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      in Soccer

      The Hidden Gem of Sports Travel: USMNT Away

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      One of the essential, and unsung, experiences in American sports fandom requires you to leave American soil altogether.Every four years, the United States men’s soccer team embarks on a monthslong journey to qualify for the World Cup, bouncing around North and Central America and the Caribbean for an excruciatingly tense series of high-stakes matches against regional rivals. That these games need to be experienced in person to be truly understood has become a well-worn trope for the team’s players, who often struggle at first to adapt to the surroundings.Fans, it turns out, have been saying the same among themselves for years. These traveling supporters — a small group of American fans afflicted at once with a borderline irrational sense of team loyalty and an insatiable wanderlust — are the road warriors of Concacaf, the regional confederation that includes the United States and its hemispheric neighbors. They are, in some way, a breed apart as fans: reveling in the opportunities for international exchange, seeing beauty in cultural and competitive differences, brushing aside warnings (warranted or not) about personal safety and absorbing the often considerable expense associated with following their national team.“Soccer is the catalyst to get us to visit these places, but we dive into the full experience, and we leave with a better understanding of a country, and often an affinity for it,” said Donald Wine, 38, of Washington, who is one of the half dozen or so fans planning to attend all 14 games in the final round of the 2022 World Cup qualification cycle: seven in the U.S., and seven outside it.The quest, though, has taken on a new level of urgency in the current qualifying cycle because the beloved rite, in its current form, has an expiration date. Qualifying for the World Cup will look vastly different heading into the 2026 tournament, when the field expands to 48 teams from 32, and the United States is expected to qualify automatically as a host. After that, the Concacaf region will receive about twice as many berths in the tournament as it does now: Given its comparative strength against its regional rivals, that could grant the United States a relatively suspense-free path through qualifying for generations.Ray Noriega, top left, has been hit with a battery in Costa Rica and a coin in Mexico. Donald Wine plans to attend 14 road qualifiers in this cycle. On Thursday, he and thousands of U.S. fans were in Texas to see the United States beat Jamaica. The return match is in Kingston next month.That means the journey — for the players and the fans — will never be the same.“I’ve told everybody going into this qualifying cycle, ‘If you weren’t able to do the other ones, do this one, because this is the last time we’re going to feel this pressure,’” said Ray Noriega, of Tustin, Calif., who attended every game of the U.S. team’s past three World Cup qualifying cycles and plans to do the same this time around. “It does feel like the last hurrah.”It is that pressure, fans say, that gives everything else meaning, that has for years inflated the underlying tension and the atmosphere at stadiums. Each game, each trip to another country, offers another chance to be surprised. It happened last month, for instance, when the team began its qualifying campaign in El Salvador.Only a couple of dozen Americans made the trip. Before kickoff, they were corralled at the stadium by the local police and shepherded to their seats against a wall behind one goal. To the Americans’ surprise, as they took their seats, the local fans around them began to clap. People in the next section over noticed and began to applaud, too. Soon, much of the packed stadium rose to their feet to give the visiting spectators a loud standing ovation. The Americans were dumbfounded.“I’ve never seen that before,” said Dale Houdek, 49, of Phoenix, who has attended more than 100 U.S. national team games (both men’s and women’s), “and I don’t know if I’ll ever see that again.”The warmth can be a pleasant surprise because, inside the stadiums at least, there is always potential for hostility.“I’ve been hit with a battery in Costa Rica,” Noriega said. “I’ve been hit with a coin in Mexico. I’ve been hit with a baseball in Panama — I guess they say they’re a baseball country.”But the frequent travelers insist such incidents are rare. The huge majority of people they meet, they said, are more interested in taking pictures, trading stories, swapping shirts and scarves, and offering advice on local attractions.Given some of the complexities of travel for these games, particularly now amid a global pandemic, the traveling fans coordinate with the team before most trips. A security specialist who works for the United States Soccer Federation connects with the American Outlaws, the team’s largest organized fan group, to help orchestrate movements on match day, arranging police escorts (if necessary), finding secure lodging and choreographing their entrances and exits from the stands.Attending matches with organized groups in the U.S. offers the familiarity of friendly crowds. For Dale Houdek and Kelly Johnson, top left, years of trips abroad yielded a different kind of close encounter with one American player.“We’re always a phone call away if they need anything,” said Neil Buethe, the federation’s chief spokesman.The fans who travel around Concacaf have come to feel like a subculture within a subculture — one with a certain level of disposable income and flexibility with work and family. Travel and expenses for a typical three-game window can run a few thousand dollars.“My dad says this is my Grateful Dead,” Max Croes, 37, of Helena, Mont., said of following the team around the world. A handful are so devoted to the cause that they plan to fly next month to Kingston, Jamaica, for a game that seems likely to take place behind closed doors, without fans, on the off chance the rules change at the last minute and they can attend.“And if not, it’s Jamaica — there are worse places to not see a soccer game,” said Jeremiah Brown of Austin, Texas, who is trying to see the full set of qualifiers this cycle with his wife, April Green.For the pure magnitude of the occasion, though, one destination stands apart from the rest.“Mexico,” said Ivan Licon, of Austin, “is its own beast.”Games at Mexico City’s enormous Estadio Azteca — where visiting fans are caged in fencing, ostensibly for their own protection — can inspire fans to break out a multiplication table to describe its appeal:“It’s college football times 10,” said Licon, a die-hard Texas A&M fan who plans to attend every road qualifier this cycle.“It’s the Red Sox and Yankees times 20,” said Boris Tapia, of Edison, N.J.More Americans are getting the memo. Before the 2014 World Cup, a few hundred fans attended the Americans’ qualifier in Mexico. Before the 2018 tournament, the U.S. contingent, the fans estimate, was closer to 1,000. The teams will renew their rivalry at the Azteca in March, when the teams are in the final stretches of qualification.Soccer, though, is just part of the appeal of these trips. Fans happily listed side quests that had made the travel extra special: surfing at dawn in Costa Rica; hiking in the mountains in Honduras; witnessing one of the world’s largest Easter celebrations in Guatemala; spontaneously carrying baby turtles to the sea in Trinidad; adopting a donkey on the island of Antigua.“His name is Stevie,” Wine said. “We still get updates on him.”Devotion to the U.S. team can take unique forms. The explosion of joy in seeing it score, though, is more of a shared experience.The smaller countries, and the more modest venues, have their own appeal. At the Estadio Olimpico in Honduras last month, about two dozen American fans were tucked into one corner of the packed stadium, a freckle of red in a sea of blue. Honduran fans offered them bags of plantain chips doused in hot sauce. When the American team mounted a comeback, the Honduran fans, in a surprise development, began pelting their own players with bags of drinking water that were being sold outside the stadium.There was not a single digital screen in the stadium, not another source of light in the surrounding sky, giving the night a timeless quality.“The experience is so pure,” Houdek said.The lower-profile trips also have a way of breaking the fourth wall that typically separates fans from the team.Kelly Johnson, 44, of Phoenix, recalled getting to know the former national team defender Geoff Cameron after she and Houdek, who is her boyfriend, kept crossing paths with him in hotels and airports over the years.A few years ago, Johnson messaged Cameron on Facebook as she and Houdek prepared for a vacation in England, where Cameron was playing professionally. She didn’t expect a response, but Cameron surprised her not only by getting them tickets to a game, but also inviting them to his home and taking them out for lunch.That, she said, symbolized the serendipity of national team travel.“Random things happen,” she said. More

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      in Soccer

      Park Ji-Sung, Former Manchester United Player, Condemns Racist Fan Song

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      Park Ji-Sung, who played soccer with the team from 2005 to 2012, said a song stereotyping Koreans was “very uncomfortable to me.”Park Ji-Sung, a fan-favorite former player for Manchester United, asked the soccer club’s fans on Sunday to stop singing a song in his honor that includes the racist stereotype that Koreans eat dog meat.As a decorated midfielder for the team from 2005 to 2012, Park earned the adoration of the team’s fans, who bestowed upon him a common honor in the soccer world: a song or chant, often performed in the stadium, with lyrics intended to praise him.But the reference to dog meat was “very uncomfortable to me,” even though he was proud that fans made a song for him and he understood they did not intend to offend or hurt him, he said on an official team podcast released on Sunday.He thought he had to accept it, he said, having come to Britain from South Korea as a young player who was unfamiliar with the culture. But he heard fans sing the song again in August when Hwang Hee-chan, a South Korean, made his debut for the Wolverhampton Wanderers in a game against Manchester United.“I should probably speak out more loud this time,” Park said on the podcast. Even if fans didn’t mean any offense, he said, “I have to educate for the fans to stop that word, which is these days usually a racial insult to the Korean people.”Manchester United said in a statement that it “fully supports Ji-sung’s comments and urges fans to respect his wishes.”References to dog meat have long been used as an attack on Koreans overseas, a stereotype rooted in the country’s longstanding battle over the ongoing, but diminishing, practice of raising dogs for human consumption. Most Koreans do not eat dog meat now; a September 2020 survey by Nielsen found that 84 percent of Koreans either have never eaten it or do not intend to do so in the future.The culture has “changed enormously” over the decades and even more rapidly in recent years, said Lola Webber, a director of campaigns to end dog meat consumption for Humane Society International. Most younger Koreans are appalled by the thought, she said, though some older Koreans still seek out the meat at specialized restaurants.“It is not part of mainstream culture by any means in South Korea,” she said. “It hasn’t been for a very long time, but especially in the last few years, there’s been a very vocal opposition.”Last week, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea suggested banning the consumption of dog meat, recognizing it as an international embarrassment.The world’s top soccer clubs have consistently wrestled with racist behavior by some of their fans. In 2017, Romelu Lukaku, who is Black, asked Manchester United fans to stop singing a song for him that contained a racial stereotype. Some fans refused, following the song with a new one: “We’re Man United, we’ll sing what we want.” More

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      in Golf

      At the Ryder Cup, the Fans Are Part of the Show

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      The most un-golf golf tournament in the world brings camaraderie, rambunctiousness and world-class banter to a sport normally played in hushed tones.At the Ryder Cup, fans are everything.They bring excitement to the biennial match, which starts this week at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin on the Lake Michigan shoreline. But they also provide an energy that can swing a match or sway an entire day of competition. For three days, Ryder Cup fans make golf feel like football, shaking a normally staid sport and transforming a quiet golf course into a packed stadium.Ben Crenshaw knows that power well. A four-time Ryder Cup player — and two-time Masters champion — he was captain of the 1999 U. S. team that mounted one of the greatest comebacks in the event’s history. Down four points heading into the final day, Crenshaw’s American squad rallied on Sunday at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., to win by one point.“The ebb and flow of the tenor of the crowd is an amazing thing to watch,” Crenshaw said. “Emotions can change very quickly. As a player you know what’s going on. You sort of sense it by instinct.”That afternoon in 1999, the key shot was made by the American Justin Leonard who sank a 45-putt on the 17th hole at Brookline. The crowd erupted. “There was no one on the face of this planet who would have given Justin Leonard a chance to make that putt,” Crenshaw said. “Seeing it go in, it was like a lightening bolt. We lost our composure. We had to apologize for that. But it was just in the moment.”The Ryder Cup, the most un-golf golf tournament in the world, brings camaraderie, rambunctiousness, singing, hollering and world-class banter to a sport normally played in hushed tones.Team Europe golfer Ian Poulter of England walks past a group of enthusiastic supporters during a practice round at the 2012 Ryder Cup in Medinah, Ill.Jeff Haynes/REUTERSThe question that concerns many people this year is, what will the Ryder Cup be like with the Delta variant surging and international travel a challenge? It’s going to be different for sure, but not so different as to be unrecognizable. For one, there will still be fans. Their importance was one reason the P.G.A. of America, which is the host of the event in the United States, did not try to stage the Ryder Cup last year without them.“We held a P.G.A. Championship without fans [in 2020], but a Ryder Cup without fans isn’t a Ryder Cup in our view or anyone’s view,” said Seth Waugh, chief executive of the P.G.A. of America. “We were able to roll it ahead to get to this year when we could have a Ryder Cup with a full fan experience.”Waugh said he was pleased that very few European fans had asked for refunds, even though the P.G.A. offered them no questions asked. He said he was hopeful there would be a robust European crowd at Whistling Straits.Jubilant fans have always been a part of the competition. The first Ryder Cup was held in 1927 at Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts. Two of the great players of that time, Walter Hagen from the United States and Ted Ray from Britain were the captains.Ray was well known in the Boston area: He and Harry Vardon, another great British golfer, had lost the 1913 U.S. Open in a playoff to Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old amateur, at the Country Club in Brookline.In that first Ryder Cup contest, the American side easily won, with 9½ points to Britain’s 2½ points. In defeat, Ray “heavily praised the crowds for being nonpartisan, his players were troubled by the many photographers,” according to the club’s history.And so was born the Ryder Cup tradition of players trying to find their footing on foreign ground with a decided home-field advantage.Before 1979, the United States had dominated the Ryder Cup. From that first match at Worcester in 1927 to 1977 when it was played at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in England, the Americans won 18 times to Britain and Ireland’s three, with one tie.But starting in 1979, with the inclusion of European players, particularly Seve Ballesteros of Spain, the event drew greater fan support. Since then, Europe has won 11 times to the U.S. team’s eight wins (and one tie).“I’m not sure if Seve was the catalyst for the Ryder Cup change, but once he was included it became competitive again,” said David Smith, an English professional golfer turned golf course developer. “It became fun. Now there’s an opportunity for both sides to win.”The European team celebrates its victory at the 1985 Cup in Wishaw, England.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty Images/Getty ImagesThis year’s European squad will include Ian Poulter, an English golfer ranked 49th in the world who has had an outsized influence on the Ryder Cup over six appearances. He has a record of 14 wins, six losses and two ties. (For comparison, Tiger Woods has a record of 13 wins, 21 losses, and three ties over eight appearances.)“Ian Poulter’s trying to get the crowd charged up,” Smith said. “You don’t normally have people screaming and chanting when you’re teeing off on the first tee.”If you were rooting for the European side in 1999, the American fans’ enthusiasm was over the top.Davis Rowley, a real estate broker and a longtime Brookline member, volunteered as a marshal at the 1999 Ryder Cup and said he tried to keep the worst of the rowdiest fans in check.“I was stationed on the 15th hole, which was the main entrance to the club,” he said. “I had four to six Boston College football players at my disposal. At one point, another marshal relayed that there were a couple of inebriated fellows on 15 tee that were heckling the heck out of Montie [Colin Montgomerie]. At my command, my boys went up and threw them out.”But that control was lost when Leonard sank his putt. “The place exploded,” Rowley recalled. “There was just this roar that shook the course.”The nature of fans is that the opposite side does not always agree. “Crenshaw at Brookline whipped the fans up,” said Andrew “Chubby” Chandler, a longtime agent for players on the European Tour. “It was a pretty unpleasant atmosphere. It was about as volatile an atmosphere as I’ve ever been to at a Ryder Cup.”Crenshaw, for his part, doesn’t deny that he played to the crowds. “I plead guilty to exciting the fans,” he said. “I was going out in my cart, and I’d see a whole bunch of fans and I’d raise my hands. They’d acknowledge that. But it was much the same way as Seve was doing in Spain.”That was the previous Ryder Cup at Spain’s Valderrama Golf Club in 1997. The Europeans won that contest by a point with Ballesteros as the team captain.Playing in the Ryder Cup, particularly for first-time participants, is difficult. “The one thing rookies don’t realize and expect is how nervous they’re going to be,” Chandler said, noting the noise on the first tee. “They’ve all played in majors, and they’ll be more nervous than that. I could never imagine that Darren Clarke [a five-time Ryder Cup player] would be so nervous on the driving range and then go birdie the first three holes.”Padraig Harrington, this year’s European captain, cited the need for experience in the selection of his team. “The older guys bring something, but the younger guys bring a huge amount of passion,” he said. “They light the fire in the team room for the old guys. You know the young guys can play. But you need those veterans as well. There’s an equilibrium point.”Changes have been made to the course at Whistling Straits, like flattening steep mounds, widening carts paths and putting the concessions on an adjacent course that won’t be in use during the competition, to move people around more easily under Covid protocols, said Jason Mengel, director of the Ryder Cup. But what matters most this year is that fans will be there in person.“People haven’t been able to root for their country in quite some time,” Waugh said. “The animal spirits are high.” More

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      in Basket

      The W.N.B.A.'s Seattle Storm Are Winners. The City Should Fully Embrace Them

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      Inside the arena, Seattle Storm fans bring the passion. Outside, the city has yet to fully embrace a team that has won four W.N.B.A. championships.SEATTLE — What do I have to do around here to buy a cap that reps the best team in women’s basketball?That’s what I was thinking last week as I walked the streets of downtown Seattle, home of the W.N.B.A. champions, the Storm.In sports paraphernalia shops, I hunted for a green-and-gold Storm cap, a T-shirt, or maybe a replica of the team’s new black jerseys, anything that would show off my love for one of the premier teams in sports.What I found were stores filled with Seahawks, Mariners and Washington Huskies swag. I saw eager customers buying caps affixed with the ice blue “S” that represents the Kraken, the new N.H.L. team in town. The Kraken’s first game isn’t until next month.Each time I asked for Storm merchandise, I was met with bewilderment and surprise. One salesperson suggested Storm gear would surely sit untouched because of the demand for Russell Wilson jerseys. Another told me she could sell me a Storm bumper sticker, but she wasn’t sure where it was.Disappointed, I drove to a nearby suburb and found a sporting goods store in a mall. Here my question was answered with this:“Who are the Storm?”A series of championships has still not generated broad support outside core fans.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesIn their 21 years of existence, the Storm have been remarkably consistent. They hold four W.N.B.A. titles. The first came in 2004. The last in 2020. As the league heads into this season’s playoffs, which start this week, they are once again among its top four teams and stand a good chance of repeating as champions.Leading the reigning champions are three athletes of remarkable distinction. Jewell Loyd is an offensive spark plug with a game fashioned after Kobe Bryant, who was one of her mentors. Breanna Stewart, the league M.V.P. in 2018, is possibly the best player in the women’s game. Sue Bird, one of her sport’s few breakout stars, has spent her entire professional career in Seattle.These three women helped the United States win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. At the opening ceremony, Bird carried the American flag in the parade of athletes.That’s who the Storm are.And yet in the stores I visited last week and on the streets of a city that touts itself as deeply progressive, I saw nothing to indicate that Seattle has a W.N.B.A. team, let alone passion for one.Merchandise is a metaphor, a signpost of something else: cultural capital. They don’t call all those hats, shirts, jerseys and sweatshirts “swag” for nothing, and the prevalence of it — or, in this case, the lack of it — speaks to something profound.The signal sent when gear is so hard to find and so rarely seen? Women remain an afterthought, which hits especially hard for a team sport played predominantly by Black women.The players notice.“You don’t see us repped as much as we should be,” Loyd told me, still sweating after a hard practice last week. “It is almost impossible to find a jersey. We are like a hidden gem. To put all of this work into something and we are not seen, what else do we have to do? We’ve won championships here and brought value to our city, and yet you can’t find a jersey?”Storm guard Jewell Loyd is one of the team’s stars.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThere is nuance to this story, though. True, in its 25th year, the W.N.B.A continues to struggle for hearts and minds. But after last season, when the league burnished its reputation for excellence and solidified itself as a leader in the fight for social justice, it is also making inroads.While viewership for most sports is declining in an era of cable television cord-cutting, the W.N.B.A.’s national broadcast ratings are on the rise. Player salaries are climbing, too, and several of the league’s stars feature in national advertising campaigns for large corporations. Eight players signed deals recently to represent Nike’s Jordan Brand, a number once unthinkable. In a first, one enduring star, the Chicago Sky’s Candace Parker, fronts the popular NBA 2K video game.The league has also successfully courted backing from companies such as Google, Facebook, AT&T, Nike and Deloitte, the professional services firm helmed by Cathy Engelbert before she moved to the W.N.B.A. in 2019 to serve as its commissioner.When I interviewed her last week, Engelbert spoke of the need to change and amplify the league’s narrative. She hailed the devoted, diverse, youthful and socially progressive fan base. She wants the W.N.B.A. valued in new ways that go beyond old metrics like Nielsen ratings.When I mentioned I rarely saw Storm gear in Seattle, my hometown, she hardly seemed surprised.“We need to do better” at marketing and telling the league’s story, she said. If that happens, sales of merchandise will rise, along with overall popularity. “I mean, everyone should know who Sue Bird is,” she said. “She happens to be one of our household names, but we don’t have enough of them.”The commissioner also singled out the importance of selling the game by highlighting individual stars and the intense rivalries among players and teams, akin to how the N.B.A. grew when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came to that league.The Storm’s Sue Bird is one of the sport’s best-known celebrities.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesOne such rivalry, between the Storm and the Phoenix Mercury, was on full display on Friday night.It was Seattle’s final regular-season game. Both teams had qualified for the playoffs, but much was on the line, including bragging rights between two organizations that have a history of epic clashes. More important, the winner would also get to skip the postseason’s first round.At that game — played 30 miles north of Seattle because the team’s typical arena is being renovated — I finally found rabid fans wearing their Storm swag. Caps, T-shirts, socks, face masks, sweatbands. A few fans donned green-and-gold shoes with player autographs. Some wore the uniforms of Bird, Loyd and Stewart from the Olympic team.Before 6,000 spectators instead of the 2,000 typically at the Storm’s temporary home, the teams put on a showcase of flowing, fast-paced basketball. Despite being without Stewart, who is nursing a foot injury, Seattle came out firing. Loyd hit a barrage of midrange jump shots and deep 3-pointers. On her way to a career-high 37 points, she scored 22 in the first quarter.The Storm won, 94-85, delighting a boisterous, fun-loving crowd. It was easy to feel the team’s intensity and to see how its firm base of loyal and diverse fans powered the W.N.B.A.But outside of such fans, away from its arenas, the league mirrors society and its inequities. All you need to do is walk the streets of Seattle and shop for a Storm cap to see that. More

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      in Football

      The N.F.L.’s New Play: Embrace Betting Ads, Watch the Money Pour In

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      The placement of gambling ads during football game broadcasts shows how much the N.F.L. has changed in its approach toward gambling.Betting has long been a part of the National Football League’s DNA. Two of its founding fathers, Art Rooney and Tim Mara, were gamblers.Rooney bankrolled the early years of the Pittsburgh Steelers with a small fortune he won at Saratoga Race Course. Mara, his close friend, was a bookmaker who bought the New York Giants for $500.For decades, however, N.F.L. officials went to great lengths to distance the league from the tens of billions of dollars wagered on its games — legally in Las Vegas but also with offshore sports betting shops, in office and bar pools and among illegal bookies. The N.F.L. backed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act of 2006 and fought New Jersey’s efforts to allow its casinos and horse tracks to take bets on football games.“We’re trying to do whatever we can to make sure our games are not betting vehicles,” Joe Browne, an N.F.L. spokesman, told The New York Times in 2008.“We have been accused of allowing gambling because it is good for the popularity of the game,” he added. “If that’s true, then we have wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars opposing gambling on our games.”What the N.F.L. once sold as a principled stand, however, has more recently given way to a far more pragmatic one. As betting on football ballooned into a multibillion-dollar industry, and as state after state acted to legalize it, the N.F.L. was left with a stark choice: to continue to fight gambling on its games, or to embrace it in exchange for a significant cut of casino marketing dollars.The proliferation of legalized gambling, like that at a FanDuel sports book in Phoenix, has led the N.F.L. to loosen its restrictions.Matt York/Associated PressAnd that money the league once spent on lobbying against gambling? This season, the N.F.L. is getting it all back. And then some.On its opening weekend, celebrities such as Ben Affleck, Martin Lawrence and Jamie Foxx headlined commercials that aired during N.F.L. game broadcasts, pitching betting as just a click away with a WynnBET, DraftKings, FanDuel or BetMGM account. The NFL Network included betting lines on its ticker for the first time.Belated or not, the N.F.L.’s embrace of gambling is, well, lucrative. League and industry experts expect the revenue from gambling companies for the N.F.L. and its teams to be several hundred million dollars this season.“Over the next 10 years, this is going to be a more than $1 billion opportunity for the league and our clubs,” said Christopher Halpin, chief strategy and growth officer for the N.F.L.Little more than three years after the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that prohibited sports gambling in most states, sports betting companies are meeting an eager audience. GeoComply Solutions, a company that uses geolocation to help confirm that bettors gambling online are doing so from places where betting is legal, said it processed 58.2 million transactions in the United States during the N.F.L.’s opening weekend, more than double what it handled during the same weekend last season.“We expected high volumes, but what we have seen has surprised us nonetheless,” said Lindsay Slader, a managing director with GeoComply, which is based in Canada. “The level of demand across new markets, such as Arizona, indicates that consumers have long waited for the option to legally place a sports bet.”The company said the bets came from 18 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Soon, more states are likely to join.New York has approved online betting and is in the process of determining which operators will be allowed to take wagers. And sports betting measures are under consideration in heavily populated states such as California, Texas and Florida, where sports book operators are spending heavily to get a foothold.“You have to look at the size of the prize,” said Craig Billings, chief executive of Wynn Interactive. “I think this is going to be the same size of market as the commercial casino industry in the U.S., $40 billion annually or more.”That is why he hired Affleck to direct and star, alongside Shaquille O’Neal, in a commercial, and his company has plans to spend more than $100 million on advertising throughout the N.F.L. season.“Being part of the in-game broadcast is important — it’s our most popular sport with a core audience of early adopters that have been betting offshore,” Billings said. “It’s a rifle shot you have to take.”WynnBET is hardly alone.Through Sept. 9 this year, DraftKings’ spending on national television advertising is up 98 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, while FanDuel’s spending has more than doubled, according to estimates from the research firm iSpot.TV.Overall, gambling companies spent $7.4 million on advertisements during the first week of prime time games, 9 percent more than they did during last year’s opening games on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights, according to estimates from EDO, a TV ad measurement platform.“The dollars are starting to add up,” said John Bogusz, the executive vice president of sports sales and marketing for CBS Sports.The network saw a surge in advertising interest for N.F.L. broadcasts this year. Bogusz attributed “a good portion” of the growth to sports betting ads.“Overall, the volume is up among all advertisers, but that added to it as well,” he said. “I think it will continue to grow.”Dan Lovinger, the executive vice president of advertising sales for NBC Sports Group, said on a conference call that the surge from sports betting operators was “reminiscent to when the fantasy category opened up.”In 2015, FanDuel and DraftKings spent millions blitzing the airwaves with commercials to gain a larger audience for daily fantasy games, where fans pay an entry fee to assemble rosters of real football players to play against the rosters of other fantasy players.The blitz worked. Sort of.The campaigns attracted customers but also the attention of regulators and prompted complaints from viewers who grew weary of the repetitive advertisements. Both companies spent fortunes on lawyers and lobbyists and endured intact to pivot to sports betting.The average amount of actual game action over the course of a three-hour broadcast of an N.F.L. game is about 11 minutes. Halpin said the league’s internal research showed that among its fans age 21 and older, roughly 20 percent were frequent sports bettors who were mostly young and male, and that another 20 percent — mostly women over 55 — were “active rejecters.”To navigate this stark divide, as well as persuade those in the middle, the N.F.L. decided to limit sports betting ads to one per quarter along with a pregame and halftime spot — six in all per broadcast.It also largely eschewed talk of odds and spreads directly during the biggest N.F.L. game broadcasts.“We have to avoid oversaturation of the game with sports betting talk or risk alienating fans,” Halpin said. “My mother loves her N.F.L., but she doesn’t want gambling talk.” More

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      in Football

      Saquon Barkley (and Fans) Returned. But So Did Last Season’s Giants.

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      Despite the return of the Pro Bowl running back, a ballyhooed defense and a readmitted home crowd, the Giants looked listless in a loss to the Denver Broncos.Running back Saquon Barkley dodged and bulled his way to a 5-yard gain on the first play from scrimmage in Sunday’s game between the Giants and Denver Broncos. Barkley, the cynosure of the Giants’ offense until a torn knee ligament kept him out of 14 games last season, seemed whole again, and the home fans at a packed MetLife Stadium leapt to their feet in response.Moments later, the Giants third-year quarterback, Daniel Jones, threw a 42-yard pass to his favorite receiver, Darius Slayton, which advanced the Giants into Denver territory. There was more unbridled euphoria in the grandstand.Fans were back for the opening game.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesThe Giants honored the 20th anniversary of 9/11.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesBut then the Giants lost eight yards on the next two plays, squandering any chance of scoring even a field goal. One drive later, the Giants ran three desultory plays without gaining a yard and punted. Soon they were trailing Denver by three points. Then by 10 points, then by 17.A new Giants season suddenly looked no different than last year’s 10-loss disappointment. The fans slumped back into their seats.The opening day of a football season always has an air of rebirth — until it feels like a repeat.As the final seconds of Denver’s thorough 27-13 thumping of the Giants wound down — the home team would score a meaningless touchdown on the game’s final play — the MetLife stands were mostly empty. That had been the case last season, because of pandemic restrictions. The void this time, however, felt different, especially since the remaining soundtrack of the event was the raucous cheering of a few thousand Broncos fans.In the end, Barkley rushed for only 26 yards on 10 carries. Jones, charged with reducing the costly turnovers that have been the scourge of his first two seasons as a starter, lost a fumble deep in Denver territory at a pivotal juncture of the game. The Giants’ much ballyhooed defense repeatedly failed to force the Broncos off the field as Denver converted seven of 15 third-downs — and all three fourth-down tries.It left Joe Judge, the second-year Giants coach, cognizant of why Giants fans scurried for the MetLife Stadium exits by the midpoint of the fourth quarter, if not earlier.“We have to earn their respect,” Judge said of the fans. “We have to give them something to cheer about. There was great energy and a great atmosphere in the stadium but we’ve got to do more as a team to make them want to stay and cheer.”Rather than rebirth, the Giants were on repeat.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesRunning back Saquon Barkley was not enough to reverse last season’s disappointment.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesThe star of the game was the resurgent Denver quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, who completed 28 of 36 passes for 264 yards and two touchdown passes. The less-observed constituent who had significant impact on the outcome was the Broncos’ offensive coordinator, Pat Shurmur, the former Giants coach who on Sunday flummoxed his old team’s defense.Jones completed 22 of 37 passes for one touchdown. Neither quarterback had an interception and each was sacked twice, although Bridgewater faced only sporadic pressure from the Giants pass rush.After a 15-play drive that took nearly nine minutes, Denver opened the game’s scoring in the second quarter with a 23-yard field goal by Brandon McManus. On their next possession, the Giants came out aggressively on first down with Jones throwing a 17-yard pass over the middle to receiver Kenny Golladay, one of the team’s foremost off-season free agent acquisitions.Four plays and a defensive pass interference penalty later, the Giants pushed into the Broncos’ end of the field. On a first down, Sterling Shepard, the longest-tenured Giant, ran a lengthy crossing route and caught a precise Jones pass before diving into the end zone for a 37-yard touchdown that gave the home team a 7-3 lead.In roughly two minutes at the end of the first half, led by the poise, elusiveness and accuracy of Bridgewater, Denver had regained the lead. Bridgewater completed six consecutive passes, the last a 2-yard touchdown toss to Tim Patrick that sent the Broncos into the game’s intermission with a 10-7 lead.Denver picked up where it left off after receiving the second-half kickoff. Although the Broncos’ running game was nonexistent, the Giants’ pass defense was still overwhelmed, in part because the feeble Giants offense kept it on the field for so much of the game.Giants fans showed their displeasure with the team’s performance late in the game.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesJones fumbled on his run in the fourth quarter, all but sealing the loss for the Giants.Michelle Farsi for The New York TimesIt took the Broncos 16 plays to traverse 75 yards, as Bridgewater continually used his legs to extend plays. On the final play of the drive, a fourth-and-1 at the Giants 4-yard line, Bridgewater scrambled to his right as he was closely pursued by Giants safety Xavier McKinney, who was grasping at Bridgewater’s headgear and shoulder pads. On the run, Bridgewater flipped the football into the end zone where Albert Okwuegbunam made an acrobatic catch in traffic for the Broncos’ second touchdown, extending their lead to 17-7.On the following possession, the Giants did mount a comeback — of sorts.After the Giants advanced to the Denver 22-yard line, Jones burst through the middle of the Broncos defensive front for a 7-yard run then wrapped two hands around the football in an attempt to prevent a fumble. But Denver linebacker Josey Jewell punched the ball free from Jones’s grasp and Jewell’s teammate Malik Reed fell on the football at the Denver 15-yard line. Once again, a promising Giants possession ended with a Jones turnover that resulted in a 36-yard McManus field goal that increased the Giants deficit to 20-7.The game was, at that point, all but over.Von Miller of the Broncos hugged his mother after the season opening win on the road.Michelle Farsi for The New York Times More

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      Fans Packed the U.S. Open on the First Day

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      As the first tennis balls were struck in earnest at the U.S. Open on Monday, thousands of frustrated tennis fans waited patiently to get inside for the first time in two years, stuck in a human traffic jam that left many feeling angry and sick in the hot sun.When Madison Keys hit the first serve to her friend Sloane Stephens inside Arthur Ashe Stadium shortly after noon, there was hardly anyone there to see it. By the time Stephens held on to win, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (7), the world’s largest tennis arena was packed, but only after fans made their way through the backlog to catch the end of a captivating opening match.It was an agonizing way to welcome back fans to the U.S. Open after a year off. But from a tennis point of view, it was a riveting kickoff to the tournament, with a rematch of the 2017 women’s final, which Stephens also won.“It seems like it was a hundred years ago, not just four,” Keys said. “Yeah, the world is obviously a completely different place now as far as regular life goes. But then also with tennis, a lot has changed.”Sloane Stephens during her first-round win against her friend Madison Keys.The biggest change for the 2021 tournament is that the fans are in the stands. They had been excluded from the 2020 tournament because of the coronavirus pandemic. But it took many of them a lot longer to get back inside than they expected.“It’s ridiculous,” said Betty Gruber, a fan from Chelmsford, Mass. “And then they let hundreds of people go right past us. I’m 82, and there are kids here and people who need to use the bathroom. It is very poorly organized.”In the end it took more than two hours to clear out the backlog of people trying to enter. Some were lined up at the South Gate, joining the back of the queue hundreds of yards away, beyond the giant globe monument. Some lines of people intertwined with others and stewards did their best to control the flow amid the chaos as people complained and sweated in the midday sun.But once inside they did all the things tennis fans have been doing at the U.S. Open for years, up until last year. They wandered the grounds, spent lavishly on food and cheered for their favorite players on a warm day that ultimately felt rather normal.The announced attendance was 53,783 — 30,993 during the day session and 22,790 during the night session.Maria Onuorah, 58, a nurse practitioner and her two daughters, Jessica and Chelsea, waited over an hour in line. After they got off the No. 7 train they were met instantly by a wall of people, already lined up on the wooden boardwalk bridge over to Flushing Meadows Park.“At least we were able to see the last set,” Maria Onuorah said of the match between Stephens and Keys. “I’m glad we were able to finally get in because we came all the way from Atlanta to see it.”Gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin stopped by the Billie Jean King Center.Fans on the grounds during the U.S. Open.One fan, who asked to be identified only as Harry, a software engineer from California, said that there were so many people on the bridge from the subway that at one point it began to shake and sway. He said he saw a handful of people, including his girlfriend, throw up.“It was total mayhem,” he said. “I’ve been pretty Covid conscious this whole time and I didn’t appreciate being packed in with all these people in such close quarters.”The United States Tennis Association issued a statement that said the delay was largely caused by crowds arriving later than they have in the past, and that the slowdown was centered on the bag check area.“Patrons have brought an inordinate number of bags this year, all of which need to be searched. This becomes the main choke point for entry,” the U.S.T.A. statement said.The U.S.T.A. added that it was looking into ways to avoid the problem in the coming days. It also said that the process to check proof of vaccinations seemed to work “smoothly” and did not contribute to the delay. Some fans agreed, but said part of the reason for that is because the process was not rigorous.“They were looking at the cards, but they didn’t match them up with ID’s,” said Matt Stapleton, 61, a film industry transportation director from Long Island. He said he waited two hours to get inside the grounds but once he made it through the gates he said — surprisingly cheerfully — that it was well worth it.Crowds waiting for the evening matches to get started.“He’s always like that,” his wife, Linda, said with a laugh. “He’s just here to have fun.”Most of the fans moved about without face coverings, but most of the workers wore masks. Originally, the tournament was not planning to require proof of vaccinations against the coronavirus, but after Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York intervened, tournament organizers changed the rules.“I’m glad they did,” said Jessica Onuorah, a graduate student at Georgia State University. “I’m vaccinated, but I feel a lot safer knowing that everyone else is, too.”Things really began moving along in the afternoon, just as they would in a normal year with no pandemic. The food concessionaires did a brisk business, fans ambled about the main plaza, sitting near the fountains, watching matches on the giant video screens, and crowds of people packed into the stands as they did in 2019, and each year for decades before that.“We missed the people in the crowd,” said the 12th-seeded Simona Halep of Romania, who beat Camila Giorgi of Italy, 6-4, 7-6 (3), in their first-round match on the Grandstand court. “You cannot compare the atmosphere. It’s much better. You feel the energy. You feel alive on court.”And once the day session ended, it all started up again at night. More

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      U.S. Open Tightens Protocols, Fans Must Provide Proof of Covid Vaccination

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      Under pressure from the New York City mayor’s office, the U.S.T.A. reversed its rules for fans attending the tournament, which will have full capacity.Under pressure from Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city leaders, the United States Tennis Association reversed its lax coronavirus protocols for the upcoming U.S. Open tournament, which opens to thousands of fans on Monday.Originally, the tournament did not require any proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test for fans to enter, and there were no mask mandates, either. But the mayor’s office stepped in over the past two days and demanded stricter protocols.On Friday evening, the tournament announced on its Twitter account that proof of at least one vaccine shot would now be required for entrance to the grounds for all fans age 12 and older. No masks are required.The mayor’s office was adamant that fans entering Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest venue on the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, be vaccinated. But the U.S.T.A. took it a step further and made it a requirement for all fans entering the grounds of the tournament.“Today, the U.S.T.A. was informed that the New York City mayor’s office will be mandating proof of Covid-19 vaccination for entrance to Arthur Ashe Stadium,” the statement said. “Given the continuing evolution of the Delta variant and in keeping with our intention to put the health and safety of our fans first, the U.S.T.A. will extend the mayor’s requirement to all U.S. Open ticket holders 12 years old and older.”De Blasio was not the only city official concerned about the potential for a large coronavirus outbreak. After the tournament announced on Wednesday that no vaccines or masks would be required, Mark Levine, a City Council member from Manhattan and chair of the health committee, said he was “alarmed” that the U.S. Open could become a super spreader event, especially with so many visitors from around the world and the country visiting the tournament in Queens, and also going into Manhattan during their visits.Reached after the tournament reversed course on Friday, Levine was pleased by the reversal.“I feel enormous relief,” he said, “and it’s just in the nick of time with crowds due to arrive on Monday.”Levine pointed out that because ticket holders were only required to get one shot, they had time before the tournament started, if they were motivated to get it.“No fan is excluded unless they want to be,” he said. “This is not a draconian measure.”Tournament organizers said they would add “extra measures” to expedite the process of checking vaccination records at entry points to the grounds.The U.S.T.A. said it had developed its original protocols for fans within guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the city’s Department of Health and the mayor’s office. But since then, it said, the mayor has introduced the Key to NYC Pass, requiring patrons and employees of indoor dining, entertainment and recreation to prove that they have received at least one dose of the vaccine.The mayor was particularly concerned about fans filling up Arthur Ashe Stadium with the roof closed. The U.S.T.A. claims that the ventilation inside the stadium is sufficient for it to be considered an outdoor venue — like one of New York’s two baseball stadiums — even when the roof is closed.The mayor insisted that the U.S.T.A either mandate proof of one dose of a Covid vaccine, or keep the roof open at all times, which could have caused scheduling headaches in the event of rain.Players are not required to be vaccinated, but they are tested upon arrival at the tournament and every four days after that. If they test positive, they must withdraw from the tournament.Ticket holders who do not wish to provide proof of vaccination may seek a refund.“I feel like that should be always a personal decision, whether you want to get vaccinated or not,” said Novak Djokovic, who enters the tournament looking to become the first player, man or woman, to win a Grand Slam since Steffi Graf in 1988. “So, I’m supportive of that. Whether someone wants to get a vaccine or not, that’s completely up to them. I hope that it stays that way.” More