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Innovation and tech are rising up to transform sports


What is a world without sports? Americans have gotten the answer to that question — for perhaps the first time since World War II. April should have begun with the culmination of the NCAA Tournament, giving way to Opening Day at Fenway Park, and Tiger Woods was due to defend his green jacket at the Masters. The NBA and NHL both would have started their playoff runs, providing nightly high-stakes drama, making way for the running of Triple Crown and the grueling matches at Roland Garros, all with an eye toward the 2020 Olympics this summer.   

But none of that happened. 

What should have marked a banner year for sports transformed into an almost empty season. Early bright spots included iRacing, NASCAR’s answer to esports, featuring actual professional drivers at home in digital racing simulators, and an all too familiar Zoom-style NFL draft. While a far cry from the pent-up anticipation fans — and marketers — had prior to that fateful mid-March day when the sports world stopped, these innovations mark the types of considerations that each sport will need to take to pave a path forward. For example, iRacing delivered about the half the audience of the races they replaced but created new engaging social dialogue between race fans and drivers, making the best of a bad situation. Amid the uncertainty, one truth remains — sports will be different this year. Fans and marketers must adapt to this new landscape as the industry rapidly evolves.   

May represented a slow and cautious return to sports, with events that are less contact-oriented leading the way. NASCAR successfully resumed to a revised schedule at empty tracks and golf returned with some featured foursomes, just 140 golfers shy of what we last witnessed on March 12, the day play was suspended. With the PGA Tour returning to full field competition on June 11, these sports are leading the way toward a televised “return to normal” as their athletes compete from a social distance. But without fans on the premises, they are returning to venues with a murmur rather than a cheering section. While NASCAR relies more on the roar of the engine than of the crowd, their return to racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway — a venue that once housed 171,000 — was relegated to mostly pit and production crews. Golf’s “galleries” play more of a visual role, framing the backdrop of each hole, cheering on players on the tee box, and informing the field of leaderboard changes with distant applause. It remains an individual sport nonetheless, and producers can focus on tighter camera angles, coupled with more intimate audio and beauty shots, to mitigate the lack of a gallery. Both NASCAR and the PGA Tour represent opportunities for sports producers to work the kinks out and try to create energy and excitement for the viewers at home despite a lack of any fans on site. Lack of competition from the “Big Four” has already proved to add some fresh eyeballs, increasing viewership and benefiting those brands that lean on NASCAR and golf, at least in the short term. 

Stadium and arena sports are another ballgame — literally. Imagine Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady with his sidekick, Rob Gronkowski, facing off against Drew Brees in an empty stadium on opening weekend. On paper, it marks a match for the ages, but, in reality, the potential media experience of that pending broadcast relies on yet-to-be-trialed production innovations. We can look to the music and gaming industries as examples. Artists have already navigated fan bases online with success. In April, Travis Scott filled 12 million virtual seats instead of a live amphitheater through Fortnite. Major sports seeking a geographic “bubble” to complete their seasons should apply these digital learnings to help innovate and scale their leagues in an otherwise confined situation. Some opportunistic entrepreneurs have already started thinking this through: Teenager Elias Andersen developed an app called HearMeCheer, which “takes input from microphones in participating fans’ smartphones, tablets or computers and applies low-latency algorithms to blend the reactions into the sporting soundtrack everyone is accustomed to hearing,” according to SportTechie. It will take a plethora of these innovations, paired with trial and error, to get to a place where the passion, drama, energy, and home-field advantage start to “feel” like what we expect from our marquee sports. 

A dispersed fan base presents marketers with new opportunities to innovate the fan experience in meaningful ways. Brands like Titleist leveraged the sports void of this past spring by providing golfers with direct access to world-class teaching professionals, providing instruction and drills for practice at home, thus shifting the focus of the media experience from watching others play to individual participation. While the outlook for getting the major sports up and running remains murky, the one thing has become clear in recent days and throughout history: We need to respond to complete adversity with an explosion of innovation and technology. Until that moment crystalizes, let’s keep thinking about what will drive the most meaningful media experiences in sports.

Jeff Gagne is senior vice president of strategic investments at Havas Media.