State’s sports fans look ahead to the new “normal”
The joint ticks every box. A 55-inch TV is visible from almost every angle. A collection of game-worn hockey sweaters and baseball jerseys hangs with pride along one wall, with special dispensation for the No. 92 of Avalanche center Gabe Landeskog and the No. 31 worn by former University of Denver goalie Evan Cowley.
If the autographed pucks on the shelves don’t turn into a conversation-starter, then the bubble dome hockey table a few feet away just might.
“We don’t have to be sitting on top of each other,” says Jake
Dubin, the Castle Rock resident and Avs fan who built the collection, “if a couple people come over.”
A puck head could kill a few hours of paradise here, easy. Which is what Dubin plans to do once the NHL resumes play in late July or early August. After all, it’s his basement.
“Unless things change, I don’t want to be in a crowded bar,” Dubin says. “If I’m going to be in a crowd, I’d rather it be at the Pepsi Center than at a bar. I’m not going to take that risk (of being out) unless it’s to be at the event itself.”
Welcome to the new normal Front Range sports fans, in
which every game for the next few months, when it comes to the NBA, NHL and Major League Soccer, is going to feel like a road game. For everybody.
Which, to be fair, beats the holy stuffing out of having no games at all. In a survey of more than 1,000 sports fans last month by ESPN, approximately two-thirds — 65% — said they were in favor of sports returning “even if fans can’t be in the stands.”
“I just want to see football games again,” said Tim Larison, who’s been a Broncos seasonticket holder since 1968. “And if there are going to be fans in the stands, great. And if I can be there, great. But if they have to play in empty stadiums, that’s better than no football.”
Dubin, an Avalanche seasonticket holder for 14 of the past 16 years, didn’t set up his man cave, a bunker of hockey heaven, because of the coronavirus pandemic. But until live games return to Pepsi Center — unlikely to happen for the NHL or NBA this summer — it’s where he prefers to scream himself hoarse.
And it’s where he’ll cheer on the Avs and Nuggets as they finish their suspended seasons in Orlando, Fla., (in the case of the NBA) or in one of the 10 “hub” cities the NHL announced two weeks ago.
“It’s going to be interesting,” Dubin said of an entirely remote postseason for the Front Range’s two most popular winter sports franchises. “There’s nothing like a playoff atmosphere at the Pepsi Center. It’ll be strange. But it’ll be great to be able to at least watch live sports and root for your team.”
How will fans react?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. To say nothing of boredom. An average of 5.8 million viewers on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend watched Peyton Manning, Tiger Woods, Tom Brady and Phil Mickelson play golf in the pouring rain for charity, with a peak audience of 6.3 million — making it the most-watched golf telecast in the history of cable television.
So we want the games back, no question. But with COVID-19 still spreading in the United States and without a vaccine on the runway, we’re also unsure if we want to come back and watch them in person.
A Seton Hall University poll of 762 Americans in early April found that 76% said they would watch broadcasts of sporting events with the “same interest” as before.
But 72% of those same respondents also said they wouldn’t attend a game until a coronavirus vaccine was developed. And only 13% said they would feel as safe at a sporting event as they had in the past.
Adam Earnhardt, chairman of the communications department at Youngstown State and an expert on fan behavior, thinks a chunk of those fans may continue to stay away willingly into 2021, even if stadiums such as the Pepsi Center and Empower Field at Mile High open up again at full, or close to full, capacity.
“The fan reaction, for the most part, it’s going to be, ‘I’ll do what you need me to do, so I can show up and cheer for my team,’ ” said Earnhardt, co-author of “Sports Fans, Identity and Socialization: Exploring The Fandemonium.”
“It’s the mom or dad who just want to load up their kids and take them to the Indians game on a Saturday afternoon — that’s probably not going to happen. I’ve got four kids, and my wife and I are trying to keep our family safe or keep them at home and still at a distance as much as possible. I think most average spectators and families are going to follow suit.”
Regardless, that experience won’t be the same as it was just a few months earlier. Going to Empower Field in the fall, presuming fans can attend, likely will resemble the current experience of going to a grocery store or a local Walmart: controlled entrances and exits; social distance maintained in lines for concessions and restrooms; constant sanitization efforts by stadium workers; and masks and plastic gloves mandatory for staff members. Facial coverings could become mandatory for Broncos fans, too.
“You’re definitely going to have cases where you can put whatever protocols in place that you need and it’s, ‘I just want to show up and cheer for my team,’ ” Earnhardt said. “But there’s also the whole face-mask-vs.-no-facemask crowd, and that whole debate. That debate aside, I think people just want to see their teams compete and to be in that place to see them do it.”
Another underlying narrative for fans, he noted, will be event congestion, especially August through October. After more than nine weeks of either few or no live sporting events, early August through Halloween could feature, running concurrently, the NBA playoffs and the Stanley Cup playoffs, two rites of spring, rolling at the same time as the NFL preseason and regular season and college football’s regular season.
And that’s not including Major League Baseball, which likely missed a window to dominate the national sports conversation in June and July because of its bickering. If baseball resumes any later than the middle of next month, it’s going to be jumping onto a moving train with some awfully crowded freight cars.
“I’ve been looking at some of these dates about when they’re going to compete — I just wonder if this is going to be a mess for a couple years,” Earnhardt said.
“Think about it: You could have a case where you could have every season of every (major) sport being played at the same time. How are fans going to cope with the rush of all these sports coming back all at the same time? I just don’t know. I think for some fans, it’s going to be overwhelming. I think you’re also going to have a case where it’s going to fracture attendance and it’s going to fracture (television ratings).”
“I just want to see football games again. And if there are going to be fans in the stands, great . ... But if they have to play in empty stadiums, that’s better than no football.”
Tim Larison, Broncos fan
How will sports play on TV?
Those ratings — hello, Tiger and Peyton — are why the networks, and leagues themselves, are so eager to get pro sports back onto television. Sport Business Media estimates that U.S. broadcasters were expected to pay out about $22.6 billion in 2020 for the rights to live sports. The cost of those rights fees are passed over to consumers and account for approximately 40% of your monthly cable bill, according to media analyst Rich Greenfield.
Given the scarcity of events in March, April and May, the return of the NHL and NBA in July and August is going to draw a lot of eyeballs. It’s just a question of where they’re watching. And for how long.
Faced with neutral-site games and no home crowds, broadcasters find themselves having to get creative — if not downright funky — to make the COVID-era broadcasts feel as “normal” as possible to a salivating audience.
To that end, Stadium/ The Athletic NBA reporter Shams Charania reported last week that the NBA and NBA Player Association are considering using crowd sounds from the NBA 2K video-game series as background noise during telecasts — another twist in the ever-blurring lines between reality and simulations.
“I think it’ll add to the game,” television analyst and former Nuggets guard Fat Lever said. “Guys will practice, and they’ll compete, just as hard. I think that’s the key.”
The NHL is expected to reveal some of its broadcast parameters soon, and it’s expected to run along a similar track. The challenge isn’t just replicating a nonCOVID game environment to fans back home, but enhancing it. Turning an empty arena from a weakness into a strength.
Do you experiment with new camera angles? Do you use more shots from a drone? Do you set off the horn after every goal, regardless of which team scores? Do you mic up players and coaches, foul language be darned? Will we see CGI people holding CGI beers and CGI boxes of popcorn, howling with CGI joy when the Avs take a two-goal lead? Nothing’s set in stone. If something works, it sticks.
“They don’t want it to be sterile,” an NHL league source told The Post’s Mike Singer.
After all, a playoff game at the Pepsi Center is anything but. The NBA playoffs and Stanley Cup playoffs are beloved, in part, because the intensity and ferocity of fans so often feed into the players, and vice versa. It’s not just tribal — it’s communal.
“It’s that experience of turning to a fan in the seat to the left of you and being able to high-five and jump up and down after a goal,” Dubin said. “Things like that. It’s the sitting-on-theedge-of-your-seat type mentality. Obviously, I get excited from home, but there’s nothing like being there.”
Going back to 2001, the last time the Avs held aloft Lord Stanley’s Cup, Colorado has a home playoff record of 32-26, a winning percentage of .552. Since the 2013-14 postseason, the team boasts an 8-4 playoff record (.667) at the Pepsi Center.
“It’s going to be more of an age thing; I think you’ll get the 20-somethings out at the bars (watching),” Dubin said. “They’re more willing to go out and to do that because they don’t have to bring (anything) back with the kids at home. I think your older crowd is going to play it a little more conservative, and be that basement and home-based type of viewing.
“I’m still hesitant to go out to the bar scene. Hopefully, I can have a handful, or one or two of my buddies over to watch it in my basement and still try to stay 6 feet apart — one guy on the couch, one behind the bar, that type of thing. Hopefully, by the end of August, or the Stanley Cup finals, things are safer. But like everything else these days, it’s hard to know.”
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