With the years 2020 halfway done and starting to wind down on its seventh month, professional sports leagues around the world are clamoring to get their current seasons postponed by the advent of COVID-19 going again, even if there are fewer games to play because of it. Some of these associations like Major League Baseball (MLB) in the US have already started, with the condition that their games cannot have fans on the stands due to health and safety regulations. Fox Sports has decided to touch upon the idea of blending cutouts of spectators on the seats plus computer-generated “virtual fans.” Almost nobody seems impressed.
USA Today tells us that, for their telecast of the first Major
League Baseball game happening right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Fox Sports felt that they should do something about the vacant stands and
bleachers. By using the “Unreal” graphics engine famously used in many current-generation
videogames, Fox Sports superimposed a multitude of CGI spectators for the games
played this weekend on locations like Wrigley Park, with a variation of models
given different (team-based) clothing and a series of looped motions. But the
attempt to fill up the empty-except-for-players-and-officials failed to hype.
Fox’s digital fans gotta go. Just a ton of dudes alternating resting their chin in their hand and then 2-second delayed reactions. pic.twitter.com/fLh7EYXTMX— Matt Young (@Chron_MattYoung) July 25, 2020
Social media exploded with
critiques on the virtual MLB fans. A significant number of naysayers think Fox
Sports should not have bothered. Others pointed out that the broadcaster could
not seem to be consistent with the spectators. They tend to be generated on the
stadium only during long shots. When the camera goes behind the pitcher the
fans usually did not appear. And when they do their looped movements simply did
not look natural. Some MLB teams themselves have an alternative for their fans,
inviting them to send cutouts of themselves to be “seated” on the stands. They
do run the risk of being damaged by a hard-flying homerun though.
Close to 5,000 people purchased cardboard cutouts of themselves for @Mets games at Citi Field this season.— Avish Sood (@AvishSood) July 19, 2020
One person bought a cutout for their dog and it’s pretty great. pic.twitter.com/8f1XJjie3h
In other leagues, the NBA has its
own system in play to populate the courtside when the truncated season/playoffs
begin July 31 at the Disney World “bubble.” Fans that can avail of “special
tickets” will get to watch the action virtually. Monitors set on the seats will
project the viewers at court, using the “Together mode” on Microsoft Teams to
make the individual viewers look like they are “sitting” together. The system
looks to be in need of further refinements.
But at least none of these
electronically-based fan generation systems are like what FC Seoul did for
their K-League game back in May. They had populated the stands of their home
pitch with female mannequins wearing facemasks, holding signs and posed like
cheering. Korean social media accused the team of using “sex doll toys, leading
to a hefty 100-million-Won fine.
Image courtesy of The Verge
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