“The long game: COVID changed the way we play, watch, cheer.”

Robert Thompson, Trustee Professor of television, radio and film and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture in the Newhouse School, was quoted in the Associated Press story “The long game: COVID changed the way we play, watch, cheer.” Thompson, an expert on pop culture and media, says that while many industry have become reliant on convenient technologies during the pandemic, the sports industry relies on fans and in person fanfare. “Close physical proximity of the players is a fundamental property of the games, packing in crowds is built into the architecture and economies of the venues that present those games, and the behavior of viewers who watch them on TV never changed that much in the first place,” Thompson says.