The hybridization of sight in the hybrid architecture of sport: the effects of television on stadia and spectatorship

Abstract

A year after the 2012 Olympics in London, and as the authorities of Brazil prepare for the forthcoming Olympics and football's World Cup, this paper examines the influence of the televised media image on the development and design of sports stadia, and the nature of contemporary sports spectatorship. Arguing that globalized television has turned sport into an international media event, it will suggest that its architecture has mutated into a semi-real, semi-virtual phenomenon in which the difference between the physical structure and its mediated image has definitively blurred. Drawing upon the ideas of Paul Virilio, we suggest that a concomitant blurring in terms of spectatorship is one of the results. In this new mediated realm the nature of vision human itself threatens to morph and evolve as it merges with mediated visualization.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Figure 1 Leni Reifensthal: Olympia, 1936.