I don't browse or even log in to reddit anymore. I don't feel bad for searching out specific things. Since the audience is so much larger, there's niches that just haven't been replaced by Lemmy or other services. Sports, media discussion, and old tech advice threads are the ones I'll still go over for.
Sports is surprising to me that it hasn't gotten bigger here. I get that the tech crowd isn't classically overlapping the sports crowd, but I feel like tech has gotten so mainstream anymore that it's more sports people into tech than tech people into sports. A lot of the subs and instances are really lacking too, not to comment on the people posting there and doing what they can. It's a tough landscape right now
Some of us tech people that liked sports, realized during Covid when they went away, that we only actually watched/attended sports to have something in common with others. I realized I didn’t need them, and didn’t miss giving any additional money to billionaires. Also, don’t get me started on tax money and stadiums lol
Oh for sure. There is a definite downside to the leagues that's becoming increasingly hard to ignore. I live in a large college town, so even outside of the team, it ends up being a community event and it's nice to have all your friends get together, even if for a superficial reason. Probably 80% of my Reddit use was sports subs and discussions not really for the sport, but because I liked the community aspect of it. I'd like to see that again here, so I'll keep posting away lol
Reddit's sports subs were small for a long time. I think there would need to be either a sports sub exodus or a lot more lemmy users before there are enough active posters into sports discussion/gossip during the week to keep engagement up and lively between games.
I was part of the baseball sub for my local major market mlb team for years and it was really just the last three or four years it was consistently active between games and even when I left (api exodus) it was the same 30 or so people on game threads.
I am hopeful that Lemmy will eventually grow large enough to supply the numerical and geographical base for good sports stuff. It doesn't take many active participants but the 100 - 10 - 1 rule I think is much more acutely felt in less populous spaces.