“All major Chicago sports teams…they’re not great,” 19-year-old Moraine Valley student Jonathan Mendoza says. “A lot of them have been in the basement.”
Chicago sports fans have been through it all in the last three years, with the 2024 White Sox having lost more games than any team in baseball history, the Bears going on a 10-game losing streak and all teams having multiple seasons without playoff appearances.
2024 was the worst sports year in the history of the city of Chicago as the Bears, Cubs, Sox, Blackhawks, and Bulls lost a total two thirds of their games combined.
The years prior were not much better as 2022 and 2023 seasons rank in the top five for worst sports seasons in Chicago sports history–meaning three consecutive years with some of the worst sports this city has ever seen.
So is Chicago’s run of consecutive historically bad seasons damaging the teams’ ability to capture the support of young fans, including those at Moraine Valley? And what will be the effect on future generations of sports fans?
“People like teams that win,” said accounting major Hezekiah Goodman. “If yours doesn’t win, then forget about it.”
Mendoza said he knows “a lot of people” at Moraine Valley who are not interested in sports and said that recent failures in Chicago sports have played a role: “Chicago sports fans, they don’t have anything to look forward to.”
Communications professor Bill Hogan has seen students’ passion and attraction to sports over the years.
“There’s always some students who are very much into it, and I still have that,” but with Chicago’s recent disappointments, he said, “absolutely, it depresses fan interest.”
And that could have lasting effects.
“Creating new fans of teams, it has to be every generation. You’ve got to renew that brand,” he said. “With a sports franchise, with a team, it’s a lifelong relationship. Chicago sports fans know that you’re willing to endure decades, maybe your entire lifetime of failure.”
Hogan has been a Chicago Cubs fan his entire life, introduced to the passion by his father. His father and his grandfather both were Cubs fans their whole lives and passed away without ever seeing the Cubs win a World Series, as the Cubs went 108 years without a championship.
“So, think about that: lifelong Cubs fans, passed down, and your team never wins in the span of lifetimes,” Hogan said. “That’s how deep the connection is.”
Even when Chicago sports have been the worst they have been in the last few years, it has never been harder to watch the Bulls, Blackhawks, and White Sox.
“I think that right now in particular the Blackhawks and the Bulls are basically not on anyone’s TV,” Hogan said.
In October 2024, numerous customers of Comcast lost the ability to watch these teams on their regular television plans because team ownership launched a new streaming service, CHSN. Fans must pay extra for the service or install an antenna to be able to watch these teams.
This paywall for consuming sports has made it harder and more expensive for people to watch these teams, especially when they may not want to watch in the first place due to their historically bad performance.
Even beyond the Bulls and the Blackhawks, the Bears haven’t won a Super Bowl in 40 years. They haven’t made the playoffs since 2020 and haven’t won a playoff game since 2010.
The White Sox are no savior either. With a 41-121 record in 2024, they were the worst team in the league and the worst team in modern MLB history. This combined with consistently missing the playoffs means no one wants to watch them play.
But is there any way to keep people interested in these teams and keep them on board so they can continue to pass Chicago sports fandom down for generations?
“All it takes is one of the teams to be good for people to be interested in following along and being a part of it,” Hogan said.
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