If you want to see capitalism in one of its rawest forms, you need to pay attention to professional sports.
The establishment of professional sports competitions in late 19th and early 20th century, and likewise, the modern revival of the Olympic games have practically served a single basic purpose: to pacify and dupe the working class, to stop them from paying attention to serious issues like politics and economy by distracting their minds and bodies with competitive professional sports. Did it work? Indeed, it did. And it's working to this day.
Today sports industry is by the nature of its work pretty much the essence of the capitalist mode of production. It generates globally hundreds of billions of dollars every year without producing anything at all in return; It has no productive value, it produces nothing except for the Spectacle. Masses flock to stadiums to watch modern gladiatorial games. They obsess over these modern gladiators, they make idols out of them, they worship them. Instead of getting out on the streets and starting a revolution, a hundred thousand people will instead fill the stadium to watch a game. This, besides profit, is exactly the desired outcome.
Ljubodrag Simonovic is a former Yugoslav basketball player who has written extensively about the true nature of sport under capitalism. In this thread i want to introduce you to him and his works. After witnessing the usage of doping substances on the 1972 Summer Olympics, Simonovic has protested and was banned from the competition and ultimately from his national team. Afterwards Simonovic left basketball and turned to Marxism, reading, studying, writing and mercilessly criticizing professional sports and the destructive influence of capitalism on the human existence and the planet itself.
Sadly his works and interviews are mostly in Serbian. There are a few English translations but they are very rare, however i did manage to find the English translation of his book The Last Revolution. I've also found a couple of other useful links about Simonovic and his work.
en.wikipedia.org
libcom.org
scribd.com
ljubodragsimonovic.wordpress.com
youtube.com