Devangshu Datta: Sports streaming beats TV

There was a time when I braved mounted riot police, pickpockets and halitosis to watch sports events. The build-up to a test match at Eden Gardens started with shady deals to buy tickets on the black. Then you stood in a queue for an hour to enter the stadium. You hid your beedis in the turn-ups of your bell-bottoms and flattened out matchboxes to smuggle them in.  

You kept tight control of the bladder through five-and-a-half hours of play (not six hours) and through lunch, and tea, because a full bladder was preferable to braving the loos and losing your place. You stood in the stands because the concrete seat was bloody hot and the guys in front of you were standing because their seats were bloody hot.

I’ve watched football in the monsoons where the Maidan turned into knee-deep slush. It was a toss-up whether you went wearing hawai slippers which would most probably not survive or whether you wore canvas shoes that would require hours to clean.

There was always a near-riot. The crowds used to be herded in and controlled by mounted police. Everybody was miserable and the horses were incontinent, which added to the all-round misery. If you happened to have a ticket for the “wrong stand” during the Mohun Bagan-East Bengal derbies, you learned to maintain a facade that was entirely at variance with inner feelings. You cheered lustily when your side conceded a goal and you cursed even more lustily when your side scored.

I’ve watched a Davis Cup quarter-final played on the lush grass courts at the South Club, from the bare roof of a building across the road. Care had to be taken not to fall off. That was a truly insane encounter. There were no tiebreaks until the fifth set and it just went on and on, because everybody served brilliantly and none of them had a killer return. Vijay Amritraj, Jasjit Singh and Anand Amritraj edged through against the Aussies (John Alexander, Bob Giltinan and Colin Dibley). Of  course, India won brownie points later in that cycle by refusing to play South Africa.

I’ve watched (and played) some hockey but even big games like the Beighton Cup final did not get so massively crowded. Most of the matches were walk-ins. Plus, of course, I have watched table tennis (including one epic world championship final), rugby, badminton, even baseball, etc.

Sports was pretty much the only reason why I bothered to keep a TV cable subscription. At first, sports coverage on TV was like being given the keys to paradise. There was soccer which was consistently of a quality one had dreamt about. Wimbledon, the US Open, and later on, the French Open were feasts. Cricket in all its myriad variations was another game that transferred well to TV; it was nice to sit on a comfortable sofa and take loo breaks and refuel the drinks between overs.

It palled a little when the advertising got painful. Then live streams for most major events started becoming available  on the internet if you knew how and where to look for them. I quit bothering to keep a TV subscription going. Maybe my enthusiasm for sports also went off the boil — I have watched less than a dozen IPL matches in all these seasons.

As always, I start looking around for live streams before a major sports event. Nowadays, streams are even available legally, and therefore of higher quality. Unfortunately they usually come with inane advertising thrown in.

The interesting thing is that there are several ways in which live streams provide serious value-additions. For example, there can be running, “clickable” statistical updates. There can be social media Twitter and Reddit feeds looped in. There can be a humungous choice of commentaries. In the last two years, a saddle point has been reached. The internet now offers a live viewership experience that beats TV hollow. I wonder how effectively this will be monetised.

Twitter: @devangshudatta