Six days ago, tennis superstar Naomi Osaka lit the Olympic cauldron and kicked off just over two weeks of sporting excellence. Now, sports fans around the globe have been glued to their screens to support their national teams and athletes competing in the biggest event of high-level athleticism.
So amid the salty caramel popcorn, loud cheers and tears of disappointment, people are taking their emotions and laying them all out in these funny tweets that we collected below.
Commenting on the very different kind of Olympic experience this year, Rick Burton, a professor of sport management at Syracuse University and the former chief marketing officer of the US Olympic Committee for the 2008 Beijing games, called the experience “sterile.” “The sponsors are going to be thinking the ratings will be down. They’re worried they’re not going to get their money’s worth,” he added.
The findings made on viewers’ engagement also show that sports without fans may be way less enjoyable. Kantar, a research firm that measures consumer enthusiasm, found that two-third of American sports spectators announced that watching sports during the pandemic was not as engaging and enjoyable. “[The Olympics] could be a little bit less engaging, a little bit less fulfilling for the viewer,” Ryan McConnell, Kantar’s senior vice president for consulting, told Quartz.
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