicago Blackhawk’s game I felt degraded and ripped off. And it had nothing to do with the game, which was a nail-biter that ended in overtime and a shootout. It had everything to do with the constant barrage of print and digital commercials, the six-dollar bottles of water, and the fact that a 60-minute game somehow stretched to 3 ½ hours.

Now I know time must be taken to clean the ice. And I love watching the Zamboni do it’s thing as much as the next fan.

I also know that it’s difficult to even imagine professional sports without the mind numbing presence of advertising. We rely on commercialism to do the simple things in life like take bathroom breaks during TV timeouts and financially support broadcasting the games we love to follow.

The problem with commercialism in professional sports is how dependent the leagues have become on an unsustainable advertising model in the last two decades.

The most infuriating part of this brightly lit picture is that, with all the increased ad revenue, ticket prices have not gone down a bit. Big businesses are able to buy up dozens of seats at a time while season ticket holders are allowed to buy tickets before the general public and sell them at a mark up. The spectacle of live professional sports is consistently out of reach for many American families.

Academic Hans Lobmeyer correctly argues “among the most important factors that made a commercialization of sports in the U.S. possible are the unique legal standing of the professional sports leagues and the heavy involvement of the media.” Professional leagues are not held to the same legal restrictions that other businesses are. The leagues are allowed to function as monopolies without breaking antitrust laws. In turn, TV stations can afford to pay the increasingly more expensive broadcasting rights due to the high sums they can command for commercial spots.

Commercialism has also profoundly altered how athletes are represented in pro sports. It’s near impossible to relate to an athlete as a person because they are now branded commodities that make millions more than most of us can imagine. The economic ramifications of this are disturbing. After all, what does it really mean to “Be like Mike”?

John F. Kennedy put it eloquently when he said “We are inclined that if we watch a football game or baseball game, we have taken part in it.” That’s the magic, energy, and passion of live sports that can’t be denied. Whether you like soccer or hockey or neither, whether you live in a big city or a small town, in America or halfway across the globe, there is a uniting power to live sports that we are in danger of losing to something as trivial as an unamusing Budweiser commercial.