What’s so enjoyable about watching Wimbledon at midnight?

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In an effort to establish whether indulging our pastimes make us healthier, a bunch of social scientists first had to define what constitutes a pleasurable pursuit. They came up with a tool called the Pittsburgh Enjoyable Activities Test (PEAT).

The PEAT breaks enjoyment down into 10 broad categories – things such as ‘being in outdoor settings’, ‘involvement in hobbies’ and ‘doing fun things with others.’ The more you do these things, the more likely you are to be robust in mind and body.

You know what’s not in there? Staying up all night to watch sports.

Were you to create a Venn diagram of two circles – one being ‘total time waster’ and the other being ‘has no practical purpose’ – watching sports would be their intersection. The outcomes of games are meaningless. It forces you to sit for long stretches, which is worse than smoking.

If you devoted half the mental effort you spend on gaming out the Canucks 2024-25 salary cap to learning how the stock market works, you would be happier and richer. These are facts.

The only reason to watch sports is that it is enjoyable. But increasingly, watching sports has become a late-night chore. Like forgetting the recycling.

The fact that sports now stretches out into forever is a running theme wherever they are played. It was a thing this past week at Wimbledon as organizers tried to wedge a hundred Centre Court matches in per day, while refusing to start any earlier than 1 in the afternoon.

Novak Djokovic started his fourth-round match near 9 p.m. Owing to an agreement the club cut with its richy-rich neighbours, Wimbledon has an 11 p.m. curfew.

I don’t know who wants to be watching tennis at midnight, but there must be more of them than whoever wants to go to an all-day tennis festival only to see the plugs pulled mid-headliner. Djokovic didn’t finish his match until the next morning.

Same thing happened with Andy Murray – 8:30 p.m. start, called at 11, finished the next afternoon.

U.S. and Australian Open matches are ending at 2, 3, even 4 in the morning. During the playoffs, baseball is pushing first pitch toward 9 p.m. Playoff hockey drifts into 8 p.m. starts.

I was never much of a nighthawk, but the pandemic turned me fully diurnal. In order to be effective, my hunting (such as it is) must occur in daylight. Sports now start when my lizard brain is crying out for bed. And we have a hard rule about TV in the bedroom: never.

Two forces are at work here – the shift from an attendance-based financial model to a broadcast-based one, and globalization.

Broadcasters long ago outpaced ticket buyers as the economic drivers of sport, but they are only now really beginning to flex that muscle. Does the NHL schedule playoff games? Not if you pay attention to the schedule.

Insanely late starts, huge gaps between games, a terror of ever crossing scheduling swords with the NBA. Broadcasters schedule sports now. And they want sports to start late, when a maximum number of wage-slaves are tethered to their electronic binkies.

Give Wimbledon boss Sally Bolton this much credit – when asked about it, she said it.

“As far as the TV audience is concerned, matches are happening at a time when they’re accessible to people. We’re seeing viewing figures that are beyond our expectations and beyond previous years, so I think they probably speak for themselves,” Bolton said.

If the broadcasters want Wimbledon’s big hitters to take the court at dinner time in L.A. – so, 2 in the morning local time – that can be done. It’s just a matter of the proper application of money. In theory, at least.

Broadcaster overreach plus globalization amplifies the issue. It, rather than heat, is the reason World Cup matches in Qatar were starting around 10:30 at night. This put them into prime time in Europe and early afternoon in North and South America.

I did a couple of those post-match 2 a.m. death marches back from the late-starting games. I was being paid to be there. I’m not sure what everyone else’s excuse was.

The NHL very badly wants to crack the Chinese market. It’s the sort of idea that’s so obviously terrible some people are convinced it’s pure genius, but whatever. Let’s imagine a bizarro world in which pro hockey becomes immensely popular in China. Let us say for the sake of this thought experiment that 10 times as many people are watching NHL games on that side of the world than on this one.

Beijing is 12 hours ahead of Toronto. How do you feel about 7 a.m. Leafs’ starts? Because if the dollars are right, it would happen.

In my perfect world, sports would start a couple of hours after I get up. That’s when my let’s-attack-the-day levels are at their highest. By noon, I have already begun my long preparation for slumber. Sophia Loren has always insisted on being in bed at 8 p.m. and she still looks like a supermodel in her 80s. That’s enough science for me.

But not everyone feels as I do. Let’s split the difference – how about a 1920s baseball model?

Back when stadiums weren’t lit, they would start mid-summer games at the latest reasonable point at which they could expect to get them in before darkness. Some time around 4 or 4:30 p.m.

You can’t flip a page on the internet without hitting some style piece about our new laissez-faire approach to work. You want to start at dawn and quit at noon? You can do that. At least, more of us can do that.

So if you want to see a game that starts at 4, start work earlier. If not, you can still put in a full 9-to-5 and catch the back half.

The counter-argument here is the ‘working stiff’ rebuttal. What about the person who has to work long hours for low pay and can’t be at the sports mid-afternoon? Shocking news – it’s been years since that person has been able to afford tickets. Only the affluent go to sports any more.

So might as well start at 4. Then you’ll be done with the sports portion of your evening by 7 or 8.

That gives all of us time to develop a productive hobby. Talking to other humans, for instance. If we do it outside while discussing sports, that’s three boxes on the PEAT ticked, and still in bed before the witching hour.