So I was lucky to be at a five set match earlier this week at the US Open, one that was decided in a 10 point tiebreak that would determine who moved on to the second round and who went home. It’s one of the more dramatic moments in all of sport, up there with soccer shootouts and hockey golden goals. My 15-year-old and I were lucky enough to work our way down to the front rows, close enough that we could fell the tension from the coaching box. Having been at a few fifth set tiebreak matches, it’s one of those moments you want to fully experience, something that leaves a mark in your sporting conscious. Something you watch so intensely that can remember how it felt.
Which is why I just couldn’t understand in the final points of the match, a handful of folks around me – including someone right in front of me – held up their phones so they could record those final moments. Instead of watching with their own eyes and leaving yourself free to jump and cheer, they focused on centering the shot and making sure to capture the footage, like you’re working for ESPN only with a phone and a terrible angle. And while it certainly wasn’t the majority of diehards who stuck around late for a five setter, there were enough to be notable.
Before you say anything, know that I understand the phenomenon of people posting videos of big experiences on the social media platform of their choosing. That’s true for deciding moments of sporting events just like it is hit songs at concerts. If you spend more than a hot moment on TikTok or Instagram or even Facebook, you’ll see more than your fill of people replaying a winning touchdown or a shootout goal or Taylor Swift coming out for an encore. And in almost every case, you can find an actual professional version of that video somewhere else – say, ESPN. But that shaky DIY video from the corner of the stadium tells anyone who stumbles up on it that you were in fact there in person. Subconsciously, it’s also a way of telling others that they were not.
Watching sports has gone through a remarkable evolution. Where once the only way to watch was live, we eventually got to the point to where it was almost better to watch at home on a big screen. And now we’re at something of a bizarro hybrid where you watch it person but actually through a small phone screen. There’s other variants, like sitting in a stadium only to watch on the huge big screen hanging from the ceiling. But without a doubt, the concept of simply sitting in a stadium seat with your eyes glued on the field or court feels like driving a stick shift.
I’ll try to limit my get off my lawn sentiments, even if I’d really like to talk way more about how annoying it was to have to peer over some guy holding a phone up in my line of sight at the biggest point of the match. Especially since he only sat down two games earlier. I won’t even comment much on how sad it feels, the fact that someone would choose the evasive goal of building an online persona over the unbridled joy of experiencing live sport in person, creating an actual memory instead of one you can only recall by looking through your own social history. That’s a much larger statement about what and who we’re becoming as a society.
What I will say is that regardless of how I feel about this guy filming the winning points in front of me – and I didn’t like it – we should recognize that this is simply part of the sports spectator experience, as much as the AI generated line calls are. We no longer live in disparate sectors of live or on screens. For a lot of people, now it’s both. Which has significant impact on how teams and sports and events are considering both their stadium experience as well as their virtual brands, formed as much by collective content creators as by their own broadcast. And no matter how bizarre it sounds, there’s a growing fan base that is more than willing to pay hundreds of dollars for the opportunity to drive to a stadium to watch something through their phone screen. It sounds crazy, especially when you see it happen.
As for me, I just wish that guy would put his arms down so I could see.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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