At one point in the highly entertaining Champions League match between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan a couple of nights ago we were treated to an extended period in which Bayern’s back four passed the ball back and forth across the pitch. You might have thought they were simply time-wasting, except that it came at a moment when Bayern desperately needed to score. We can only presume they wanted to feed the ball forward but could find nobody safe to pass to. We can only presume this because the international television coverage showed only enough of the pitch for us to see those four Bayern players and two Inter forwards who were putting in a half-assed effort to harass them. How much more interesting it would have been if we’d been permitted to see all of this unfold from a camera place high above and behind the Bayern goal that revealed to the viewers the offensive and defensive formations the Bayern defenders were trying to size up.
That in a nutshell is about half of what is wrong with soccer broadcasting. The other half is the mind-numbing refusal of networks to provide meaningful tactical analysis during or after matches.
This moment reminded me of the Champions League match I had seen last week live at Camp Nou in Barcelona, where even 3/4 the way up the stadium holding 100,000+ spectators, off one of the corners, the view of the teams’ formations was stunningly revealing. (Here is a random, low-rez cameraphone shot from my seat, with the Gunners on their heels.)
This is part of why I suspect that soccer may have the highest “quality of the experience live” to “quality of the experience on TV” ratio of any of the major sports. In any case, as promised in the previous post, here are a few reflections not so much on the way sports are broadcast, which I’ve written a lot on (you can click the “broadcast” category on the right-hand side of the blog), but on the experiences different sports and sports leagues make available to their paying customers. (I will rate specific live experiences of particular sports and leagues in the next post.)
There are, of course, some things that can be appreciated better on TV in every sport. I’m sure I am not the only fan who records on TV most matches I see live in order to pick up on some of the things I missed.
We all need replays, especially slow-motion replays, to understand some of the best or most controversial moments in games. It’s nice to get some real-time information about players and other events that are not clear to spectators (e.g. no one in my section seemed to know why an Arsenal player was sent off in that match, though they were all clearly happy about it), though I can usually get this with a good-old-fashion transistor radio. And many sports experiences are enhanced by being able to appreciate the emotion on the faces, and the skills involved in subtle moves that are obscured from a distance. I suppose this is why we might say that many aspects of the craft of acting are better appreciated in movies than from the third balcony of a theatre.
I dare say that watching on TV is also a fair bit cheaper, and takes less time that going live; and more often than not is a lot more comfortable.
On the other hand, every sport offers positive experiences live that can not be replicated on TV. As long as you’re not overly misanthropic or claustrophobic, there is usually a shared social experience in sports crowds that most fans find appealing — especially those who are strong partisans of their (usually) home team. To many fans, this is what they find most appealing — being with their tribe. But even to the non-tribal fan (such as myself), to differing degrees, depending on the sport and the teams, a crowd can generate moments of spine-tingling excitement and collective joy. It’s also fun to be able to pay some attention to things the TV systematically doesn’t show, like pre-game warm-ups, how the players of opposing teams might hang out a bit together pre-game or during TV timeouts, or how hockey teams manage their personnel changes “on the fly.”
And then there is the dreaded audio-visual public-address system used by the team owners in the stadium…. More on this as I go sport-by-sport in the next post.
Wayne Norman
This Sporting Life 
Sander
March 17, 2011
I personally don’t see that much more I see in a soccer stadium than I do on TV. You see the tactical intricacies of the formations less on TV, but you can deduce a lot of what’s happening from the TV images anyway. That, for me at least, is very different when it comes to American Football.
Watching NFL games on TV is good, but you’re missing a lot of information, especially when it comes to the passing game. It’s impossible to see the kind of coverage being played, and with the camera zooming on the quarterback before passing you can’t get a clear picture of routes being run either. Live this is very different and you can see how each team moves to create and remove space.
Part of this may have to do with my background. I’m European and I’ve only started watching American Football in recent years. Perhaps constant exposure to soccer makes it easier for me to see what’s happening from a limited amount of information, and the lack of exposure to American Football makes it harder for me to deduce what’s happening there.
Bill
March 18, 2011
Fantastic post!
I think the problem with English language broadcast is the English! The British traditional view of soccer focuses on the individual and avoids tactics and subtlety. In a sense the whole British conscious is “ball watching” instead of seeing the game holistically. Americans have just copied this approach and as a result the game is missing huge portions of texture and context.
Until the Americans break this tie with the British view of how the game should be viewed, the broadcasts will continue to suck. Seeing how soccer parents and players view the game, the current state of affairs is failing to provide good education on the game. The commentators either don’t know or avoid discussing the game in an intelligent manner. Their knowledge of the laws of the game is usually stunningly bad. The NFL has a lot of issues to solve, but the TV presentation of the sport is first class, soccer could benefit greatly by learning something from them.
Nathaniel Gindele
March 21, 2011
In my undergraduate days, I was sometimes presented with the option of taking a long walk to the basketball stadium and watching the game in poor seats or watching the same game on television. Going to the games is a considerable investment, even higher for paying spectators, and you can’t simply turn the game on and off at the drop of a hat. The clickability of televised sports offers us a psychological shield (if desired) when things go wrong, though this can’t be without some sacrifice to the die-hard fan in us when things go right.
I’m also an instant replay addict, which has only gotten worse with the addition of a DVR. As has been discussed, replay is very important to football, and I would argue, so much so that Dallas’ industry-leading stadium is headlined by its TV. Should we think of arenas as being the ideal sports bar for the match they host?
Sean Steele
March 25, 2011
Wayne, you have hit on one of my biggest complaints about the deliver of soccer.
I was lucky enough attend the recent PSV-Ajax game — a 0-0 draw which would have been thoroughly mind-numbing had I watched it on t.v.– but which was fantastic in that I could see what was going on in the third of the field away from the ball – the bit that is never shown on t.v. It helped that the atmosphere was spectacular, but I found the birds eye view most compelling. I think this is also why I enjoyed the televised Sounders – Galaxy game more exciting than most MLS games. It seemed like the camera angle was a bit higher and caught more of the off-the-ball action than usual.
On the opposite end of the spectrum… have you every looked at Fox’s PL: Weekend Roundup online? The shots are so tight and cuts oddly placed – it gives me a headache just watching it.