Matteo Venieri
venam@bu.edu
The year is 2023. Not a single game has been played in front of a live crowd since March 2020. Unthinkable to gather tens of thousands of people in a stadium or arena after the number of people infected by COVID-19 reached one billion worldwide. Now, AT&T Stadium, Madison Square Garden, Fenway Park and all the other iconic venues of the country are nothing but relics of a different era of sports.
For now, this is just a hypothetic and very grim scenario. But not an impossible one. The confirmed cases of Coronavirus in the United States have gone from 75 on March 1 to more than 1 million on May 1. And the number will likely keep going up for the foreseeable future.
Ever since the Thunder-Jazz game on March 11 was suspended because of Utah’s Rudy Gobert positivity to COVID-19, the world of sports has been put on hold almost entirely. From that day, many have speculated about the day sports will return.
But a more compelling question is, what will be different about sports, once they return? Given the magnitude of this quest, I decided to seek assistance from other people from the world of sports. To my surprise, before delving into the future, I found out that the origin of this journey began a decade ago.
In 2010, then-Bleacher Report writer Dexter Rogers was almost prophetic in his article “Could you imagine what the world would be like without sports?” In the piece, Rogers illustrates how deeply sports are embedded in our lives and how different we all would be without them. “Many of us rely on sports to get us through the daily grinds of life,” he wrote. “It gives us an escape that often allows us to fantasize and dream about the so-called impossible.”
I felt almost compelled to reach out to him and ask what he thought about his own prediction a decade later. “I think it was forthcoming,” Rogers said. “A lot of it hit home. It immediately took me back to the place I was mentally and spiritually, when I published that. I looked at what’s going on today, and some of those things that I alluded to it within that specific article have manifested before our eyes.”
In fact, in 2020 sports fans have already seen the cancellation or postponement of some of the most anticipated events, like March Madness, the Boston Marathon, the Masters Tournament, Wimbledon, UEFA Euro 2020 and the Summer Olympics. In the next few weeks and months, we’ll discover if the Tour de France, the Champions League final and the Kentucky Derby will take place in some capacity or not.
Rogers’ perspective proved to be the first step in the right direction. Imagining such a far-fetched scenario was for few, but living this shutdown is for many. The feverish desire to bring back sports ASAP involves literally everybody. The players, who in many cases had to forfeit part of their salary, the fans, who right now would salivate even for a Hoboken Zephyrs game, and the major leagues, which have already lost $12 billion in revenue, according to an ESPN analysis.
This massive loss is the main reason why professional leagues like the MLB and the NBA are on the clock to find an answer to their future. Baseball was scheduled to have its opening day on March 26, whereas right now NBA teams were supposed to be battling in the playoffs.
From the proposal of creating hub regions across America, to the possibility of playing at Disney World, at Vegas casinos or even on cruise ships, no plan seems too unrealistic. One thing, though, appears inevitable: when sports come back, it will be without fans.
On the practical side, this answers in part the initial question. Playing in empty stadiums and arenas will certainly be different, but not unprecedented. In the modern era of pro sports, there is actually one precedent.
In 2015, the Orioles and the White Sox had to play in an empty Camden Yards due to the riots in Baltimore that followed the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. “It was just a surreal environment,” then-Chicago manager Robin Ventura said, as reported by the Chicago Tribune. “I don’t think we really want to play another one like this.”
It’s often hard to separate a great sports moment from the loud cheer it generated, especially when they turn a tragedy into triumph. Think about Mike Piazza hitting a go-ahead home run in the eighth inning at Shea Stadium after 9/11. Think about Steve Gleason blocking a punt at the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina.
The crowd didn’t just lift those moments to immortality, but more importantly helped everyone share a piece of their pain and made them feel part of something bigger and stronger. Will there ever be a comparable post-Coronavirus moment without a roaring crowd to highlight it?
It’s indisputable that a large, loud crowd brings a different kind of electricity to a game. Without the cheers, the boos, the de-fense and CHARGE! chants, the atmosphere is going to be eerily quiet. Russell Wilson will probably have to whisper the play call to his teammates in the huddle, or otherwise Harrison Smith will hear everything, all that way back from his safety spot.
TV producers will have to adjust as well, trying to keep the audience from home engaged in the action without the usual soundtrack of the fans. A challenge that will call for broadcasters to step up their game too and avoid making Sunday Night Football at Foxboro feel like a bingo hall in Peabody. On the bright side, they’ll have lots of time to adjust before things go back to what they used to be.
A study by Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health concluded that forms of social distancing will be necessary to curb the spread of COVID-19 until 2022, with the risk of a resurgence in contagion by 2024. Therefore, just like malls and restaurants, new safety protocols will have to be implemented at the various sports venues at the time of reopening.
Keeping six feet or more of distance, as indicated by the CDC, will likely mean to leave every three or four seats empty. In other words, a sold-out crowd at Yankee Stadium, for example, would shrink from 47,300 to 14,000 fans or less. Lambeau Leaps could become anathema, while the classic hot dog toss might be substituted with a more practical Purell bottle toss.
Perhaps, getting into an arena will require to go through not only a metal detector, but also a “COVID-19 detector,” whether in the form of a test or temperature check. Face masks might become necessary for admittance and so will be thoroughly washing and sanitizing your hands before leaving the restrooms – something that, in the first place, should have never been interpreted as mandatory just for the employees…
And yet, all these measures might not be enough to welcome back fans in the stands anytime soon. A recent survey by Seton Hall University revealed that 72% of Americans would not attend a sporting event without a vaccine.
WBUR journalist Shira Springer warned that allowing mass gatherings too early could be a terrible mistake. “Opening venues too soon would diminish the seriousness of the situation and increase the risk of a second wave,” she said. Miscalculating the time of reopening, she added, “will be a black mark that tarnishes the image of sports.”
In her analysis, Springer offered a thought-provoking idea, suggesting that new technology could soon offer fans an even more competitive alternative to the classic in-stadium experience.
Back in 2014, the NBA began experimenting with Virtual Reality to broadcast its games, and since then has made significant strides. Before the suspension, the Association offered a game in VR every week, plus the entire All-Star Weekend and several playoff games. Now, it’s easy to imagine that the offer will grow in the near future.
At the moment, this isn’t exactly a way of consuming sports that fits everybody’s pockets. To have access to VR, fans need a headset, a compatible smartphone and the NBA League Pass, which costs between $120 and $250, depending on the extra features desired.
However, such an immersive way of experiencing games can already be considered the best of both worlds. In fact, it gives fans the chance to enjoy a game from the comfort of their couch, while at the same time giving them the perspective of sitting courtside without spending thousands of dollars to secure that highly coveted seat.
“The fans who use it have given us a lot of great feedback,” said Jeff Marsilio, the NBA’s senior vice president of new media distribution, as reported by Forbes. “The engagement time is longer than you might expect. People tend to stay in there because they feel a real sense of presence in the concept.”
The window between the return of sports on TV only and the reopening of stadiums and arenas filled to capacity might be wide enough to allow the improvement and expansion of VR. This technology could ultimately establish itself as a new reality in our lives and a standard device in millions of households.
Personally, I believe that there’s nothing like going to sporting events, because the game itself is just part of a larger experience. Yes, it’s about cheering for a dunk or a homer, but also an unparalleled way to create great memories with your friends and family, as you fight the snow with a cup of hot cocoa or beat the heat with a cold one.
When I was a kid, I went to every home game of my city’s soccer team with my grandpa. We were always standing in the same spot, right behind the corner flag on the right side of the field. Sun or rain, wins or losses, we were always there. Firmly holding onto the cold steel bars that divided us from the players, like prisoners striving to be as close as possible to the other, more enticing side.
Those years were instrumental in shaping my love for sports, and something I wish to replicate one day as a season ticket holder with my own family. Right now, I can’t imagine a headset able to replicate that type of experience.
However, when sports do come back, I, like most people, might not have any other option. As venues remain locked and technology advances, we might soon witness a historical shift in the way we experience sports.
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