They Got (Video) Game; N.B.A. Finals Can Wait: Millions of young American men seem to be asking the same question. Since 2000, television broadcast ratings for almost all major sports have fallen among male viewers between 12 and 34. Even Nascar, whose ratings have generally been hailed by the industry as healthy, has suffered a modest decline, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Over the same period, sales of sports video games in the United States have risen by about 34 percent, to more than $1.2 billion last year from slightly less than $900 million in 2000, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm. Young men are also the core market for video games.
For the lords of sports, the attitude toward the video game revolution seems to vacillate between appreciation for the licensing revenue that video games can bring (the National Football League, for instance, reaped an estimated $300 million from a recent five-year licensing deal with Electronic Arts, the leading video game company) and concern about whether these games are forcing the cash cow of television onto an unwelcome diet.
