If sports teams were doing so well with their political stances, they wouldn’t see a sharp decline in ratings and interest. Take the NBA, for example. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 34.5% of respondents watched fewer sports due to social justice campaigns. Specifically, 19% of liberals and 53% of conservatives watched less. Clearly, the American people don’t want woke sports. They watch sports to disconnect.
Additionally, it’s hard to stomach the virtue-signaling from the NBA and its players, knowing that they are hypocrites who support communist China. It’s true, the NBA has a multi-decade/ multibillion-dollar relationship with Communist China for media rights, streaming, merchandise sales and much more. Players have nauseatingly lucrative deals with Chinese apparel and shoe manufacturers. Because USA Basketball makes significant money from China, they refuse to acknowledge the CCP’s treatment of the Uyghurs.
The average NBA fan hasn’t heard of the Uyghurs. That’s not a testament to anything other than a lack of mainstream media coverage of their plight. The Uyghurs are a Turkish-speaking, mostly Muslim minority residing in Far West China. Uyghur historians viewed them as the original inhabitants of Xinjiang. The Chinese Communist Party disagrees; therefore, they are systematically exterminating the Uyghurs. By the millions, the men are imprisoned in concentration camps like Nazi Germany. The women are forced into sterilization, abortion or the unauthorized sale of their young children into Chinese factory slave labor. Recent footage shows hundreds of Uyghur men, handcuffed, blindfolded and heads shaved, herded onto a train bound for a secret camp. This is slavery. According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, some of these slaves make Nike basketball shoes. Senator Josh Howley R-MO alleges that these slaves also make the Nike NBA uniforms.
Has the NBA issued a statement denying or admonishing this? NO. Have they painted the court or taken a knee for the Uyghurs? NO. There is total ambivalence because they are complicit and reliant on the infusion of cash. It’s pay-for-play selective activism.
So, when we see these players and teams canceling folks like us on the right, know that they are hypocrites and their ratings are paying the price. The only hope is to Make Sports Great Again by keeping politics off the court, off the field, off the medal podium BEFORE it gets taken OFF the air for lack of interest.
