ABSTRACT
Sport media has always been primarily aimed toward closing the distance between the spectator and the on-screen action (cf. Bowman & Cranmer, 2014). From the first-wired reports of prizefights in London for an eager (and still British) American Colonial population to KDKA Pittsburgh’s first live radio broadcast of Major League Baseball (a 1921 contest between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Philadelphia Phillies) to the online streaming of the 2008 Beijing Games via NBCOlympics.com, sport media have substantially advanced in providing spectators with seemingly unprecedented access to the field of play. Social media technologies have extended this access to the locker room (Pegoraro, 2010; Frederick, Lim, Clavio, & Walsh, 2012; Bowman, 2013), and fantasy sport play (Bowman, Spinda, & Sanderson, 2016) have given fans some modicum of involvement into their favorite players and teams-albeit indirectly (i.e. no action control).
