Richard Scudamore wearing a prototype Scudatron device. Copyright John Sibley/Action Images
Richard Scudamore has seen the future. It sounds pretty neat. Although one must concede that the future does sound suspiciously like the movie Avatar. The Premier League chief executive is on a fact-finding mission in Hong Kong (facts found out so far: they have money; we want some of it) and has had his head turned by an amazing new gizmo called “Immersion Technology”.
IT (that acronym isn’t already taken, right?) allows the sports fan to strap on a device through which he or she can view the action. Turn head to left, see one end of the pitch; turn to right, see other end. Scudamore reports that headphones are also involved. Entertainment ensues.
And because these machines are broadcasting TV pictures from the ground, as Scudamore says: “You could be on a Saturday evening in Hong Kong, 3pm in England, deciding whether you want to be on the Kop or the Holte End at Aston Villa.”
Leaving aside whether this sort of pick-and-mix approach to choosing which football team to watch is to be encouraged, would this be any good? IT would certainly make watching football at home a bit more like being at the ground. The purist will insist actual physical attendance is the only way to enjoy football, to which I say: that depends on the club you support. Many is the time watching my own team that I have wished I was far away and wearing a large digital box on my head; not least because it might short-circuit and electrocute me, thus saving me from having to watch my team play football any more.
Assuming that it is not morally reprehensible to enjoy a football match without being there, there are still questions over the practicalities. What if, sitting on the sofa with the Scudatron Premier League Visualisation Unit strapped around your melon, you turn minutely to your left in order to scoop up another fistful of delicious Official Premier League Partner Cardio-destructo-snacks, and suddenly the headset is pointing squarely at a pillar, or the fat neck of a person in front of you, or at the hapless, pouting figure of Fernando Torres, moping around 70 yards from where the action is?
Aside from the possibility of technical malfunction, and the philosophical questions (“If you are bored to death watching Stoke v Blackburn but you were not there, did you actually die?”), the major problem with the Scudatron is crowd segregation. Scudamore says that he envisions fans sitting together on the sofa to enjoy the exciting, headsets-on, in-no-way-Jaws-III-ish experience. What if they are from rival teams? It is simply not practical for the constabulary to police every home in Britain, let alone Hong Kong as well, just in case a United fan and a City fan find themselves in the same living room, techno-ed up and ready to go.
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