Television has completely transformed the sports world.  It allows people across the nation to view events from around the world as they happen.  Television lets everyone witness some of the most cherished events in sports live from their own homes.

    Watching sports on television has become almost a ritual for many people.  Friends get together to watch games at their house or meet at a bar.  The spring begins with baseball, with many fans being able to watch every one of their team's games if they have satellite television; otherwise, they are limited to the games on cable.  Every fan cheers that their team will win their division and make it to the World Series, although Red Sox fans care almost as much about just beating those hated Yankees.  The World Series generates huge revenues for Fox, which televises the games.

    Then, as the season winds down with the World Series, sports fanatics spend every Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night watching college football and football teams from around the country.  Moreover, every Monday night is ABC's Monday Night football, which has become a tradition and is a part of football history.  As winter comes, so do the college bowl games.  The bowls have become extremely big, as evidenced by the fact that each of the four main bowls is sponsored by a big-name company: the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the Nokia Sugar Bow, the Fed-Ex Orange Bowl, and the Sony Playstation Rose Bowl.  Companies are willing to spend millions of dollars to have their name heard because there are so many viewers of these games.  After the college bowls come the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl, one of the biggest television events each year.  Millions of Americans and over 200 countries gather around television sets to watch the big game.  Advertises spend millions of dollars for seconds of advertisements during the playoffs and the Super Bowl.

    As the football season comes to a close, college basketball and the NBA begin to grip the country.  Americans from all over the country hope for their college teams to get into the Big Dance and win the National Championship.  Similarly, in the NBA, fans hope all year that their team will make the playoffs for a chance to claim the NBA crown.  Both March Madness and the NBA playoffs gross large amounts of money for television stations as advertisers are willing to spend hundreds of thousands, and even millions, of dollars to have their name mentioned during these all-important games.

    Television has allowed people from all over the world to watch sports.  Although doing so costs money, that money is more than regained from the money from advertising.  Thus, televising sports has benefited all, from the television stations, to the sports teams themselves, which sell the rights to the television stations to broadcast their games, to to the businesses that advertise, and to the fans, who can watch games live from their own home.