Ever sat back and really wondered why sports or the exploits of our favourite athletes, teams or the end result matters so much to us.
Sport is an essential and important aspect of societies around the world; it arises indispensable when it comes to its impact on a plethora of public arenas, including economics and the mass media. Sport coincides with community values and political agencies, as it attempts to define the morals and ethics attributed not only to athletes but the totality of society as a whole. Fans of spectator sports find a reaffirmation of key societal values through sports, as they give meaning to their own lives.
“By becoming fans, spectators engage in certain kinds of pleasures, fulfilling their own desires through fetishism, voyeurism, and narcissism," writes Brummett (21).
But hold up, think about it some more. Do you sometimes believe that in the Caribbean we have somewhat lost a sense of the real value of sport and its effects on us as a society? Barring perhaps Jamaica and possibly Cuba, do the performances of our teams and athletes really matter to us as much as we would like to think? And I'm not talking about global powerhouses that many here only get the chance to view via their digital devices.
The World Cup and other major sporting events, like the Olympics or Brian Lara returning home after his past record-breaking feats, turn sports journalists into travel writers, assigning them the challenging task of describing the character of millions or thousands of people based on a handful of interviews. The takeaway of stories becomes, unsurprisingly: Sports exercises a lot of power over a lot of people.
Aside from the return of the 2006 Soca Warriors from Bahrain and Germany, when last have we really experienced that in-depth affection to any of our sporting heroes. We applaud silently for an evening and maybe a day when some of our individual athletes achieve glory, like say a Dylan Carter or Nicholas Paul. Sadly, believe it or not, not many persons can even remember what year Keshorn Walcott won Gold at the Olympics. And this is by no means an attempt to take anything away from the man's achievement.
So as author Eric Simons put it over, while sport exercises a lot of power, how really? And how much power? And for which people? These narratives of fans, identity, and meaning underlie some testable hypotheses about how sports affect people but offer little in the way of empirical backing. Perhaps that’s because numbers would challenge the hypotheses.
The Times asked people in 19 countries how much they cared about football. But of the countries surveyed, only in Colombia did 50 percent say there were “very interested” in it. In Brazil, 40 percent said they were very interested, while 47 percent said they were “slightly or somewhat interested,” and 12 percent didn’t care at all. Twelve percent of Brazil’s 200 million people means that there were 24 million people in Brazil who did not weep with the gods over the World Cup results of 2014. Imagine what the results may be today if such a survey were to be conducted on cricket in the West Indies.
Bill Simmons, one of the most influential American sportswriters, once wrote after his team lost the Super Bowl, “I have never been able to answer the question, ‘Why does this matter to me so much?’ That’s just the way it’s always been. Ever since I can remember.”
“Why does this matter to me?” is a scientific question. “That’s just the way it’s always been” is a nifty dodge.
Psychologists who have tried to zero in on why people love sports have settled on, at the most reducible level, eight different motivations. Some of them are more common, but none is any more significant than any of the others. People like sports because they get self-esteem benefits from it. Some people like sports because they have money on them. People like sports because their boyfriend or girlfriend or family member likes sports. People like sports because it’s exciting. People like sports because it’s aesthetically pleasing. People like sports because, like the theatre, it is a venue for emotional expression. People like sports because they need an escape from real-world troubles. People like sports because it provides a sense of belonging, a connection to a wider world.
Time for us in the Caribbean to start feeling that sense of belonging and connection again. Who knows what 2022 holds in store for us.
Editor's Note
Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Media. He was a FIFA Media Officer at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views expressed are solely his and not a representation of any organisation. shaunfuentes@yahoo.com.