Colonel_Reb
Hall of Famer
I ran across this yesterday afternoon. This doesn't seem too far off from the future of the NBA and NFL in some ways. If Don or one of the moderators wants to put this somewhere else, please do. I wasn't sure where to put it, so I ended up going with Happy Hour.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/early-lead/2010/09/in_italian_soccer_team_empty_s.html
<div id="entry" ="entry">
<h1>For one Italian soccer team, empty seats are dressed as fans</h1>
</div>
This is a really horrible idea.
Sure, giant pictures of cheering, adoring, fighting fans look good on
TV ... certainly better than the black curtain some American sports
teams use.
The problem for Triestina, a professional soccer team from the
northern Italian city of Trieste, is a combination of a ginormous
stadium and a dwindling fan base. As the Wall Street Journal pointed
out, this may be a noble solution for TV, but it's one that looks lame
in person...especially since the "fans" were wearing winter coats on a
lovely afternoon.
"It's a virtual tribune, with virtual fans," says Marco Cernaz,
Triestina's general manager. "We'd love to have a full stadium with real
supporters. And we've done everything we can to get people through the
gates. But the reality is that we can't. This way at least we create a
bit of atmosphere, a bit of theater."
Looks like a full house of cheering soccer fans, right?
Nope. It's giant sheets of vinyl with photos of fans stretched across 10,000 empty seats at an Italian soccer stadium, according to this Wall Street Journal article about Triestina, a team in the northern Italian city of Trieste.
Triestina has reasons for not being able to draw fans:
<blockquote>Triestina, which plays in Serie B, the second tier of
Italian soccer, has some serious challenges when it comes to selling
tickets. Trieste is in a geographic cul-de-sac, with the Adriatic Sea to
the south and west, Slovenia to the east and a narrow strip of land
connecting it to the rest of Italy. That means the city, despite a
population of some 200,000, has virtually no surrounding population.
"We're also the oldest city in Italy demographically, with an aging
population and one of the lowest birth rates in the country," [the team
owner] says.
Legislation introduced over the past two years to curb hooliganism now
mandates that fans must present identification when buying tickets and,
in some cases, do so in advance. What's more, every Serie B game is
broadcast on live TV, a fact that may also limit crowd sizes (Serie B
attendance has fallen almost every year since 2002). On Saturday,
Triestina drew just 4,546 fans in a stadium that holds a total of
32,454.</blockquote>
So they paid for their stadium to look better on TV, and may have
saved money in the process. In some major league baseball parks (Oakland
and Florida), tarps cover unsellable seats, but they don't have images
of fans on them.
So could this work in Chicago? Could the Cubs and Sox make Wrigley and the Cell look better this way on TV?
Maybe, but virtual fans don't buy beer. That's where American teams make real money.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/early-lead/2010/09/in_italian_soccer_team_empty_s.html
<div id="entry" ="entry">
<h1>For one Italian soccer team, empty seats are dressed as fans</h1>
</div>
This is a really horrible idea.
Sure, giant pictures of cheering, adoring, fighting fans look good on
TV ... certainly better than the black curtain some American sports
teams use.
The problem for Triestina, a professional soccer team from the
northern Italian city of Trieste, is a combination of a ginormous
stadium and a dwindling fan base. As the Wall Street Journal pointed
out, this may be a noble solution for TV, but it's one that looks lame
in person...especially since the "fans" were wearing winter coats on a
lovely afternoon.
"It's a virtual tribune, with virtual fans," says Marco Cernaz,
Triestina's general manager. "We'd love to have a full stadium with real
supporters. And we've done everything we can to get people through the
gates. But the reality is that we can't. This way at least we create a
bit of atmosphere, a bit of theater."
Looks like a full house of cheering soccer fans, right?
Nope. It's giant sheets of vinyl with photos of fans stretched across 10,000 empty seats at an Italian soccer stadium, according to this Wall Street Journal article about Triestina, a team in the northern Italian city of Trieste.
Triestina has reasons for not being able to draw fans:
<blockquote>Triestina, which plays in Serie B, the second tier of
Italian soccer, has some serious challenges when it comes to selling
tickets. Trieste is in a geographic cul-de-sac, with the Adriatic Sea to
the south and west, Slovenia to the east and a narrow strip of land
connecting it to the rest of Italy. That means the city, despite a
population of some 200,000, has virtually no surrounding population.
"We're also the oldest city in Italy demographically, with an aging
population and one of the lowest birth rates in the country," [the team
owner] says.
Legislation introduced over the past two years to curb hooliganism now
mandates that fans must present identification when buying tickets and,
in some cases, do so in advance. What's more, every Serie B game is
broadcast on live TV, a fact that may also limit crowd sizes (Serie B
attendance has fallen almost every year since 2002). On Saturday,
Triestina drew just 4,546 fans in a stadium that holds a total of
32,454.</blockquote>
So they paid for their stadium to look better on TV, and may have
saved money in the process. In some major league baseball parks (Oakland
and Florida), tarps cover unsellable seats, but they don't have images
of fans on them.
So could this work in Chicago? Could the Cubs and Sox make Wrigley and the Cell look better this way on TV?
Maybe, but virtual fans don't buy beer. That's where American teams make real money.