ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the use of diverse forms of online digital technology including video teleconferencing software, such as Zoom. The pandemic thereby accelerated a gradual shift to the increased integration of digital technology into working practices but also leisure activities. In physical exercise and sport, this shift included the use of training devices connected by computer streaming technology, a boom in computer gaming, and an increased viewing of eSports. This chapter explores the possibility that the pandemic accelerated an existing change in the nature of sport spectatorship, just as it has accelerated changes in other aspects of everyday life. It is suggested that the pandemic may have anticipated or accelerated a gradual shift from sports spectatorship as the experience of sport via the television screen, to spectatorship as an experience of sport as a computer-generated simulation. Ultimately, it is argued that computer-generated imitations of sport, despite their growing sophistication and capacity to reproduce the televisual experience of sport, cannot reproduce the authenticity of that televisual experience of a live game. The pandemic served to make explicit how important an awareness of the existence of vulnerable, physically embodied competitors is to the spectator's appreciation of sport.
