Take me out of the ballgame

Forget crowd inflation, which I blogged about a couple of months ago with respect to the movies. (Inflate me, my sweet inflatable use.) A soccer team in Italy is giving the word “crowdsourcing” a whole ‘nuther meaning.

As I read in The Journal the other day, Triestina’s team doesn’t draw all that well. Apparently they’re no AC Milan or Juventus, and typically play before about 5,000 fans. Talk about Nolé, Nolé, Nolé, Nolé…

At Saturday’s match, those few, those happy few, that band of fratelli, were met with a big surprise. The stand facing the television cameras – which holds 10,000 – was full.

On television, the crowd looked impressive. But in person, the scene looked a bit strange. The fans were clad in scarves and winter coats—unusual for a balmy September afternoon. They failed to make a sound when the home team ran out on the field and didn't budge when the match ended in a scoreless draw.

That’s because, in an attempt to save money and “create a bit of atmosphere” heretofore lacking, Triestina had printed up a vinyl covering with pics of “virtual fans” and layered it over some empty seats.

There is, of course, something colossally depressing about attending a major sporting event where there’s no crowd. Forget what’s going on on the field/ice/court: half the fun of being there is the crowd. There’s nothing like being among 35,000 fans booing the ump, twirling their index fingers to signal a home run that said ump has failed to acknowledge, or singing “Sweet Caroline.”

When I watch a game on TV – which I do plenty of – I always feel a bit sorry for the athletes playing in front of empty stands. Then, of course, I get a grip and remind myself not to expend too much sympathy on a bunch of guys making millions of bucks a year when, for most of them, the employment alternatives would be fast food, crop picking, or possum hunting.

We don’t tend to have a non-crowd problem with Boston professional sports. Even our soccer team draws more than Triestina’s squad.  For the rest of “our” teams, tickets tend to be hard to come by and expensive.  Right now, of course, with the lack luster Red Sox foundering out of contention, the Red Sox are in danger of losing their consecutive sell-out record. At this point, they’re running on the fumes of early season expectations and the attendant sales, and what I assume is the fact that management is buying up any leftovers so they can keep what is this year’s only positive streak going. Personally, as a baseball fan who likes to take in a couple of games a year in person, I will be just de-lighted to be able to actually buy some tickets next season, as the bandwagon fans start looking at that bandwagon and seeing juggernaut.

One driver behind Triestina’s PVC fandom – which, by the way, at least uses images of actual team fans – was making things look a bit better on TV. They also see it as a way to increase advertising revenue – I guess  because Bossini (see picture) wouldn’t want their banner flying over an empty section.  They’re also saving money because they don’t need to hire staff or buy insurance for the seats they’ve shut off. (With the help of their virtual, vinyl fans, they don’t need to worry about having to patrol empty areas to prevent fans from cadging a free upgrade to a better seat. If all those seats are covered by vinyl, waht’s a fan going to do? Crawl under and cut a head-hole out with an Exacto knife?

Triestina’s problem is two-fold. First, there’s location, location, location. Trieste is stuck in a little dead-end, barely connected to Italy-proper. Then it’s population, population, population. Theirs is small (about 200,000), and there are very few people in what little there is of a surrounding area. Plus, Triestina has a low birth rate, so they’re not making too many new fans.

This is all pretty sad – sniff, sniff – but vinyl fans do seem a pretty powerful antidote to soccer hooliganism. (Maybe the Brits should try it.) On the other hand, they don’t buy beer or acrylic scarves, either.

The article points out that some baseball teams in the States cover areas with tarps. And that, for football, games aren’t televised in the local area unless a ticket sales threshold is met. All of Triestina’s games are aired, which works to suppress ticket sales.

Meanwhile, back in the world of New England sports, Patriots quarterback Tom (“Our Tom”) Brady stirred things up a bit when he called out the local fans for being too quiet, and for jumping ship by the beginning of the fourth quarter if the game looks decided already. As the online commenters on this brouhaha – and there have been many of them – have noted, the design of the local football stadium is such that, acoustically, it’s hard to make a whole lot of noise.  And of course, as anyone who’s been to a heavily attended event at Gillette Stadium well knows, leaving at the end can mean two hours to get out of the parking lot, and two hours on Route One before you get onto a “real” highway. The place is a traffic nightmare.

It also may just be that Patriots fans are more sedate than some in other towns.

But if Our Tom thinks the crowd at his games is flat, he ought to take a look at Triestina.