Page 228 - Sport Culture and the Media

AFTERWORD || 209

though, that such hi-tech gadgetry will not please sports fans, some of whom
‘believe we are fast approaching saturation point, where new toys distract from,
rather than enhance, the viewer’s experience’ (Meacham 2001: 2). Sometimes
this new technology may also fail to live up to its promise, as when EyeVision,
developed by Carnegie Mellon Robotics for the film Matrix and then used for
multi-camera, 270-degree TV coverage of the Super Bowl (see Chapter 6), ‘was
found wanting during the most critical period of the 2001 Superbowl, when a
single camera angle was required’ (p. 2).
Enhancing orthodox sports TV broadcasts, even where it allows viewer choice
of camera and the capacity to call up data, is, however, less disruptive to the
prevailing broadcast sport order than the use of the Internet as a broadcaster.
For this reason, the IOC banned webcasting at the 2000 Sydney Olympics (and
beyond; Boyle and Haynes 2003) out of fear of jeopardizing its expensively
sold TV broadcast rights. However, it sold to WebMedia.com the much less
in-demand worldwide Internet broadcasting rights and US TV rights to the
Sydney 2000 Paralympics (Higgins 2000). Here an event that would not
normally receive the close attention of broadcasters (four hours of the 1996
Atlanta Paralympics were broadcast in the USA, only 2 per cent of the coverage
devoted to the Atlanta Olympics) can be disseminated to dispersed audiences
via television and the Internet. As larger contracts come up for renewal,
however, and organizational realignments take place involving television com-
panies and Internet service providers, moving sports images will be received by
additional means. In late 2002, AOL Time Warner and BT vied to pick up the
lapsed rights to delayed coverage of the English Premier League before more
comprehensive negotiations over the next round of Premier League rights
(Gibson 2002b). The launch of new broadband sports networks can be seen to
be putting considerable pressure on the traditional dominance of television in
sport. For example, Wisden, the highly traditional cricket magazine (owned by
the Getty family), went online in 2001, streaming the first live cricket match on
a pay-per-view basis, while in early 2002 the media company Granada was the
first to screen an English Premier League match on the Internet (again, as pay-
per-view). Internet betting agencies are also substantial beneficiaries of the
convergence of broadcasting and computing, and live webcasts of horse races
from around the world are now common (Dodson 2002). As Boyle and Haynes
(2003: 109–10) note, in 1999 Glasgow Celtic became the first British football
club to provide live video coverage of a home match on its web site. With the
BBC web site showing live coverage of a snooker tournament in early 2003, it
can safely be expected that the Internet will produce more live, ‘as live’ and
edited sport events.
The Internet is also unquestionably now a significant source of sports
information. Aided by highly unfriendly time-zone deadlines for newspapers,