From the fake fans flown in from Lebanon to support host nation Qatar to the computer-generated pseudo-replays flashing up on stadium screens, it feels like there’s never been a bigger gulf between what’s actually happening on the field and the safe, sanitized product being beamed across the world.
Sure, there is an occasional flurry of authenticity at the edges: pitch invaders and rainbow bucket hats puncturing the carefully controlled bubble that FIFA and Qatar have crafted in their bizarre, clinical land—a place with more stadium seats than citizens. But even sporting calls go through the pasteurization process: decisions mediated by the lottery of video assistant referees (VARs), semi-automated offside technology literally turning the players into featureless mannequins.
This is all a natural consequence of sports being sucked into the attention economy—they’ve become just another way to convert eyeballs into advertising impressions. You might think your favorite sport is about fine margins, the smell of grass and soil and sweat. But no. It’s engagement metrics and ad inventory, official tractor partnerships and personal sponsorship deals.
The problem with this—one that everyone but Elon Musk can grasp—is that sponsors and advertisers do not like controversy. Or, to be more accurate, they don’t like spontaneous controversy. FIFA will still make a record $7.5 billion from this World Cup cycle, despite a decade of protests against the host country. On an individual level, though, athletes and their representatives quickly learn that the best way to make money in sports is to be good on the court and keep your mouth shut: Be Roger Federer, not Nick Kyrgios.
You can see this process happening in real time. As young athletes morph from promising individuals into brands in their own right, they become more measured, more manufactured. The more valuable their time becomes, the less reason they have to speak to journalists at all. The rare interviews they do grant become a sort of void—mouth moving, head nodding, nothing of interest emerging—and anything of even slight interest gets seized on and turned into a headline, making it even less likely they’ll open up next time around.
But it’s those individual stories that really make sports compelling. Without them, fans switch off. So what’s required is a way to inject some personality without the risk of athletes saying something harmful to their reputation, their sponsors’ bottom line, or anyone else. The result? The behind-the-scenes’ sporting documentary—like Qatar manufacturing atmosphere by hiring in fans, your ailing sport can manufacture some palatable drama by bringing in a production crew.
The premier example is Drive to Survive, a popular Netflix series about Formula 1 racing, which has been credited with reviving interest in a sport that had been flagging for years—and even doing the apparently impossible and making it appeal to an American audience. There’s also the Amazon Prime format All or Nothing, which has taken cameras into the dressing rooms at Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur, and Arsenal, as well as a host of NFL teams.
