It was in early 2020, history might record, that spectator sports across the world changed irrevocably. As the world reeled from the coronavirus pandemic and our outdoor life abruptly shrank with the lockdown, as the pervasive fear of infection took hold of our psyche and keeping physical distance became the new social code to live by in public spaces, sports understandably took a backseat.
But there was too much at stake for the world of sports, and when it became apparent that in the foreseeable future, the world would have to find ways to ‘live with the virus’, sports administrators, too, prodded by necessity, began to dream of reinvention. More on that presently, but as countries start easing lockdown restrictions, we’ll likely witness a resumption of sports calendars at scale.
On May 17, the Government of India announced the reopening of stadiums and sports facilities. Athletes can now practise, and the new mindset suggests that tournaments might also resume soon, even if matches play to empty stadiums. There is a serious possibility that the IPL (Indian Premier League) will return in October as the World T20 in Australia gets postponed. Senior officials in Cricket Australia do not wish to take the risk of holding an international event involving 16 participating nations. They would rather host the lucrative Indian tour, which is expected to fetch Cricket Australia, the country’s cricket administrator, $300 million. The logic is clear: rather than playing host to teams from 16 countries, Australia would prefer the relatively controlled setting of a bilateral competition with India, where it might have to host no more than 100-120 people, including players, broadcasters and media personnel.
In view of the likely postponement of the World Cup, the BCCI has started working on a plan to hold the IPL in this window, provided that the virus situation in India is under control. While refusing to be quoted, senior BCCI officials have confirmed to india today that these plans are indeed afoot and an announcement may come by end-July once the country enters Unlock Stage II. A domestic tournament, BCCI officials say, is easier to organise as it can take place in a city with multiple stadiums and hotels close by. If that sounds reasonable, the economics are compelling: at stake for the BCCI is Rs 3,900 crore in revenues, Rs 600 crore in title sponsorship and Rs 3,300 crore in television rights, which it stands to lose should the IPL get cancelled.
Given what hangs in the balance, three different scenarios are being worked on. Option 1 is a closed-door competition, with no spectators, on the lines of the German Bundesliga, currently under way. Option 2 is a controlled setting, where only hospitality boxes are sold to corporates, who will be responsible for the guests they bring in and to ensure that they maintain agreed protocols for physical distancing. Franchise owners and their guests can be accommodated in this formula. An improbable Option 3 is to have far fewer fans in stadiums, again maintaining physical-distance norms. Unlikely as it seems at this point, the BCCI operations team is trying to work out the logistics of accommodating a small fraction of the full-house capacity: illustratively, say, 15,000 fans at the Eden Gardens, which normally seats 70,000, assuming that government regulations will allow it. For the BCCI, though, the reasons for wanting fans in the stadium are not mainly economic: gate receipts account for only five per cent of its total income. The big money comes from TV rights and title sponsorship, and those revenue streams are more or less guaranteed as long as the tournament is held. So, who needs the fans, right?
Wrong!
GHOST GALLERIES
While acknowledging the crisis, Rohit Sharma, vice captain of the Indian cricket team and skipper of reigning IPL champions Mumbai Indians, says the situation is far from ideal but a resumption of sport, in a safe environment, should be priority. “We’ll still be playing for our fans,” says Rohit. “They won’t be on the grounds but they’ll know it is for safety, theirs and ours, and they can still enjoy the action on television. [For us], it will be like going back to Ranji Trophy cricket and age-group cricket when there were no fans. It will be difficult but we will manage.”
India’s bowling coach Bharat Arun, while ruing the absence of fans, said the players are professionals, capable of adjusting to new situations. “The blue millions are a huge plus for us in Indian cricket. They are present in every stadium we play in. But this is not the time to get them to the grounds. It is [still] for them that we will turn up and play, and we know they will follow us wherever they are.”
BCCI president Sourav Ganguly was unequivocal that safety was paramount. “We need to make some sacrifices [in the short term]. The sport is resilient enough to make a comeback to its full potential once we have a vaccine.” Sourav is quite open to the possibility of closed-door games if the situation so warrants, and his team is working closely with colleagues in Cricket Australia on the proposed India tour in December.
…AND THE CALL TO IMPROVISE
Quite aside from the players in the middle, who feed off the excitement and fervour of fans, for sports broadcasters, the absence of spectators in stadiums threatens to leave them a magic ingredient short in the entertainment feast they like to cook up. Fans make a stadium come alive with their antics and ardour, for the game, for their beloved stars, for the teams they back, as if their life depended on it. Sports, it is well acknowledged, would mean little without fans.
Broadcasters know this only too well. Speaking to india today, Star India chairman and CEO Uday Shankar said his company was busy dreaming up new ways to re-create the drama fans bring to stadium sports. Expect, for example, giant screens and high-fidelity audio to fill in for fans, to give players a semblance of continuity. “At the moment, there are strict rules governing coverage. But in a scenario where we don’t have fans in stadiums, we have to think of [alternative] ways to make coverage attractive and creative: expose fans to raw emotion real time, seen in recent documentaries, [for example],” said Shankar. The ‘recent documentaries’ he is alluding to are: The Test (available on Amazon Prime) and The Last Dance, an ESPN-Netflix miniseries on the career of American basketball legend Michael Jordan. “Raw emotion real time” is possibly a veiled reference to footage that shows players responding to match situations in hitherto unseen areas, like the dressing room. If cameras were allowed inside dressing rooms, fans would have access to locker-room talk and reactions. Shankar seems all for disrupting coverage norms.
BRINGING FANS INTO THE PICTURE
How else can the broadcaster adapt to the new normal, and give fans following the game on television something they love? Can fans on the couch fill in for fans in the stadium? If the camera can no longer cut to a screaming fan in the crowd, can it patch in their reactions as they watch from the safety of their homes? That’s a rhetorical question in the day and age of live streaming videos, with the ubiquitous smartphones, it will be a cinch. Anyone, anywhere, with a smartphone and a high-speed data package, can either live-stream or record and send reactions, and a mobile app can transfer the video directly to the channel. The channel engineers can then sort and select the fan videos, and patch them into the match video feed. They already do this for text messages and tweets coming in from fans to make coverage interactive.
This improvisation has the potential to convert a handicap (of the missing stadium fan) into an opportunity. It can transform telecast, simultaneously engage fans across geographies and time zones, and take coverage to a new level of interactivity that sports fans will likely cherish. Producers of televised sport have already tested technological innovations such as Spidercam, Segway, drone footage, placing cameras on the hats umpires wear and planting audio devices for live chats with players during play. Fans have steadily become interactive participants in mediatised sport through the use of digital platforms and apps. These innovations, no doubt embedded in a corporate culture of promoting consumerism, have also helped increase fan engagement.
MORE POWER TO FANS
So far, broadcast has focused mainly on the stadium. While the game is on, the channel hardly ever shows fans far out of the stadium or in other cities, let alone in different countries. Fans unable to travel or afford the cost of tickets are excluded from the ambit of broadcast. The nature of their engagement with the coverage is passive. However, fandom, too, has a performative potential. If fans had a measure of choice and some control over how they come across on screen, they could be drawn into the spectacle, which would eventually enrich sports broadcasting.
Patching in clips made by enthusiastic fans, located anywhere from Mumbai to Montreal, would also be a way of showcasing their geographical spread and the global nature of fandom. It would also offer an opportunity to embrace real diversity. As opposed to the stadium fan, who is mainly a young local male, the off-stadium fan following is a far richer demographic tapestry. They speak different languages and come from diverse social, cultural and economic milieus. Coverage that looks widely and inclusively at fans could cut across age, gender and the urban-rural divide, it could capture the enthusiasm of a physically challenged or terminally ill fan as effectively as it might the excitement of a jawan at a border post.
Not so long ago, when broadband internet and mobile technologies were not so advanced, this would have been unthinkable, but not any more. Today, courtesy platforms like Hotstar in India, fans are able to tune in even in remote villages. It’s not as if we’ve lost stadium buzz forever, but the challenges posed by a runaway pandemic, and the need to reimagine fan engagement in this environment, are likely to reshape sports broadcast forever. It will be for the better mostly: the invention this necessity will mother will possibly widen sports following beyond our wildest imagination pre-COVID.
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