tim's experiment

Watching the Global Football TV programme twirl past my nose (you have to watch something while you’re exercising and I have conscientious objections to 24) I suddenly realised that I had passed an unexpected statistical landmark. The entire 2010 World Cup had passed, and I had seen none of it.   Not one kick of the ball – no goals, no noteworthy incidents, no opening or closing ceremonies – nothing. I realise that for some people this might be unexceptional, and even welcome. I remember one of my colleagues on the Derby Evening Telegraph going out to get some public reaction to the latest development at the local footy club. “Son,” said the first person he asked, “if they played in my front garden I would close the curtains.” Not everyone is a fan. Well I am not really a fan, but I take an interest.

I remember sitting at home to watch the World Cup in considerable detail when it was held in England, and we won. I remember hiring a second hand television on behalf of a floor full of students so we could watch it in Mexico, although England had I think not qualified. When I had done five years as a sports reporter the urge to watch the whole thing had disappeared. Watching football was work. But I still tuned in for the odd game. If you work in the education business and have modern teaching technology you can now put your employer’s equipment to work and watch on a very large screen, which is fun. But as far as South Africa is concerned I missed the whole thing.

This is partly, of course, because they no longer have it on the old free-to-air television network. You can’t see anything unless you have cable. I fell out with the cable people a couple of years ago – a long story – so we just have the basic stuff. And the World Cup was not on it. No doubt I should have expected this. More surprisingly it was not on the news either. News coverage of every football league in the world includes a bit of footage. Usually a few seconds of action with a goal at the end of it. But this time the World Cup was an exception. No clips, however short, on the news. So the television news people were reduced to still pictures and occasional computer reconstructions, followed by live interviews with fans outside the stadium.  The excitement in South Africa, if there was excitement, was not conveyed. Even after the Cup was over the mysterious shortage continued. The Global Football programme has no clips either.

Now I don’t know if the World Cup people adopted this as an explicit policy, but the result of their efforts, at least in Hong Kong, was that you could not so much as see a ball being kicked unless you payed someone. It might be the cable people, or a cinema, or a bar owner, but the idea that this was something which a moderately interested person could watch for free has disappeared. So I suppose I was not the only moderately interested person who missed it completely this time around.  And I wonder how long the thing will last as the great show it used to be if this level of greed is deployed every time. Of course the game needs its avid fans. But it also needs the vast legion of occcasionally interested onlookers whose attention fosters the delusion that what happens on the pitch is important. The game needs to be talked about. If all the water-cooler conversations die after a few sentences because only the fanatics saw any of the games then interest will eventually be combined to a few rabid enthusiasts, as it is for rowing or chess.

Having said which being bombarded with the Olympics for two weeks was no fun either. Is there a happy medium in these matters?