Can Stadiums Replace Fans With Cardboard Cutouts and Avatars? (thehustle.co) 167
A new article on The Hustle tries to explain why sports stadiums are suddenly full of fans made out of cardboard:
Back in March, a German filmmaker and soccer aficionado named Ingo Müller was sitting at home, complaining to his wife about not being able to attend the matches of his favorite club team, Borussia Mönchengladbach. "She said, 'If you're really pissed about not going to the stadium, just take a photo and send it there,'" Müller tells The Hustle. So Müller contacted a local printer and a team to build a portal where fans could upload photos of themselves. For a sum of €19 ($21 USD), he'd print out each photo on a cardboard cutout and install it in the stadium, with the permission of club owners. Originally, he anticipated between 500 and 2k orders. So far, 21k+ people have purchased a cutout.
All the proceeds go back to charities associated with the team, including a portion to fans impacted by the pandemic. Now, Müller has received inquiries from sports teams in "at least 15 countries," including Sweden, Colombia, China, Russia, Serbia, and Austria, about setting up their own cardboard fan project. He's even decided to apply for a Guinness World Record. And Müller isn't the only one tapping into the trend. Cardboard fans are lining the stands at baseball games in Taiwan and South Korea, and soccer matches all over Europe. Shaquille O'Neal's cardboard likeness even turned up for a soccer match in Northampton, England. At least 8 Premiere League teams have been in talks to fill their stands with cutouts. Turkish soccer clubs are trying a model with two price tiers: 123 liras ($18) for season ticket holders and 149 liras ($22) for regular fans...
For sports teams trying to recoup ticket revenue, cardboard fans aren't the only idea in the mix. Using AR, an Iceland-based company, OzSports, is trying to project avatars of fans into seats. In Denmark, one team brought 10k fans into its stadium with Zoom. In South Korea, a soccer team filled its fan seats with actual sex dolls — a move that earned them widespread criticism and an ~$81k fine.
All the proceeds go back to charities associated with the team, including a portion to fans impacted by the pandemic. Now, Müller has received inquiries from sports teams in "at least 15 countries," including Sweden, Colombia, China, Russia, Serbia, and Austria, about setting up their own cardboard fan project. He's even decided to apply for a Guinness World Record. And Müller isn't the only one tapping into the trend. Cardboard fans are lining the stands at baseball games in Taiwan and South Korea, and soccer matches all over Europe. Shaquille O'Neal's cardboard likeness even turned up for a soccer match in Northampton, England. At least 8 Premiere League teams have been in talks to fill their stands with cutouts. Turkish soccer clubs are trying a model with two price tiers: 123 liras ($18) for season ticket holders and 149 liras ($22) for regular fans...
For sports teams trying to recoup ticket revenue, cardboard fans aren't the only idea in the mix. Using AR, an Iceland-based company, OzSports, is trying to project avatars of fans into seats. In Denmark, one team brought 10k fans into its stadium with Zoom. In South Korea, a soccer team filled its fan seats with actual sex dolls — a move that earned them widespread criticism and an ~$81k fine.
Yes! (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely yes.
Re:Yes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you can, question is if you should.
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That was my first thought as well.
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The could rent them to the a Trump campaign when not in use, to fill up the empty seats. Nobody would notice any difference, and the IQ matches Trumpers perfectly.
Leftists bought tickets for the Trump rally then did not show up. It was a planned thing to make Trump appear less popular than he really is. Similar to registering with a different political party in order to vote for the least viable candidate in the primaries, so the candidate from your party looks better in comparison.
I'm a conservative Republican who is lukewarm with our current president. As a registered Republican I am constantly blasted with communiques requesting money to help on the campaign trail
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Indeed. The biggest issue is that cutouts have significantly less disposable income than people, so ticket sales tend to do worse when filling the seats with them.
Re:Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
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In S.Korea they used sex dolls [latimes.com]. This seems less controversial and cheaper too.
You'd assume that since they were wearing clothes, there wouldn't have been any controversy. Is western prudism making its way over there? I thought South Korea didn't have the typical hang-ups regarding sex. Hell, they even have a giant penis park [buzzfeed.com]. Seriously.
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In S.Korea they used sex dolls
Used sex dolls sounds gross and unsanitary.
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In S.Korea they used sex dolls [latimes.com]. This seems less controversial and cheaper too.
Plastic representations of humans filled with fake smiles and body parts.
The only thing that would make that controversial in the US, is the accuracy of it.
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Maybe people will finally figure out that you don't need billion dollar stadiums and the massive taxes needed to build and maintain them. For the last 40+ years professional sports (at least in the US anyway) have made most of their money from television contracts. Billions of dollars a year. It's the reason they can afford to pay huge salaries to mediocre players.
So just get rid of the stadiums and broadcast the games on television/internet.
Of course there will always be a few people who will complain t
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Of course there will always be a few people who will complain that the long drives, heavy traffic, waiting in long lines to take a piss and getting anally raped for food, drinks, ticket prices and parking fees is all part of "the experience".
But that is part of the experience. That's part of why I don't have any interest.
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You mean like the BLM riots?
We'll see how bad coronavirus actually is shortly. And it's not going to be among demographic you want to see in gas chambers.
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No, corporate executives, hedge fund managers, and mercenaries aren't likely to be affected, I'm quite aware of that. Your point?
Why not cover the stands in green screen fabric (Score:5, Interesting)
and just CGI in sportsball enthusiasts from previous years?
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For televised games they already do this with ads. Each region the game is shown in can have different ads targeted to the local market. But that's only of use to large clubs in the upper leagues.
Japan is using robots, of course. Before you ask I don't know what the inflatable dongs are. https://www.softbankhawks.co.j... [softbankhawks.co.jp]
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Before you ask I don't know what the inflatable dongs are
Japan and South Korea really need to work on some sort of collaboration here.
Re:Why not cover the stands in green screen fabric (Score:4, Insightful)
and just CGI in sportsball enthusiasts from previous years?
CGI might somehow satisfy TV viewers, but it does nothing for the players. I have to think that cardboard cutouts in the stands have a positive effect on athletes. It's at least some kind of physical fan presence, and a reminder that the fans still care and are still rooting for them.
Additionally, I really don't want to see CGI 'fans' in the seats. I find there's far too much artificial reality today, and too much blurring of the line between reality and fantasy. Hell, we now have a whole political system and way of life based on that - we don't need more of it, and its purveyors don't need additional encouragement and licence.
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The cardboard cut outs won't cut it for the players, either.
It would be about as exciting (and motivating) as watching paint dry, or grass grow...
Re:Why not cover the stands in green screen fabric (Score:5, Funny)
It would be about as exciting (and motivating) as watching paint dry, or grass grow...
So it would be exactly like watching sports.
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Presumably the cardboard fans are just 0.11 beta, and this time next year the fans will be animatronic: moving, yelling, drinking beer, surfing the web on their phones instead of watching the game, etc. By 2023 they'll be able to catch foul balls (or duck or "accidentally" miss a catch, all in the name of realism). You could even have some of the phone-surfers get "killed" by foul balls. "Look at ol' Phoney here! They replaced his head covering with something that 'thunks' more loudly than last week, and th
Re:Why not cover the stands in green screen fabric (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a flying fuck about the players. They are a bunch of grown ass adults running about like children and making millions of dollars for doing so because another bunch of grown ass children want to watch them. Caesar was right.
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Give them bread and circuses and hire barbarian mercenaries? We're well on our way to the Fall of Rome, aren't we?
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I'm not a huge fan of sports either, but I never understood the mentality that sports players employed in jobs whose primary goal is entertainment would be considered less than careers such as medicine, engineering or law. A quote from Robin William's literature teacher from Dead Poet's Society sums up my view on this better than I could, so:
[...] medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
Re:Why not cover the stands in green screen fabric (Score:5, Insightful)
so I don't understand why other feel the need to deride their profession.
I would hazard a guess because they have imagined their wealth has given them some ordained authority to lecture their customers regarding morals. Entertainers are paid to entertain. If I want to be lectured on morality, I will visit a church.
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Given them "ordained authority"... or simply given them a platform? Are you trying to tell me that if you were famous you would not use that if you felt strongly about something? It's a nice notion in principle... I guess?... but ultimately these people have the same rights that you do, and it isn't entirely their fault if more people are listening when they exercise their 1st Amendment ones.
If you want to be mad at someone / something, maybe get mad at the people whom they can influence strictly because th
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I would hazard a guess because they have imagined their wealth has given them some ordained authority to lecture their customers regarding morals. Entertainers are paid to entertain. If I want to be lectured on morality, I will visit a church.
This isn't much different than people who have obtained wealth in any number of other professions. Or perhaps you feel only rich businessmen should be able to lobby politicians or influence public discourse on important topics?
That isn't really fair, as you perhaps feel no rich people should have undo influence on politics in general. That is a nice idea, but not one I ever see being realistic in practice.
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"The average sports player is more of a master of their craft than the vast majority of engineers or doctors...."
Are they? Or did they simply win the genetic lottery in terms of size, height, reaction speed, and so on?
Regardless, I don't really care if people want to pay to watch grown men or women hit a ball or run up and down a field or drive around in circles. I do, however, question whether or not a significantly large percentage of a school's educational budget should be devoted to athletics, stadiums,
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Please define "significantly large percentage" of a school's budget. I believe you are simply guessing at the economics behind school athletics and really don't know what you're talking about.
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just rerun last years game, its already proven these drunken retards are just there to scream and act even dumber, doubt they know what actually happened in the game
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I think they should pipe in audio from people watching the game and mix it together.
Is this fun for people really? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they can paint the lines virtually they can paint the audience... but wtf is the purpose besides a tongue in cheek joke and solidarity signaling? Are people really enthused to see cardboard cutouts in the stadium? Why not just avoid aiming the camera at the empty seats?
Re:Is this fun for people really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah - the real thing you miss without a crowd present isn't imagery of stands full of people, it's the sound of a crowd. It's like watching one of those late night shows that used to be in front of an audience and watching them now without one. It's weird, because there are no crowd reaction sounds. You can also watch the comedians running them have problems with timing because they don't have a crowd to react to know when to pause for laughs. They don't know when something they didn't think was that funny was, or when a joke didn't land. It's just kind of awkward.
Part of watching live sports is hearing the live crowd. Cardboard cutouts don't cheer. They just sit there. Having a stadium full of a motionless, soundless audience wouldn't "fix" anything - if anything, it would just make the experience even weirder.
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They're using crowd sounds recorded from earlier matches as well.
I always hated laugh tracks. (Score:3)
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They're using crowd sounds recorded from earlier matches as well.
But won't the players become confused when the pitcher is looking and nodding at the catcher and the crowd suddently goes wild, while later on an outfielder is making an incredible catch and .... silence.
It's like they're playing back the audio track exactly as previously recorded.
If you want a laugh-track example, go back to Star Trek TOS where Kirk was in a gladiator fight -- that's the first time I've "seen" one. And even if it didn't exist then, it sure does NOW.
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Yeah - the real thing you miss without a crowd present isn't imagery of stands full of people, it's the sound of a crowd...
Seems we used to feel the same way about filming sitcoms. Then they invented the laugh track and turned a live audience into a button.
And it hardly takes a virus to empty a stadium. Just put a few asshole players in there who refuse to play for anything less than millions of dollars and a full season's worth of salary while hundreds of millions of humans suffer and die around the world. You won't be able to fit fans into the stadium after making room for that amount of arrogance.
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People are paying to have their cardboard avatars at the stadium. It's revenue for the club that they are missing out on when no one can attend.
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If they can paint the lines virtually they can paint the audience... but wtf is the purpose besides a tongue in cheek joke and solidarity signaling? Are people really enthused to see cardboard cutouts in the stadium? Why not just avoid aiming the camera at the empty seats?
I have a better question. Why does anyone care if the seats are empty or not?
Are people really only watching these games because they think other people are too?
If that is the case, then sports fans are dumber than I thought.
Re:Is this fun for people really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does anyone care if the seats are empty or not?
Well, the only reason that I give a shit is because the bastards promised us that the extra revenue from sports fans would generate enough taxes to pay the taxpayers back for their enormous fucking subsidies. We all knew they were lying, but getting back at least some portion of that lost money would be nice.
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To answer that question, watch the movie "Miracle".
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I have a better question. Why does anyone care if the seats are empty or not?
Because one of the main reasons that spectator sports exist is to serve as a relatively harmless outlet for our deep-rooted tribal instincts.
If the tribe goes missing, so does the satisfaction.
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There's no game I can think of, including friggin' golf, that the crowd isn't close enough as to be unavoidable. if you don't remove all stadiums and crowd areas, you cannot avoid looking like kids playing in an office parking lot on Sunday.
Thought game: Watch the movie Miracle and imagine it with no crowds. I don't like hockey and I get worked up watching that movie.
Without the crowds? Just a hockey game.
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If they can paint the lines virtually they can paint the audience... but wtf is the purpose besides a tongue in cheek joke and solidarity signaling? Are people really enthused to see cardboard cutouts in the stadium? Why not just avoid aiming the camera at the empty seats?
As someone else pointed out, it's not just about home viewers. Athletes do feed off the crowd. I don't know if static cardboard cutouts will help the athletes much, but it at least shows teams someone cares.
Time for VR to shine? (Score:2)
So I've read some intersting reports that Corona antibodies may not last very long which of course opens the whole reinfection is possible dilemma. ref: https://www.the-scientist.com/... [the-scientist.com]
If Corona is going to be a multi-year struggle thenwe have to step-up our remote conferencing and view options. An idea for VR is to have the entire pitch with players filmed from all angles (or automagically reconstructed by software) so anyone can view the game from any angle which can be especially immersive via VR.
I
Re: Time for VR to shine? (Score:2)
I would say in-room projection not headsets. If they can paint the walls of your room with a view from right on the sidelines where the players are life sized, with sound from the players, coach and sportscasters, who cares about seeing the audience. Though you could construct a pageant of fans going nuts out of personal streams and interpolate in a woofered roar. Hmmm sounds interesting actually...
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Hell, if they're going to do that they may as well go all the way. Erase the uniforms on the cheerleaders for starters, and put attractive naked people in the crowd near me
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"At this point, there's very high chance that we'll get vaccine by the end of the year"
According to who? The president? A news reporter? Or, an actual virologist who has successfully created vaccines before?
But can they sing? (Score:3)
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To me one of the biggest differences between soccer (football) crowds internationally and just about any US sports crowd is that the soccer (football) crowds can sign and chant.
Imagining thousands of fans signing at the players...
I know they can pipe in the music but it isn't likely to be quite the same result.
They already pipe in "additional" sound during live games in the big stadiums.
Re: But can they sing? (Score:2)
I'm not quite understanding this - there are many signs, and chanting, at American football and baseball games. You can see them on TV all the time. It's been awhile since I watched/was at a basketball or hockey games so I can't speak to that.
Speaking for baseball, different teams have different chants (granted, some of them offensive), there's "the wave" that goes through the stadiums at least once per game, there are songs that fans sing along to. There are signs that people hold up, although recently th
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I grew up in New York and went to MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL games in my youth. I live near Knoxville and have been to NCAA Div I football and basketball games and been one of a hundred thousand people singing "Rocky Top." I've been to NASCAR races at Bristol (where there is an auto race in a venue the size of a football stadium) where the noise level is just completely indescribable unless you've experienced it--and I've been to a football game in that same venue with 157,000 people in attendance. I've wat
Every one should do like South Corea (Score:2)
Re:Every one should do like South Corea (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, why not (Score:3)
Most of the people I meet are effectively cardboard cutouts. I can see it.
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As long as the movie is entertaining.
It is a Holographic Universe, after all.
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So, off on a couple of points. [scientificamerican.com]
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Ah yes, the "wrong because old" theory.
When it's refuted, then we'll talk. Until then that's a Fallacy of Novelty. Just saying.
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Protests and rallies (Score:3)
If we can hold massive protests and rallies, then we can fucking hold sporting events.
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"Is indoor Nascar a thing?"
No. Why should it be? Massive protests aren't either.
Big protests are a bad idea, but 1st amendment (Score:2)
Big crowds at protests are a bad idea from a public perspective. However, America has an important tradition that people can peacefully protest, a tradition protected by the Constitution. It's important that citizens can protest bad acts by agents of the government. Even when there is a risk that comes with it, even when it might be a bad idea.
Going to a football game is much less important, and is also a bad idea right now.
* public health perspective (Score:2)
That should be:
Big crowds at protests are a bad idea from a public health perspective.
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I don't care why they're protesting, but "justice" might be a bit of a stretch here.
Regardless, shutting everything down and taking away entertainment is what led to such unrest ( at least in part ). There's only so much pressure folks can take before they pop, and there doesn't appear to be an associated spike in deaths from the riots...so...ya. Why are we shut down again?
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Are you saying the lack of sporting events is what caused the BLM protests to precipitate? Do you consider the fact that countless black men have been murdered by the police; and fellow citizens wanting to see an end to police business as usual is a "stretch" to call "justice"?
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I said "in part", and yes.
Drop the hyperbole; it's not countless, we know exactly how many. 9 unarmed black people were killed last year by police officers. Read the cases, then decide what you'd have done.
You're looking at correlative data and drawing conclusions. Understand there are plenty of narratives that fit the dataset, some are far closer to being accurate than the "POLICE ARE RACISTS" and "SYSTEM RACISM".
Too late for BOK (Score:2)
Darn it. Donald would have loved that idea bigly.
install a camera (Score:3)
They can, yes...but... (Score:2)
Without paying customers in the seats, that will be a problem for most sports teams, as stadium revenue (for sports and all other events in a venue) are the majority of their income, by far. What they are more likely to do, in addition to filling seats with cardboard cutouts; is to consider beefing up video angles and options and offer a pay-per-view or season-view package to watch events in their stadiums.
Opposed to the broadcast games, this would likely include multiple angles as well as several side-by-
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Source data needed, because this says that's not true for baseball [blogspot.com], or for basketball [businessingmag.com], or for (American) football [investopedia.com].
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My statement was based on things like the SF 49ers Stadium, that while they have Sunday/Monday football, Tuesday is a Monster Truck show, then Thursday/Friday are live concerts, then back to football on Sunday/Monday, week after week, after week.
https://sportsnaut.com/2014/07... [sportsnaut.com]
This stadium may be more high-end that the average stadium, but others do something simliar, meaning football (or baseball, or hockey), is only a slide of the pie for money that Stadiums (and their teams) pull from their use.
https:// [berkeley.edu]
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So, looking at the 49ers stadium, specifically, in 2019 they had $78M in gate receipts for their year, while their stadium brought in $498M in revenue.
In a Freakonomics interview, Bob Lang, the 49ers’ vice-president of communications, made this comment:
LANGE: Yeah, we went straight from monster truck into Taylor Swift last weekend, and then as soon as Taylor Swift got off the field, they are putting down sod. Because we’ve got a soccer match coming up shortly. https://freakonomics.com/podca... [freakonomics.com]
S
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This depends on the sports and relative wages payed to players.
Football, baseball, American Football, and hockey all pay rather insane amounts (and golf and tennis, socially distanced by nature of the game). And car racing and apparently horse racing. Bettors gotta bet!
Mixed martial arts fighting is on weekly (UFC) without pay-per-view (it's PPV this weekend), I'm assuming the revenues from commercials cover costs and provide profit (entry level pro-MMA does not pay well - win to fight again, and don't ge
Recreating the stadium experience at home (Score:2)
I was able to recreate the stadium experience at by having my children stand behind the sofa while the game was on TV while blowing vuvuzelas. Periodically they would come out and step on my feet while spilling a drink.
What's different at home is the addition of dog farts from the critter trying to sleep in my lap. Well, that's who is getting blamed.
Avatars? Which kind? (Score:2)
needs to work with an Lambeau Leap (Score:2)
needs to work with an Lambeau Leap
Add Some Authenticity (Score:4, Funny)
They should add some authenticity by turfing a few drunk and disorderly cutouts towards the end of the games.
I will never... (Score:2)
On the contrary (Score:4, Insightful)
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Good points. But this doesn't explain the people who just sit and watch sports. Sure, it's better to put on pads and chuck a spheroid down the field subject to rules than it is to pummel the nearby villagers. But what do spectators of either pastime get out of it?
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Fans feel that they are participating in the process, and are often highly emotionally invested. If the home team wins, the trophy doesn't just belong to the team, it's a victory "for the whole town." Just like in the village-pillaging days.
Now, as to why watch sports instead of something else? A lot of people grew up playing sports, and / or came from a family of athletes. A lot of people are into sports as much as people who read Slashdot are into, say, coding or anime. Still other people like music
Re:I will never... (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to think that too.. but have come to the conclusion that while it most certain still is impotent tribalism, it is the impotence that is the feature.
It permits a venue outside of violence and warfare in general, for social groups to have meaningless ranking and competition against each other, to satisfy that primal urging from within the human condition. Basically, a tribalism checkvalve.
It still spills over into actual violence from time to time (fans in the stands going apeshit et al), but for the most part, it allows say, Chiefs vs Cowboys to trade barbs on who's team is the best, in a venue that literally has no real bearing-- and this is indeed "The FEATURE". Otherwise, the impulse would be satisfied over some material matter that could imperil life or happiness in a meaningful capacity, and that leads to real deficits in the world.
I wont be attending a sportsball event of any kind anytime soon, but with this thought in my mind, I am less disgusted by it. Still disgusted to be sure, just less so.
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Remove The seats (Score:2)
Um, Hell Yeah! (Score:2)
*CAN* they?
EPL this week and weekend did, both posters spaced in seats close to the field, and whole sheets of apparent fans in the corners. most likely to give TV viewers a fleeting impression of actual fans.
Oh, and recorded fan noise.
I don't much like it, but my team won, oh, hell yea!
What about the Kiss-cam? (Score:3)
Subject Matter (Score:2)
2 way monitors (Score:2)
Put roughly 1,000 to 10,000 monitors of actual families and groups of friends watching and cheering. Make some 2-way so players can walk up to a monitor and talk to a family.
Arcade Fighting Game Backgrounds (Score:2)
Oblig... (Score:2)
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The death rate continues to drop linearly.
So then how long before covid starts bringing our dead back to life?
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Do you honestly believe there will be effectively no more US based deaths related to COVID in 3 weeks?