The Covid-19 pandemic has forced us all to tap into our creativity. In an attempt to simulate real game conditions in the absence of attendees in indoor and outdoor venues, several major team sports like baseball, basketball, soccer, and hockey have resorted to using fan cutout placards to fill the seats instead. Can hardly blame them, as everything happened so quickly. But one who frequently attends live sporting events and now has no other option besides watching sporting events on television has to wonder if it’s worth going back to the ballpark once the gates re-open. For a true sports fan, nothing beats attending a live sporting event, and many of us will pay top dollar and endure certain levels of mistreatment to do it. So when comparing live game experiences, there’s no doubt that stadium placards have it better than real fans.
IF YOU MUST PLACARD, THEN PLACARD
The idea of using placards in place of real folks occupying seats, especially in baseball, seemed shrewd enough at first, but after seeing a couple of soccer venues in Europe fill nearly every seat with a placard, seeing a Major League Baseball venue with several hundred placards in a 45,000 seat stadium lost its appeal.
The NBA used virtual fans in their building and in states where the pandemic regulations aren’t as stringent, real fans can be seen spread throughout the building during college and professional football games. Major League Baseball has already completed a 60-game regular-season and three rounds of postseason play. The World Series begins in a few days and we’re still seeing placards scattered around ballparks.
At this point, it’s better to just leave every seat empty where fans aren’t allowed in the building. No one’s fooled, and there’s no replacing real fans, although you wouldn’t know it by the way they’re treated.
PLACARDS HAVE IT BETTER THAN REAL FANS
Placards don’t have to worry about sitting in the same row with the guy who gets up ten times during the game to buy beer.
Nor do they have to worry about the guy who gets up ten times to buy beer becoming drunk and obnoxious, yelling profanities at players and umpires, and hurling all over folks in his section.
They don’t have to worry about getting elbowed while chasing a foul ball or getting hit in the noggin with one.
They’ll never get turned down for autographs.
They won’t have their view obstructed by other fans doing the wave during a tied baseball game in the bottom of the ninth inning.
If the placard is over six-feet tall, it doesn’t have to worry about spending two or three hours with their knees banging against the seat in from of them.
They don’t have to worry about vertigo if seated in the upper reaches of the stadium. If you’re seated in the same row up there with the guy who gets up multiple times to get a beer, then you have to stand up multiple times. More dizziness.
They’ll never have to stand in long lines to purchase overpriced, unhealthy food or use the restroom.
They are totally unaffected by the flurry of three-point field goal attempts during a basketball game.
They don’t have to worry about missing key game action because the person in front of them decides to stand up just when something crucial is about to happen, even if that person is seated in the first row.
If they’re seated in the next-to-last row of the upper deck, hundreds of feet from the playing surface, they don’t have to worry about hearing some guy sitting behind him screaming at umpires: “That was a strike!” or “How could you miss that call?”
And of course, placards have no emotional attachment to franchises, particularly those constantly mismanaged ones in permanent rebuilding mode, and have no worries about the owner backing up a truck and moving the franchise on a whim.
IT’S OBVIOUS THE FANS ARE MISSED
In every way imaginable, the fans are missed. The existence of stadium placards is just one example. The televised sporting events brought to you from empty stadiums now come complete with manufactured crowd noise. The NBA had virtual fans inside the bubble arena. Players score touchdowns or goals, hit clutch baskets or home runs, and still thump their chests and point to the stands as if seeking adulation from placards. Coaches and managers still gesture and extend their arms while yelling at a referee or umpire standing inches away.
The owners miss the revenues from ticket sales, concessions, parking, and the gameday sales of team merchandise. The nearby businesses miss the before, during, and after game socializing in their establishments. The home team misses the fan support; some of the visiting players miss having the incentive to silence a hostile road crowd. Both teams miss the energy in the building. The announcers no longer have to yell over crowd noise to be heard, but they do it anyway.
True enough, the athletes we watch on television grew up playing in empty venues or outdoors in front of no one but their teammates and maybe a few family members and close friends. And while several teams, particularly in the NBA and Major League Baseball, play in front of mostly empty seats during normal times, it still has to be a strange feeling to play with no fans around.
WHEN THE FANS RETURN, MORE OF THE SAME
Season-ticket holders forced to purchase meaningless pre-season games and licenses to pay for their seats. Player holdouts, work stoppages, and lockouts. Game action interrupted for instant replay review. Three-hour rain delays and day-night doubleheaders in baseball. Poor sight lines and inadequate legroom even in the newer edifices. Non-competitive basketball games where at least one team is playing its third game in four nights, all involving travel. Rowdy fans in your section, including the guy in front of you who won’t sit down. Instant replay delays. Long lines for the right to overpay for concessions or use the restroom. Eardrum-rupturing music and screaming public address announcers. Listless matinee games. Overcooked introductions of starting lineups. Playoff games that end after 11:00 PM on school nights and before your 90-minute trek home. New arenas with higher prices and smaller seats. Walking into the arena only to notice the player you came to see is out of uniform and on the bench during warmups. He’s not injured, just doing “load management.”
These are the experiences of fans who dare attend a live sporting event and don’t have access to a VIP section or luxury box. The prices keep going up, the games keep getting longer and the newer arenas are built to accommodate everyone except those who come to watch the game, but we show up in large numbers anyway, even if the home team is perenially lousy.
Will there be any appreciation for the fans shown upon their return? Nothing long-term. Perhaps there will be a “Welcome Back” Fan Appreciation Event similar to the ones we normally see during the last home game of the season, where a few folks can win a drawing for a television set or vacation and one person might even win a car, while the other tens of thousands in attendance will leave the building empty-handed and poorer as they face the immediate prospect of a traffic jam on the way out of the parking lot, and a letter in their mailbox offering a chance to buy next year’s season tickets at a higher price.
And as devoted fan bases in cities like Charlotte, Seattle, San Diego, and Oakland have found out, local residents not willing or able to chip in to finance a new playpen most of them will never be able to afford to enter, could lose their franchise altogether.
Somewhere, a placard is laughing at us.
Photo by Anelale Nájera on Unsplash
