Is there anything that the digital age hasn’t transformed? If there is, it probably won’t be too long before it has. In the past three decades, the web has infiltrated all aspects of life, including how we socialize, work, entertain ourselves, and even experience our hobbies.
This will be all too clear to sports fans. The experience of the modern-day soccer or basketball fan is vastly different from the experience of the sports fans in, say, 1981. The web allows fans to dive deep into their passion in various ways.
How Sports Fans Use The Web To Dive Deep Into Their Passion
In this blog, we’ll look at just a few ways the internet has liberated fans and allowed them to enjoy their passion even more.
Behind the Scenes
The only way to experience behind-the-scenes action in the past was to work for the team you support. Today, fans can access that footage and insight just by getting out their smartphone and clicking a few buttons.
After a slow start, sports teams have gotten to grips with social media fan engagement and routinely pump out content that would previously go through an intermediary (say, a sports television network). Want to see the players arriving at the stadium? See some action shots from training? It’s all there.
Far-Flung Action
The world is a big place, but it’s been made much smaller thanks to the internet. In the olden days, it would have taken a lot of time and effort to keep up with the action of sports events that took place on the other side of the world. It was possible, sure, but only with work, and even then, the effort may only yield a quick highlights clip.
Today, sports fans can keep up with action regardless of where it’s taking place. This is especially beneficial to fans of sports that don’t have a strong local presence. A soccer fan in Michigan, for instance, can come up with the goings-on at FC Barcelona almost at the same level as a local fan can.
Testing Knowledge
The internet doesn’t just allow sports fans to keep up with the latest goings-on at their teams and their chosen sport in general; it also allows them to test their knowledge.
They can do this in multiple ways. One such method is to start a sports-insight Twitter account and see how many people argue the points they make. Commentators with real insights tend to get half hate, half love response. If they’re talking, then you’re doing something right!
They can also test their sports understanding directly by using a site like fanduel sportsbook to bet on the intricate details of the game. This has (largely) always been possible offline, but the digital era heralded a new age of possibility.
Today, they can make predictions about many, many facets of a game’s outcome, not just the winner and loser. And to a sports fanatic, that’s a crucial detail.
Stepping Into History
Given the amount of action that takes place, we tend to assume that the sporting world is always looking forward. But that’s not really true; history and tradition play a big role in the identity of clubs.
In the olden days, younger fans wanting to know about the glory days of the past would have to make do with the stories and insights of elders. Today, things are different.
They can watch classic games, read up on a club’s legendary players, and generally consume large volumes of historical data. This enhances the fan’s experience since it puts the club’s current position in context.
Sharing Glory, Sharing Defeat
Finally, there’s the matter of shared experience. For local fans, this has never been an issue since they were surrounded by other supporters. But distant fans of the past would find they’re celebrating victories and commiserating defeat on their own.
Today, they can log in to Twitter and other social media sites and share the experience with thousands, if not millions, of other fans.
