Most TV sports broadcasters make a dreadful assumption. They automatically jump to the conclusion that because they’re focussing on something that goes under the heading of ‘sports’ there will automatically be an audience out there, desperate to see and hear what it is they have to screen and what they have to say about it. Well here’s the thing. That’s not how it works for some of us. Granted we all have our weekend weak spots – there’s no secret about the way motor sport is viewed around here – but for the rest, there is an awful lot of sports TV that is just plain painful.
For anyone who has never played and has never had any interest in ball games, it really does take more than the average amount of sainthood to sit through hour after hour of facts, figures and flailing limbs without going into some sort of a coma. Who watches all this stuff really?
When it boils down to it, it seems to me, sport is just a way to render down what is available -and better – elsewhere and to water it down into a sort of inoffensive televisual soup.
I reckon there are essentially two ingredients that make sport interesting. One is the physical spectacle involved – and yes occasionally there are some beautiful sights, such as James Rodriguez’s wonder goal in the World Cup, and some striking sights, like New Zealand’s Haka, to behold on a sports field. The second is the drama that a tight contest can produce – and yes (again) sometimes the story makes the game worth watching. But these acceptances mark the exceptions rather than the rule.
The point is that beauty is far more reliably produced elsewhere, just as drama can be more nuanced, more layered and more satisfyingly sampled when someone has put some creative effort into it. Sport is rolled out by the media as much as it is because it is cheaper and easier to mass produce than good drama or great artistry. As far as I can tell it’s about TV’s production needs more than it is any natural appetite for consumption.
The sports I’m prepared to give some time to are the ones that have their drama built into the fabric of their scoring system. Two that fit the TV screen especially well are tennis and darts. Both involve a fast turnaround in points scoring which gives significance to every part of the drama. From match point up in a game of tennis you can still easily lose. I like that.
The same volatility is true of darts – a sport which make absolutely no concessions to aesthetic appeal and which rests purely and simply on the rat-a-tat denouement of a sporting drama that is purely about the execution of precision under pressure. Darts – fittingly perhaps – hits the spot.
I buy that quick fire, edge of the seat equation. I don’t have to know anything about the personnel involved or the intricacies of the equipment they use to understand the ebb and flow of the contest. I can tune in and know all I need to know in the space of a few seconds, with no pretence of expertise of insider knowledge. I can enjoy it for what it is and walk away with my mind on something else whenever I choose. Darts makes no demands on me and I like it for that. I can bet on a darts contest when visiting betfair safe in the knowledge that what I see with my own eyes means I know as much as the next man.
You could argue that tennis is more of an aficionado’s game and I wouldn’t argue. There are plenty of tennis buffs out there. I like tennis for pretty much the same fundamental reasons as the darts, even if it does occasionally entail a certain physical attraction.
But for the rest – the ball players, the jockeys, the he-men, the she-men and the panoply of TV’s gum-chewing gladiators – you can keep them. I, for one, just wish all those TV people would realise that I just don’t want to know about them.
