Athletes Come Together to Provide Entertainment in the Absence of Live Sport

Read Jake’s article on athletes and organisations’ attempts to entertain fans in the absence of live sport due to COVID-19.

The cancellation of sporting events worldwide in the face of COVID-19 has been a source of disappointment for fans of all kinds of competitions, teams and athletes. For myself, it was the Australian Grand Prix being called off which was the biggest blow. As the opening race of the season, the Australian race has always been the moment that the constructors pull down their pants and everyone sees what they’ve got, to paraphrase Red Bull’s team principal Christian Horner. After the excitement that was building after testing, it is tantalising to not be able to find out how fast each car really is.

Furthermore, sporting competition has always served as a welcome distraction from the negative aspects of fans’ lives, be they as simple as boredom or far more serious. As COVID-19 presents such a serious threat to our way of life and many find themselves isolated at home with little to keep themselves occupied, the loss of sport hits harder than ever.

Photo [Minot Air Force Base]
However, many organisations and athletes around the world have been turning to alternatives in order to provide their supporters with a show. Professional NBA teams have been playing one another online, through the medium of the namesake game franchise the NBA 2K series. Fans of racing have been indulged in a similar manner.

Photo [Wikipedia]
Formula 1 drivers past and present, as well as drivers from other racing categories, participated last weekend in two online events. The first of these was simple called ‘The Race’, a short competition held on the sim racing game rFactor2 in which real world superstars such as Max Verstappen and Juan-Pablo Montoya competed against dedicated sim racers from the world of esports. After a series of heats to determine qualification for the final, it was the sim racers who won the day on their own turf. Jernej Simoncic claimed the cash prize, as well as the substantial bragging rights.

Photo [Wikimedia Commons]
The second event to take place on the 15th in lieu of the Australian Grand Prix was appropriately dubbed ‘Not the Aus GP’. This event was a more casual take on this new medium, though with a nevertheless competitive line-up featuring McLaren’s Lando Norris up against F1 esports mainstay Daniel Bereznay as well as many other real-world drivers and also, rather unexpectedly, Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois. The Belgian proved himself to be something of a renaissance sportsman, managing a highly respectable 11th place (out of 20 drivers). Meanwhile, the esports drivers’ familiarity with the game allowed them to come out on top, with Bereznay winning the day.

Photo [Wikimedia Commons]
During the event, Lando Norris’ twitch stream had the most live viewers on the platform with upwards of 70,000 people watching his perspective alone. The peak viewership of the event across all streams was just over twice that amount, which displays the appetite for solutions like these to the present situation. The organisers of each event have taken note of this, and both will be returning on the 22nd and likely for several more weekends into the future.

Photo [Flickr]
Hopefully, the success of these events will encourage athletes or organisations from other sports to follow suit. For myself and many others, the ability to watch Thibaut Courtois battle it out on track with the likes of Lando Norris has provided a welcome ray of sunshine and a much-needed distraction in an otherwise dark and concerning time.

 

 

Comments

comments

64 thoughts on “Athletes Come Together to Provide Entertainment in the Absence of Live Sport

  1. Pretty section of content. I just stumbled upon your website and in accession capital to assert that I get actually enjoyed account your blog posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing to your feeds and even I achievement you access consistently quickly.

  2. hi!,I like your writing so much! share we communicate more about your article on AOL? I require an expert on this area to solve my problem. May be that’s you! Looking forward to see you.

  3. It is really a nice and useful piece of information. I am glad that you shared this helpful information with us. Please keep us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.

  4. A person necessarily assist to make seriously articles I would state. This is the very first time I frequented your website page and to this point? I amazed with the analysis you made to make this actual publish extraordinary. Great activity!

  5. Do you mind if I quote a couple of your articles as long as I provide credit and sources back to your site? My website is in the exact same niche as yours and my users would really benefit from some of the information you present here. Please let me know if this ok with you. Many thanks!

  6. You could definitely see your expertise within the work you write. The world hopes for even more passionate writers such as you who aren’t afraid to mention how they believe. All the time follow your heart.

  7. My brother suggested I might like this website. He used to be entirely right. This publish actually made my day. You cann’t imagine simply how a lot time I had spent for this information! Thanks!

  8. Thanks for another informative web site. Where else could I get that kind of info written in such an ideal way? I have a project that I am just now working on, and I have been on the look out for such information.

  9. The next time I learn a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I do know it was my choice to read, however I truly thought youd have something interesting to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about one thing that you possibly can fix for those who werent too busy looking for attention.

  10. I just wanted to send a brief word in order to thank you for those wonderful steps you are posting at this site. My long internet research has at the end of the day been compensated with sensible points to talk about with my friends and family. I would state that that we website visitors actually are very much endowed to exist in a remarkable network with so many wonderful individuals with useful opinions. I feel rather privileged to have come across your entire site and look forward to tons of more exciting times reading here. Thanks a lot once more for a lot of things.

  11. I haven’t checked in here for a while as I thought it was getting boring, but the last few posts are good quality so I guess I will add you back to my everyday bloglist. You deserve it my friend 🙂

  12. I do believe all of the ideas you have introduced for your post. They’re really convincing and can definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are very brief for starters. May you please prolong them a bit from subsequent time? Thank you for the post.

  13. I’m very happy to read this. This is the type of manual that needs to be given and not the random misinformation that is at the other blogs. Appreciate your sharing this greatest doc.

  14. Hey! This post could not be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my good old room mate! He always kept chatting about this. I will forward this post to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thanks for sharing!

  15. Heya i’m for the first time here. I found this board and I find It really helpful & it helped me out a lot. I hope to offer something back and aid others like you helped me.

  16. Do you have a spam problem on this website; I also am a blogger, and I was wanting to know your situation; we have developed some nice procedures and we are looking to swap strategies with others, be sure to shoot me an email if interested.

  17. Oh my goodness! an incredible article dude. Thank you However I’m experiencing problem with ur rss . Don’t know why Unable to subscribe to it. Is there anyone getting an identical rss drawback? Anyone who is aware of kindly respond. Thnkx

  18. I’ve been absent for a while, but now I remember why I used to love this site. Thanks , I will try and check back more frequently. How frequently you update your web site?

  19. There are some attention-grabbing deadlines on this article but I don’t know if I see all of them heart to heart. There’s some validity but I will take maintain opinion until I look into it further. Good article , thanks and we wish extra! Added to FeedBurner as effectively

  20. I think other web site proprietors should take this site as an model, very clean and fantastic user friendly style and design, as well as the content. You’re an expert in this topic!

  21. I in addition to my friends were reading through the nice secrets and techniques located on your website and then immediately came up with a horrible suspicion I had not expressed respect to the website owner for them. Most of the ladies were definitely so excited to study them and have in truth been taking pleasure in them. Thank you for genuinely very helpful and also for having certain essential subjects most people are really desperate to be informed on. My personal sincere apologies for not expressing appreciation to earlier.

  22. I’m not that much of a internet reader to be honest but your sites really nice, keep it up! I’ll go ahead and bookmark your site to come back later. Cheers

  23. Its such as you learn my mind! You appear to understand a lot approximately this, such as you wrote the ebook in it or something. I feel that you could do with a few percent to drive the message home a little bit, however other than that, that is fantastic blog. A fantastic read. I will certainly be back.

  24. Whats up very nice blog!! Guy .. Excellent .. Superb .. I will bookmark your web site and take the feeds also…I am satisfied to seek out a lot of useful information here within the post, we’d like work out more techniques on this regard, thanks for sharing. . . . . .

  25. I would like to thank you for the efforts you’ve put in writing this web site. I am hoping the same high-grade website post from you in the upcoming also. In fact your creative writing abilities has encouraged me to get my own web site now. Actually the blogging is spreading its wings quickly. Your write up is a good example of it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

THE STAND