People Who Need People: Sports without Fans

Sports are back...kind of. There are professional athletes competing against each other on live television, but without fans I’m not sure exactly what to call the experience.

I’ve been a fan of English football as long as I can remember. Growing up playing soccer in the 90s, David Beckham was peaking as, well, David Beckham. So naturally my focus landed on England and on Manchester United, the Yankees of the English game as far as success and global notoriety were concerned. To this day, I follow the team closely, watch games regularly on the weekend, and supplement my non-fiction reading with articles about prospective transfers and game analysis.

With the Premier League among several leagues around the world to resume play over the last month or so, and with baseball and basketball set to resume play here in the US, the glaring omission is obvious: the fans. The first league to do so was the German Bundesliga. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I tuned in to the first game. I’ve never felt more ambivalent watching the game I love.

What I was watching looked like soccer, but it didn’t feel like it. Putting aside my own concerns for the players’ safety and the seemingly contradictory rules meant to safeguard athletes in a contact-heavy sport, the silence that filled the empty seats changed everything. It changed how I experienced watching the game, it changed how the athletes themselves play the game, and the data shows that it has an impact as well. Without fans, there’s no homefield advantage.

Sports are entertainment. It’s why 20-year olds are able to become millionaires, and it’s why a small handful of elite athletes can be financially secure for decades from one contract. With so many people watching, there is enough revenue from advertising and merchandise to sustain it.

As entertainment, then, it would seem like they are there for us, the fans. As I watch sports make it back on television without fans, I’m left wondering how much we are actually a part of the sports we watch; if the experience watching and participating is drastically different without non-athletes cheering on (or jeering on) the athletes themselves, we must be an integral part of the game itself, at least the version we want to see.

So impactful is the absence of fans that live broadcasts now include an audio recording of ambient fan noise, cheers, and jeers. Though it is a much preferable experience to watching games without it, the cognitive dissonance of seeing empty seats and hearing the excitement from an absent crowd when a shot grazes the goalpost is hard to compartmentalize. Sports, ever the solace from the mundane for many, still comes with a layer of ambivalence during the pandemic.

It has made me realize, then, how integral people are even to those very activities we feel so separated from. Without people watching athletes play their game, the game is drastically different. Even if you don’t go out often (I much prefer home cooking and not waiting in lines), it was disconcerting not to see the hustle and bustle of a Saturday night. And the caution I take when I see someone on the same hiking trail as I is a constant reminder of the world we’re living in and the one that used to be--one where I would long to be alone on a hiking trail but still feel some sort of connectedness to others when I saw someone sharing that same experience with me.