Just don’t drop the C-bomb

In fact, they ended up writing about little else. Not that I’m criticising them for doing so, because as I write this I’m faced with the same dilemma: how can I write an opinion piece without adding to all the endless contagion-related copy out there? This is a lot harder than it seems – especially in an industry like real estate, where the pandemic has impacted almost everything. So is there anything else going in the world that’s sort of real estate related and that’s been unaffected? Sport? Well, that’s clearly a bad example. But I could talk about the impact on how sports facilities are being used instead of the usual property sectors. And in doing so I promise not to mention the C-word (not the sweary one, the one that ends in ‘19’) even once.

Let’s start with football. I’m sure you’re all glad to have football finally back on our screens again a whole long week after the last season ended – when the final of the Champions League took place on August 23rd, almost three months later than usual. Of course, the first thing you notice about the matches is the lack of spectators and then you realise how crucial their presence is for generating the atmosphere. The first game I saw under such conditions was LASK of Linz vs Manchester Utd, just before the lockdown. It wasn’t just that it was an eerie experience without the fans, it also seemed to drain the spectacle of any excitement, while robbing a small club like LASK of a huge payday from attendance receipts against a glamour club – both in this and in the return fixture months later. Empty stadiums certainly take a bit of getting used to for the viewer. One solution to this (for us at least, not the players) has been to introduce canned crowd noise, whereby cheers are generated at the flick of a studio technician’s switch whenever something exciting happens. Sadly, unlike in real life, the biggest cheers, when a goal is scored, tend to come a few seconds after the action, thus instantly reminding you that they’re not real. And those other crowd noises of a more negative sort but that also make an essential contribution to the atmosphere, like groans, booing and impatient whistling, are entirely lacking. So this approach is by no means perfect, but at least it has solved one perennial problem: racist chanting – for the moment.

Those who have digital TVs usually have the option of switching the simulated crowd noise on or off – in the latter case presumably if they just can’t stomach it and would prefer to hear the real noises in the venue instead. Since I don’t have such a TV, I actually had no option but to watch the US Open tennis championships without spectator noise. Its absence was particularly galling when Novak Djokovic was disqualified from the entire tournament for intemperately batting a ball into the throat of a line judge. Perhaps only Djokovic was glad that on top of everything else he didn’t have to face any actual taunts from the audience as he was given his marching orders; but the fact we were deprived of the sadistic pleasure of hearing this and seeing his reaction was definitely our loss – and an experience that can’t be recreated by piping crowd noise into the broadcast.

One sport that may not be so familiar to readers in our part of the world is snooker, which held its World Championship a few weeks ago. While the players in this high-concentration sport generally seemed glad of being rid of the distracting coughs, muttering, the off-putting calling out during shots and the soul-destroying groans after bad ones, the TV audience naturally misses all that as the game sedately unfolds. So once again, someone at the BBC pressed a button whenever one of the players produced a good shot to give us at home the impression of a smattering of applause. Except not every time – some absolutely astounding shots were mystifyingly disregarded by the button-presser and thus greeted by the “crowd” with a stony silence. With Formula One, on the other hand, the absence of a crowd – real or simulated – makes little difference. The engine noise obliterates any other sound anyway. So I can happily inform you that even without the sound of cheering Formula One is every bit as boring as it ever was.

The whole issue of ‘to can or not to can’ crowd noise should become irrelevant once sports venues (hopefully) get back to normal. As I’m sure those of us in real estate who’ve had to attend zoom meetings will testify, the physical interaction between humans can never really be simulated, no matter how good the tech is. There, I’ve done it! I’ve actually managed to get to the end of this piece without once typing ‘Covid-19’… oh!! Bugger…