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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Well, this week we've been checking in on different art and entertainment sectors to see how they're starting to come back or planning to come back when the time is right. Today, we'll talk about spectator sports. The New York Knicks and the Brooklyn Nets have already started to allow fans back into home games, the hockey teams as well in New York and New Jersey. New York State and the state of New Jersey allowed this as of a few weeks ago.

We're just a couple of weeks away from opening day for baseball, which will now include a limited number of fans at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. Joining me now to talk sports reopenings, which present different challenges than for music and theatre is noted Mets fan, David Roth, editor and co-owner of Defector Media, a new sports blog, and worker-owned media company at that. David, this Queens boy who owns a T-shirt that says, "I'm still calling it Shay," welcomes you to WNYC. Thanks for coming on.

David Roth: Thanks very much. It's an honor to be here and to be around somebody else that owns that particular T-shirt.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Let's start with baseball, actually, how are they going to do it? 

David Roth: About the same way they're doing everything else. Right now it's going to start at 10%, and you'll need to show a negative PCR test if you're going to be able to get into the games and they're going to distance the seats and have people wear masks. It all feels like basically the accepted best practices that exist for opening anything, it's just that these are going to happen outdoors and people are going to be yelling a lot more than they would at the ballet.

Brian Lehrer: There is that. How do they do the PCR test?

David Roth: It's going to be the rule is basically you need to show a negative test result from three days or two days in some cases before the actual game itself. It's all catches catch can in terms of how you will be displaying those results. The Nets, want fans to download an app, which is very Brooklyn Nets of them, and have them then report through that. In all of these instances, it seems like the idea is, once you've shown that, you're on the honor system, they'll take a temperature check before you go in, but the rest of it they want you to wear a mask, but if you're actively eating or drinking, which I think could be just anybody brandishing a beer, they're trusting you not to be a jerk.

Brian Lehrer: The difference between the Nets app and the Knicks app is that the Nets app actually works.

David Roth: Yes. [chuckles] All of this has this kind of-- maybe I'm too suspicious about it but there's this element of disaster capitalism stuff about it where they want touchless payment, they want apps, all this stuff that it seems like teams were nibbling at before the pandemic, they're now like, "Oh, no, this is for your safety."

Which maybe I'm wrong to be suspicious about it. At this point, yes, it's hard to argue with any decision the Nets make.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners if you have a question or thought or maybe you're in the business in one way or another about spectator sports reopening in our area, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 for David Roth, editor, and co-owner of Defector Media, or you can tweet a question @BrianLehrer. You are kind of making the joke, but I think kind of not when you talk about the difference between this and going to the theater or going to a concert being that people are screaming, and of course, people do do that, cheering as a part of the spectator sports experience. How does that affect COVID risk, especially in the indoor spaces, like when you go to see a basketball or hockey game?

David Roth: I think as with anything to do with this last year, it's a question of personal risk management and what you're willing to accept. The indoor stuff is tough, they'd distance the seat pods, and at 10% it's really that means about 5,000 people at a Knicks game or Rangers game in New York, and roughly similar numbers in New Jersey, at the Rock.

I think that that is a low figure relative to where some different arenas are in different states, but I think that from my own personal standards, that is just about as high as I would be willing to go. At a baseball game, I think it's very different. From what we've seen over the last year being outdoors is decently safe, but you still have to get there, you still have to just-- all of it is just a series of bargains you make with yourself so that you can do a thing that you want.

Brian Lehrer: Many movie theaters aren't serving food, so people keep their masks on. Movie theaters were allowed to reopen for the first time in the city last weekend. I know they've been open in New Jersey and in the New York suburbs for a while but this is one of the concessions, which is no concessions. Are they going to do that at the ballparks or have they been doing that at the indoor arenas?

David Roth: It's somewhat limited, again, because of the people that are there, but they are doing it. What I was saying before in terms of the touchless or cashless stuff is what they're trying to do in terms of minimizing the amount of face-to-face time you have with someone when buying chicken fingers, but they're not going to stop selling chicken fingers, they make a lot of money on chicken fingers. That's the part of it where it's going to be some facsimile of normal that will then shade up as conditions improve, but what that means, for now, is that it's fewer people working at the concession stands and fewer interactions with them, but they can't afford to stop selling that. That's where they actually make their money on this.

Brian Lehrer: Tom in Palisade, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tom.

Tom: Hi. Good morning. My question is, how are they doing ticket sales at these outdoor stadiums with spread seating and distance seating, and how are they dividing it between season ticket holders and regular ticket sales? Because obviously, they can't fit as many people as they would shoulder to shoulder in the stadium is like they used to. I'm just wondering, who loses out? Are the season ticket  

holders losing out, or are they just reducing the amount of general sales?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Tom. David, have they announced this yet for Yankee Stadium or Citi Field?

David Roth: No. Right now most of what they've done in terms of messaging on it is making sure that season ticket holders are happy and know that they'll be taken care of which is what you'd expect. I think eventually it will be the sort of thing where general admission tickets will be harder to get but the business that they make the most money off the highest rollers is suits, and they are going to plan to open those more or less as normal, which would seem a little bit riskier, those are enclosed spaces but this is something that they're all going to have to manage.

So many of the not just season tickets, but if you get a ticket, like a seven-game pack or something like that to Mets or Yankees game, that involves access to these indoor club spaces that they're going to have to figure out how to deal with. If you go to a game and you have access to the Acela Club at Citi Field, there's people that just spend the whole game and they're watching on TV and drinking gin and tonic, and that's a very different experience than sitting outside six feet from a pod of other people doing the same thing.

Brian Lehrer: Chrissy in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Chrissy.

Chrissy: Hi. I'm just really a bit concerned with giving all my information out to the Brooklyn Nets. I essentially have to give up my medical history, a lot of credit card information, my residence to see a game. I don't know if I trust the Brooks enough to safeguard that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Chrissy. Well, David, is it medical history, in addition to your negative COVID tests within the last 72 hours, which is I think what it is?

David Roth: Yes. There's a little more stuff than I would feel comfortable doing myself.

Brian Lehrer: Really? This is interesting.

David Roth: I mean it's not like bad. It's just the thing where like, why would I give the Brooklyn Nets anything but my credit card number, you know what I mean? Like, it's the clear pass that they have, or the app and stuff like that. It's not super invasive but it is the sort of thing where it's more invasive than maybe you would want to do. Again, this is the type of question that you need to answer yourself but enough of it is jarring to me, for instance, you have to have a US identification, like a residence in order to get these like sort of things. You need to show that in order to get the app. There's just a lot of things in there where they stick out and not as disqualifying necessarily, but certainly as strange.

Brian Lehrer: How about the economics of it? Theaters and music venues, don't even know if they can make it in so many cases at 25% capacity and things like that. What are the economics of pro sports where players get paid millions of dollars? I

think most of the revenue at this point comes from television rights, not fans in the seats, but correct me if I'm wrong.

David Roth: No, it is. That's the cushion that they have that the Philharmonic does not. All of this money is already there from television deals, not just that the teams themselves have. The Yankees and the Mets own their own cable networks, it's not a problem there, but there's national television contracts, there's disbursements from the league. The teams did lose money last year, not being able to sell tickets, but I think that there's been a broader trend in baseball away from attendance being a major revenue support. The team like The Rays, which is usually, like if you're looking for the cutting edge of faintly squicky arbitrage in professional sports, the Rays usually it. They've already stopped--

Brian Lehrer: That's the Tampa Bay baseball team.

David Roth: Yes, sorry, I should be more specific. The Tampa Bay Rays have already tarped off the top section of their stadium, and they always had trouble selling those seats, but at some point, they just decided they'd rather not sell $15 tickets, that they'll sell $50 tickets to people who want them, and that the $15 thing was just not worth it for them. I don't think that the Mets or the Yankees we'll make that decision but it is the sort of thing that that is a trend that is broadly now in the equation. It'll be I would say interesting but it's probably more upsetting to see where it goes.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, David, do you think anything might change for spectator sports longer term as a result of the pandemic? Earlier in this series, our music guest, John Schaefer said he thinks live streaming concerts, which became a thing out of necessity over the last year, are here to stay as part of the music landscape. Do you think there's anything like that that applies to spectator sports?

David Roth: I think to a certain extent, in the same way, that live streaming concerts are probably here to stay but also as soon as you can go to shows again, I will be going to shows again. I think people will take what they can get with this. It's a question of how much that demand will come back. As much as I love watching sports on television, which I do, it really is very different to see it in person, I think, especially with a sport like baseball, like something that can be episodic and enervating watching it on television.

It's an experience, it's time outside with your friends. It's just there's not a substitute for it. I think that certainly, the demand is there. It's a question of how much the leagues are willing to do to invest in these other ways of watching it. So far, they seem pretty happy to stick with television because that's where the revenues are.

Brian Lehrer: I'll let you give a quick plug to your thing because it's New Defector Media, where you're not only editor, you're a co-owner, because it's a worker-owned media company. In such a capitalist thing as the sports world, what is a worker-owned sports journalism company?

David Roth: It's basically a bunch of people that had a bunch of bad experiences

being owned trying to figure out a way not to be owned while continuing to do our jobs. We all quit Deadspin in October of 2019, around the same time, just having had a very bad experience with our new ownership there. It took a while to figure out how to do this, and it needs to be subscriber-supported, which obviously you can probably empathize with that and the stresses of it, but we had this readership that was willing to follow us and was willing to pay to read what we do and we're viable six months out, where everybody's getting paid. We have health insurance through it.

It's just a question of trying to figure out for us, like not just new ways to give people bang for their buck, but just as somebody who has worked in freelance, writing online and stuff like that, there need to be more websites. Right now there's this narrowing that I think is both unhealthy and unfun. We want to try to help other sites do something like what we did just because there needs to be more good stuff to read.

Brian Lehrer: David Roth, Defector Media. Good luck with it. Thanks for coming on.

David Roth: Thanks very much.

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