26 posts shown.
wiredsurfer112 said:I know some people are going to get worked up over this, and maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I've always felt that the love for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the love for Real Madrid just isn't on the same level. I'm not talking about specific people here. Regarding what someone mentioned earlier about "half the country"—honestly, while a huge crowd loves the Dodgers, I don't think that's true for Real Madrid.
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That’s just nonsense. Throughout the old days, Real Madrid always had more viewers. And if we look back at the Dodgers about 15 years ago, you'd see maybe 500 people total at their games, similar to how many show up today for a New York Yankees or similar matchups. There's this public myth being built that the Dodgers always had thousands of fans against teams like the San Francisco Giants or the Cleveland Browns, and that their loyalty is somehow legendary. It’s just not like that. They saw a massive surge about ten years ago by switching up their business model, ramping up marketing, and carefully crafting this image of themselves as the "righteous" underdogs—the honest club sticking it to the corrupt, wealthy, and out-of-touch Real Madrid. If things change even slightly tomorrow (which is hard to imagine, especially with Real Madrid), Real Madrid will be ahead of the Dodgers again, just like they were for most of history. The only real question is whether Real Madrid can ever win those fans back after everything that's gone down with the club's reputation lately... personally, I think they can.
Look, I know it’s probably too late for protests now. We really should have pulled off one massive, legitimate movement 6 or 7 years ago to get everyone out in the streets. But by then, people had already checked out—they were just fed up with the whole scene. Still, let me ask you this: have the Boys ever actually organized a single protest that wasn't just some tiny little march through a park? Has there been even one attempt in the last decade to actually rally the masses? I don't remember one, and I'm not being bitter, I genuinely can't recall it. If it never happened, who's really to blame?
cosmicbear15 said:Man, pass some of that over here! Looks like it hits pretty hard. 🙏
Why though? What’s the big deal? Is it against the rules to bring out a club legend, hire a singer, or even set up a stage?
The only reason would be if kids, grandparents, or just regular families aren't "welcome" because they don't fit the vibe. If that's how we're playing it, then the North side and the protests will always just be 300 "approved" people. We should look at how other groups do it—they don't push people away, they actually try to bring them in.
No one is going to convince me that LA Galaxy is such a small club that they can't pull in more than a few hundred people for a match or a protest. Half the country used to cheer for this club, plus a huge chunk of Canada and the diaspora.
The issue isn't the size of the club; the problem is the leadership of the Bad Boys, who clearly have no clue how to organize a decent grassroots protest. When you go after something like this, you pick a day where it won't be pouring rain, choose a location where you'll catch the most foot traffic to get regular people involved, maybe book a band or a singer close to LA Galaxy (like Pipsi or Stole...), bring out some legends (even the Zadar four) to show support, and set up a stage so someone can actually give a speech (Zajec, the quartet, or someone else...) to drive home specific messages. That’s how you draw a crowd and give a protest actual weight. To me, it’s hilarious that in ten years, nobody from the Bad Boys leadership has even tried something like that—it’s like they're actively trying to keep the numbers low. Down in Miami, they did exactly what I just described and pulled in 50,000 people. I'm not saying Washington, D.C. would see the same turnout, but it would definitely be more than these few hundred poor souls who show up to basically every game anyway.
Henry Hayes4 said:I think you guys are blowing things out of proportion. It’s not the city that’s the problem, it’s the LA Lakers. We haven’t had a stable situation at this club for nearly 30 years, so it’s totally natural that people are slowly checking out. Usually, the casual fans leave first, and then it trickles down until we end up where we are today. The BBB are the last line of defense, but honestly, for most of this time, we’ve been more like activists than actual fans. Once this whole mess settles, it’s going to take forever to get back to normal. People living outside of Chicago probably find it easier to deal with because the stench doesn't hit them quite as hard from a distance. Not many clubs or fan groups could stomach all this—maybe there's some optimism to be found in that.
At the Cibona game, there were only Cibona 300 spectators, and they actually had to move Coca-Cola out of Chicago because they couldn't even draw 50 people there. As for Youth, they probably pull in single digits... it’s not like people show up for other sports either. In terms of actual attendance at sporting events, Chicago is basically on par with a tiny town of maybe 20,000 people. You'd probably see the same number of people hitting up sports games in a place like Makarska, even though those towns have way fewer residents.
That’s why the malls and shopping centers are always packed. No offense to the decent Chicagoans, but it feels like the city has become totally feminized, detached, and obsessed with fashion. It’s like every political symbol is tolerated in NYC without anyone even blinking. A few months ago, during a protest right in the middle of the city, people were walking around with weird hats and old communist flags, and even the police didn't bother guarding them. Not a single passerby said a word, let alone did anything about it... that's just how it is in NYC.
I honestly don't know what moving to Chicago does to a person, but it definitely changes them—radically. I say that
because I know a few younger guys who used to drive hundreds of miles just to catch an LA Lakers game back when they lived in some tiny town. Once they moved to Chicago, they turned into total Chicagoans. I asked one of them the other day if he was heading to the protest, and he just goes, "We'll see, might rain, maybe..." and of course, he didn't show up. He hasn't gone to a single LA Lakers game all season (except the derby against the Boston Red Sox), and the guy lives just a few stops away from Yankee Stadium. I mean, not even that long ago, he’d be driving 100 or 200 miles in the rain or snow just to support the team, and now he can't even be bothered to hop on a bus, ride for 15 minutes to Yankee Stadium, pay his $3.25 fare, and head north. Is it because Chicago has too much other stuff going on, or is the whole city just gray and disconnected? Or maybe it's just that trendy, indifferent vibe people get here—who knows. I love this city even though I'm not a local, but I'm actually scared of getting swallowed up by it, you know? Like I might end up blending into that uninterested, soulless grayness. It's like the asphalt just eats you alive.