New Delhi: While spectator-less games are most likely to be the new reality of sporting events due to the coronavirus pandemic, a new Japanese smart phone application will ensure that these games don’t take place in pin-drop silence.
According to The Guardian, a remote cheering app Remote Cheerer will allow “fans following the match on TV, the radio or online to encourage – or berate – players via their smartphones, their voices reverberating around the stadium in real-time via loudspeakers”.
The app was launched just a few weeks before the J-League — the top division of the Japan Professional Football League — is scheduled to restart in late June or early July. It was developed by Japanese firm Yamaha with help from J-League clubs Jubilo Iwata and Shimizu S-Pulse.
A recent field test showed how users in multiple remote locations could choose from a range of options on the app, including booing, cheering, applauding and chanting. This was projected inside the 50,000-seat Shizuoka Stadium ECOPA in Japan’s Fukroi city, via 58 speakers set up among the empty seats.
While the app has drawbacks as it does not allow people to question the referee’s calls or criticise the fitness of some players, it offers something a step closer to the pre-pandemic reality.
Moreover, this app can be also used for other events that require spectatorship.
“Fans are an essential element of the match atmosphere,” said Jumpei Takaki of the sales division at S-Pulse. “As a former professional footballer, I know how encouraging their support is to the players on the field.”
“Users were able to gain a sense of being present at the venue, even though it’s a massive stadium,” Yamaha said in a statement, adding that the system “demonstrated the ability to create a spectator atmosphere similar to that of a real match”.
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58 speakers across the stadium & multiple salutations
With 58 speaker units in a stadium, viewers have the option to select which part of the stadium they want their cheers to emerge from. Not only that, the app offers a range of salutations including: ‘Cheers’, ‘goal’, ‘groan’, ‘boo’ and even silence.
Japan had recorded 16,623 cases of coronavirus and 846 deaths. However, recently, the number of new cases in the country has dwindled to mere dozens, indicating that Japan has, perhaps, managed to beat the pandemic without a severe lockdown or even mass testing,
The country also prepares to resume normalcy with President Shinzo Abe lifting the state of emergency Monday.
In a similar attempt to make the stadium atmosphere a little closer to normal, South Korea played music in its empty theatres when the country’s professional football league opened early this month. Taking it a notch further, empty seats were filled with “fans” which later turned out to be sex dolls and earned the club a record fine by the K-League.
In Germany, soccer has already kicked off and stadiums across the world, including India, are opening up — without spectators.