Why Should Media Members Be Entitled to Free Admittance to Sporting Events? [UPDATE]

While this is certainly not to say it was right for Floyd Mayweather’s camp to block credentials to Rachel Nichols and Michelle Beadle (as well as other purportedly perceived threats like boxing writer Steve Kim, Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan, and Martin Rogers of our site’s parent company USA Today), it is understandable behavior from their perspective. One imagines they wanted to cut off potential domestic violence questions from happening in the post-match press conference. Stifling dissent — and, presumably, concurrently rewarding sycophancy with access — apparently succeeded in producing the type of scene they sought:

So, the media stuff is understandable as well as unsurprising, given everything we already knew about Floyd Mayweather, for whom a dastardly persona doubles as a business model. The archetypical heel draws viewers who hope he’ll get his ass whipped, and Mayweather’s savvy, amorality, and calculatedly boring fighting style all factored into his nine-figure payday on Saturday. So, he was able to block out voices and/or outlets who had been rightfully critical of him, and got even more attention on the day of his pay-per-view for doing it. The dog wags the tail.

What’s less clear is what so many outlets — and not just the ones whose reporters were denied access — had to gain from sending so many people to cover this boxing match. Of the hundreds of stories that were written, whose were unforgettable? Dan Wetzel had a characteristically great column, but it’s unclear to what extent it mattered that he was in the arena for it; Drew Magary’s piece on Mayweather’s cowardliness was at least as good as anything else I read about the fight, and that was done from the East Coast.

As more and more content gets produced in-house by sports leagues, teams, and athletes, we’re also going to see access get increasingly restricted — especially for anyone who has the audacity to be critical. How necessary a middle man is objective media? Witness the recent fuck-laden tirade by Reds manager Bryan Price, who completely misunderstood the role of media, or the Oklahoma City Thunder, who Grantland’s Bryan Curtis described to be systematically marginalizing the last vestiges of the local print press. Even the venerable Bob Ryan, whose access in Boston should’ve been grandfathered in for perpetuity two decades ago, told me the Celtics had been sticking him up in the corner.

In a column before the fight on Saturday, Dan Wetzel, who disagreed about whether this was good business on Mayweather’s part, wrote that boxing and MMA promotions regularly restrict access to critical voices:

Of course, as Wetzel wrote, there was still a line an hour-long on Saturday morning for 1,000+ media members to pick up their credentials, so any sympathetic solidarity with the journalists who were kiboshed didn’t result in a dearth of those covering the fight. To me, it’s unclear why media outlets would want access that seems to be beholden on steering away from unfavorable coverage.

Nevertheless, those who sent columnists and reporters to Las Vegas for the fight clearly placed a high value on the work, or they would not spring for flights and hotels and expense accounts. Would decision makers still pull the trigger on the trips if ticket costs also had to be factored in? If not, then maybe the event isn’t worth covering from up close?

And this isn’t just about boxing. It would seem, to me, that the best way to avoid the conflict of interest with the teams and institutions that we cover would be to not accept complimentary tickets. (Disclosure: I once got a press pass to a UFC event, but didn’t publish anything about it afterwards; while it’s not as though other TBL writers have never been credentialed, it is pretty rare). In my ideal dream world, the press conference credentialing process would be similar to the way it is now, but media members or their outlets would have to purchase tickets to the game at face value.

Why do media fetishize access-based coverage of these events? Is it the story, in and of itself? The networking opportunities, amongst each other as well as the myriad movers and shakers in attendance, that can enhance coverage down the road? The cachet of being an outlet that is there, akin to being a celebrity seen at the spectacle? Again, the point of this is not to criticize Michelle Beadle or Rachel Nichols, who were discriminated against for unfavorable reporting, but to question a status quo that feels progressively antiquated and at odds with the tenets of journalism.

If there’s an argument about why media members should be given free admittance to games or matches, please DM me your email address on Twitter, and I will reach out, and run your response.

UPDATE: Here are responses from Mac Engel of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Josh Verlin of City of Basketball Love.