A timely and eye-opening look at the current and future landscape of sports.
An account of how professional sports is now “driven by data.”
Schoenfeld, the author of The Match and The Last Serious Thing, chronicles how high-tech, public relations–savvy, cutthroat entrepreneurs have turned professional sports into engines of profit. The author admits his debt to Michael Lewis’ 2003 bestseller, Moneyball, which tells the story of how the manager of an underfunded Major League Baseball team hired a mathematical analyst to mine the game’s vast statistics and tease out player attributes that won games without showing up in conventional metrics. For several years, he enjoyed spectacular success until other teams caught on. Having followed how analytics affected the game, Schoenfeld turns his attention to the franchises themselves. For decades, rich business owners bought teams like they bought yachts or racehorses. “You didn’t buy a sports team to make money,” writes the author, “you did it because you had money and wanted to do something fun with it.” Galvanized by the Moneyball story, a new generation of owners and front-office experts has turned teams into superefficient mega-corporations resembling those in which the owners had originally made their fortunes. Winning remains important, but many devoted fans will note that strictly following the numbers takes away much of the thrill. As dynamic agents of capitalism, modern sports franchises seem obsessed with keeping fans engaged (i.e., spending money) rather than entertained. Formerly verboten, sports betting has exploded, and franchises have expanded into real estate, fashion, concessions, and digital content. Combining in-depth research and illuminating interviews, Schoenfeld describes the transformation of a dozen organizations, emphasizing baseball and basketball but casting his net widely. He shows clearly how soccer, the world’s most popular game, has become the poster child for the transformation of professional sports—and the rebellion of dissatisfied fans. Read Moneyball first and then turn to this one.
A timely and eye-opening look at the current and future landscape of sports.Pub Date: June 6, 2023
ISBN: 9780393531688
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.
The Chicago Bulls stalwart tells all—and then some.
Hall of Famer Pippen opens with a long complaint: Yes, he’s a legend, but he got short shrift in the ESPN documentary about Michael Jordan and the Bulls, The Last Dance. Given that Jordan emerges as someone not quite friend enough to qualify as a frenemy, even though teammates for many years, the maltreatment is understandable. This book, Pippen allows, is his retort to a man who “was determined to prove to the current generation of fans that he was larger-than-life during his day—and still larger than LeBron James, the player many consider his equal, if not superior.” Coming from a hardscrabble little town in Arkansas and playing for a small college, Pippen enjoyed an unlikely rise to NBA stardom. He played alongside and against some of the greats, of whom he writes appreciatively (even Jordan). Readers will gain insight into the lives of characters such as Dennis Rodman, who “possessed an unbelievable basketball IQ,” and into the behind-the-scenes work that led to the Bulls dynasty, which ended only because, Pippen charges, the team’s management was so inept. Looking back on his early years, Pippen advocates paying college athletes. “Don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou student-athlete nonsense,” he writes. “These young men—and women—are athletes first, not students, and make up the labor that generates fortunes for their schools. They are, for lack of a better term, slaves.” The author also writes evenhandedly of the world outside basketball: “No matter how many championships I have won, and millions I have earned, I never forget the color of my skin and that some people in this world hate me just because of that.” Overall, the memoir is closely observed and uncommonly modest, given Pippen’s many successes, and it moves as swiftly as a playoff game.
Basketball fans will enjoy Pippen’s bird’s-eye view of some of the sport’s greatest contests.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982165-19-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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