Reading. All sport (Int)

All sport will revolve around the TV viewer

The very first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix took place in November 2009. It was a wonderful spectacle. Twenty bright, shiny, immensely powerful Formula One racing cars zoomed around the brand new circuit at breath-taking speed, in a race which started during daylight hours and ended in the neon glare of spotlights, well after the sun had set. What struck me, however, was how the whole event was designed not for the spectators within the stadium, stuck behind crash barriers, but for the worldwide TV audience. The race’s starting time was fixed by European TV stations who wanted to show the race when their viewing audience was at a peak. And the way the race was filmed and presented felt more like a Hollywood film or an expensive videogame than a genuine sporting event. I wondered whether this was the future of sport.

Until now most people have considered watching sport live, at a racetrack, in a stadium, or in a muddy field, to be a lot more fun than watching it on TV. Being there live is, well, real and totally engaging and absorbing. Spectators at live football matches feel genuinely involved in the action and able to influence what’s going on by shouting or cheering or singing, or by simply being there. Some experts, however, believe that this will change. Spectators won’t want to go to watch live sports in the future because TV coverage will become so realistic and exciting that live sport will be boring in comparison. Before long, we’ll all have large, flat-screen TVs with 3D pictures and amazing sound, and instead of feeling far from the action and unable to interact with it or influence it in the way that live spectators can, we’ll be empowered by technology to take part. Viewers can already view goals from different angles, follow the performance of individual players, and access information about the match and the players as it’s in progress.

Before long, watching from home will replicate the experience a fan gets in a stadium. And when that happens, there is a real danger that attendances will start to fall. So will top professional sportsmen and women end up playing matches without spectators? The answer is that, in some cases, yes, this will probably happen. A more likely scenario is that spectators at the more popular live sports will expect to have the same experience as at home. In the future, at a football match, we might have TV monitors in our seats so that we can watch replays and listen to commentary, for example.