www.esquire.com: Someday, when this is all over—cotton masks shoved away, untouched, in the back of your sock drawer—we’ll look back at this moment in American sports. And we'll say what the fuck. The NBA plays its games within miles of It’s a Small World. The MLB is one big game of catch the coronavirus. The NFL expanded its rosters so that teams can inevitably funnel in healthy players to replace the sick ones. The NCAA is waging a legitimate civil war, college football one giant free-for-all where schools are playing whatever teams are left standing and willing to risk it.
3 comments:
I un-ironically loved this article. It pointed out a sad truth that is the lack of audience at any live event. the focus here was on the lack of audience participation and energy at sports games but it is a very real truth for the future of all in person events that we have become so used to in our society, including theatre. However I couldn't help but be amused by the dry sarcasm of the author. His take on ranking the substitute audience members in sports arenas was genuinely amusing, while also being rather informative. I did not know that a lot of these so called solutions were happening. Of course I am not a sports fan, so I would not have seen them on TV, but, it was informative none the less. The author did not try and make it seem like these solutions were "the one" that would be sweeping the nation and becoming the perfect solution to live audiences everywhere, but he did make it amusing and fun to read about.
A funny take on this awful situation. I will say that despite being a “theatre” person… I do/have/would/will/can watch sports. I spent a lot of my younger years in my childhood friend’s home, who was a boy who loved sports. They always watched basketball and baseball and played basketball video games and I was dragged to their soccer games and basketball games and kendo matches. When I wasn’t at his house, my dad and I watched football at home. And even in my freshman and sophomore year in high school, before I became the shut-in I am today, I would go to football games and be a “traditional American high school student” and cheer on the teams in the student section. My friends would drag me to Dodgers games, and I loved going to the volleyball courts to support my friends. So as I understand the exhilaration of a curtain rising on a show, I understand that there is the same fascination and feeling when it comes to sports games. I will say that I think it is hilarious how the sports industry has been playing with the audience spaces and coming up with funny ideas. It’s a small silver lining.
I thought this article was entertaining while still pointing out interesting ways that different venues are handling the pandemic. I hadn’t considered the similarity between professional sports and live performing arts in that the lack of audience has a direct negative impact on the experience as a whole - I’ve heard directors talking about having a limited number of audience members turn their microphones on just so that the performers can hear some kind of reaction to what they’re doing, and this seems to be similar. I think it’s interesting that even though pro sports are designed to be consumed by most people through TV broadcasts, hearing and seeing some kind of spectators is important enough to the players and producers that they have gone to the measures pictured here. The ‘virtual fans’ option particularly stuck out to me as an impressive display of technological advancement while also firmly in the uncanny valley area of not lifelike enough to be unnoticable. I live in Indianapolis and so I’ve been hearing a lot about the Indy 500 and their plans for the race - they want to have a 5% audience capacity, which strikes me as seeming weirdly sad for those spectators. The point of going to the race isn’t really about the race itself, it’s more for the tailgate experience, and having a tiny smattering of people in the stands seems like more trouble than it would actually be worth.
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