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Paul McNamara

Madonna, Bob Dylan and Jack White have banned phones from their concerts. An exasperated Adele once asked an audience member: “Can you stop filming me? … You can enjoy it in real life rather than through your camera.”
In the sporting sphere, however, those bastions of decorum at Augusta National Golf Club are alone in waging war on mobile devices, employing a strict cell phone ban for patrons attending the US Masters. Mark Calcavecchia, the 1989 Open Championship winner and veteran of 18 Masters, was hoofed off the premises this year after flouting the rule.
Contrast that staunch technophobia with the routine sight of fans hungrily filming and photographing in football stadiums and rugby grounds, courtside, poolside and ringside, on fairways and in arenas.
“People nowadays are constantly switching their attention,” Professor Chen Zhansheng, head of the department of psychology at the University of Hong Kong, said.
“Also, because of social media, they constantly seek connections and approval. The need to belong is satisfied very differently from in the past: it comes from constantly uploading [content] to share.
“It’s the difference between enjoying the moment and disassociating yourself from what’s happening. This creates problems, but it’s also part of the new way of living.”

Rob James, senior vice-president of golf events for IMG, said this method of live sport consumption was “more noticeable now than 10 or 20 years ago”.
Boasting nearly 30 years’ industry experience, including 4½ years as Manchester United’s Asia marketing head, he cautioned against event organisers following Augusta’s stringent lead.
“Handheld devices are now so integral to a consumer’s everyday life that to do so would be seen as detrimental for the majority,” James said.
After runners in the 2013 Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon caused pandemonium by stopping to capture images of themselves, race officials considered prohibiting phones on the course.
They ultimately relented and with the genie now out of the bottle, promoters and administrators are increasingly keen to leverage punters’ attachments to their screens.
James said that official event-week apps for both this year’s Open Championship and AIG Women’s British Open “showed double-digit growth”, alongside material increases in social media impressions, social engagements, social media followers and live-stream views.
“Viewing short clips, checking the leaderboard or map on the event app, or listening to radio commentary have become big parts of the major-event experience,” he added.
Marketers have long since had to get creative to cater for changing habits. The primary reason for the 2003 introduction of T20 cricket was to attract the time poor. It would become a juggernaut, as would social media, as Twitter, Instagram and TikTok infiltrated, then consumed people’s lives following their respective launches in 2006, 2010 and 2016.
“As social psychologists, we feel the way people live their lives is rapidly changing,” Chen said. “But technology is changing so quickly, we’ve not kept up with what these changes mean for us.
“We always say human beings are shaped by our environment and our language, but now, more than ever, with technology, smartphones and social media, there are new patterns. It’s more universal than sport and we probably need to observe our own decision patterns: the changes we do and don’t like.”

The intrusive content capturing by so-called influencers irked both rank-and-file supporters and players at the recent US Open tennis tournament.
One especially ignorant group staged a photo shoot during Naomi Osaka’s first-round victory over Anastasia Zakharova.
“It’s common courtesy to read up on the sport, especially the etiquette,” Osaka said. Among the stream of online comments about the roughly 100 influencers and content creators who were granted accreditation for the Flushing Meadows fortnight, one read: “I think the US Open is starting to fly too close to the sun with its anti-fan practices”.
On a recent video call to discuss the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships, the Olympic 100m champion, Noah Lyles, said that “influencers are needed” but that “there’s a time and a place for them”.
“It’s important to get the content and let people know an event is happening, and it can be fun and entertaining, but there can be a selected space for it,” he added.
James said that a typical marketing blueprint today would “include the engagement of influencers to create additional content, promote an event and enhance the live experience for the public”.
“With planning and care, this can be really effective, but if it’s not managed and there are no clear guidelines, the content might not be what the organisers were expecting,” James said, adding that the increasing presence of influencers “is a trend that will continue”.
In the main, James welcomes paying fans posting their videos on social media because “viral clips and human-interest stories often reach a far wider and more diverse audience than that of a traditional broadcast”.
“Partner activations and exhibition areas [on site] actively encourage it,” he said.
Equally, James said that in his experience it was only “the novice eventgoers” who spent most of their day out watching through a screen.
“It’s probably the unique factor of seeing a sportsperson so close in real life,” he said. “If it’s perceived as a once-in-a-lifetime experience for someone, they will try to film or catch a selfie.
“Seasoned sports fans or event goers know when to view without a device, or when they can do both without ruining the experience.”

Chen would advocate, where feasible, an approach similar to the one applied at the opera, where audiences are allowed short windows between acts to snap away.
He said that in instances where people “are having a difficult time with others in their daily lives, then online networking, sharing and commenting can be beneficial”.
“The validation can be quite reassuring,” Chen added.
Nonetheless, those who unfailingly cannot resist shooting their team’s goal celebration, recording match point or filming the winning putt, rather than drinking in those moments, expose themselves to brain fog, according to Chen.
“We have limited capacity,” he said. “Constantly seeking validation and not living in the moment can deplete your resources, then you tire easily and lose focus. Your moods swing because your resources are allocated among different focuses.
“In the past, we encouraged multitasking, but I’m not sure it’s a good thing.”
Before Galatasaray played Manchester United in a 2023 Champions League match, the Turkish club’s ultras told fellow supporters that phones and social media use were banned. “[Ninety] minutes of aggressive support. Go to war with the team,” read the missive.
James, however, said that large numbers juggling watching what’s in front of them with using their phones “doesn’t negatively impact the atmosphere”.
He said that audiences in smaller venues sitting close to courts or tables “are not viewing through screens”, while “larger events with bigger venues and crowds tend to have more distractions and things to watch and to film”.

James cited the example of last month’s UTMB Mont-Blanc World Series Finals in Chamonix having “probably the best atmosphere in its 20-year history”.
“The race start and the finish chute were packed with supporters, more people than ever filming the winners, but the noise was electric,” he said. “The action was also live streamed, so a spectator 30km away from the lead action could get updates on their handheld while waiting for other runners.”
Like it or not, the Masters is destined to continue fighting a lone battle against mobile phones in sporting amphitheatres.
“People constantly feel that if something exciting happens, they want to tell their friends right away,” Chen said. “It’s about the immediate satisfaction. You want to get instant feedback, and it’s hard to regulate.”


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While some event organisers ban or limit the presence of mobile phones, many encourage their constructive use


While some event organisers ban or limit the presence of mobile phones, many encourage their constructive use.


Is this the reel life? Sports events confront whole new world of social media, influencers

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While some event organisers ban or limit the presence of mobile phones, many encourage their constructive use

While some event organisers ban or limit the presence of mobile phones, many encourage their constructive use