[SamuelMcF]

I don't know whether sports could safely be done in empty stadiums, so I'm not necessarily advocating we have college sports at all in '20-'21.

But if we do... here is my idea: virtual attendance.

Once of the unique qualities of sporting events relative to Netflix is that sports are live and it is a more communal experience because you have to watch it as it happens (except for DVRs, I know). If you're there in-person, you are experiencing it with other fans, seeing things unfold collectively, cheering together.

Already some TV experiences have a supplemental side experience, and in a way Cardboards already do this when they post among themselves during games. I think it could be fun if they basically created a way for fans to Massive Group Conference Chat during TV broadcasts. Some of the fan noise should be piped into the stadiums, and fans should be able to hear other fans yelling as the game plays. People could even be "seated" in virtual sections.

It could be fun. I would do it, although my wife would not be happy.

The NFL was already starting to do this. Thursday night games were being broadcast on Twitch.tv, a very popular online platform for video game streaming. There was a live chat feed and stat tracking. IIRC the game I tuned into for a little bit had ~30k concurrent viewers at the time, which for Twitch is very high (akin to the numbers for some of their more popular streamers).

[SamuelMcF]

I don't know whether sports could safely be done in empty stadiums, so I'm not necessarily advocating we have college sports at all in '20-'21.

But if we do... here is my idea: virtual attendance.

Once of the unique qualities of sporting events relative to Netflix is that sports are live and it is a more communal experience because you have to watch it as it happens (except for DVRs, I know). If you're there in-person, you are experiencing it with other fans, seeing things unfold collectively, cheering together.

Already some TV experiences have a supplemental side experience, and in a way Cardboards already do this when they post among themselves during games. I think it could be fun if they basically created a way for fans to Massive Group Conference Chat during TV broadcasts. Some of the fan noise should be piped into the stadiums, and fans should be able to hear other fans yelling as the game plays. People could even be "seated" in virtual sections.

It could be fun. I would do it, although my wife would not be happy.

The NFL was already starting to do this. Thursday night games were being broadcast on Twitch.tv, a very popular online platform for video game streaming. There was a live chat feed and stat tracking. IIRC the game I tuned into for a little bit had ~30k concurrent viewers at the time, which for Twitch is very high (akin to the numbers for some of their more popular streamers).