«The way of living sport has changed and that is why we have to revolutionize traditional sport towards entertainment. The new generations want changes, they can’t stand a full game and they pay more attention to the networks, alternative channels or multi-screens. They want much shorter and more exciting things. There are ideas that come out and others that are emerging ». Gerard Piqué, former Barcelona player and leader of the Kosmos company, famous for organizing the Davis Cup in tennis and the groundbreaking Kings League in football until last year, comments in various interviews on Twitch, the way forward for the world of sport and its conception as entertainment. Reinventing everything seems to be in fashion. Nothing seems fun for young people and they seek to adapt the disciplines so that they have a mixture of competition and some dose of ‘show’.
Tiafoe, the tennis player who breaks with the canons of clothing in the racket world, recently said different things should be done in his sport to reach young people, an opinion shared days later by Jessica Pegula, current number 3 in the WTA ranking: “It’s something that could help this sport.” The French player raised his voice a few days ago to open the debate on the permissiveness of the fans to be able to speak and move during the games, changing the silence of the stands for the noise of other sports. In the run-up to the Mutua Madrid Open, it has gone a little further than the cheering and mobility between points of the fans. On the eve of the event that runs until May 7, the tournament hosted an innovative competition with a festive atmosphere and a format that is far from the usual classic to get closer to what could be seen in the future in the world of tennis.
Under the name of RedBull Bassline, the tournament brought together eight of the best rackets participating in this Masters 1,000, with a fast format, where the matches lasted 10-15 minutes, to the best of three tie-breaks and with the background music from a live DJ, who not only cheers up during breaks. The speed of the games meant that the fans saw all these players in just two hours of the tournament. As a curiosity between game and game, the tennis players warmed up on the court with exercise bikes placed next to each of the benches.
There were seven matches in total – four quarterfinals, two semifinals and one final – with short, intense battles. Without any chair referee making the decisions, in the style of the curious ‘ultimate frisbee, it was the players themselves who set the rules of the game. The usual task of the referees is covered by sensors implanted in the lines that will decide which ball has gone out. «It’s a very different experience: the rules, the music… when you’ve spent your whole life competing in silence it’s very different to listen to music during points. It’s a lot of fun,” said the recent winner of the Monte Carlo Masters 1,000, Andrey Rublev, to what Stefanos Tsitsipas, number five in the world, considered “a breath of fresh air.”
Innovative formats to attract the younger generations with more dynamic formulas have expanded in recent times, recently reaching boxing, with the ‘Team Combat League’, through a league made up of eight teams made up of boxers from everyone who faces each other in single-round combat, and in which the Spanish Jennifer Miranda participates. Or the NBA itself. On the occasion of the All Star celebration last February, some similar rules were applied to the competition created by Piqué together with the streamer Ibai Llanos, such as the use of a button and a kind of electronic roulette that decided different winning options. game.
2023-04-27 11:04:56
#Tennis #reinvents #kind #Kings #League
