The Democratization of Sport

It is said that “If you have a body, you’re an athlete.” That makes about 8 billion athletes on our planet.

But from what you see on TV during any given weekend, you’d think there are far fewer. You might even think it’s hopeless for most athletes to gain any visibility or recognition of their achievements. Only a tiny number of athletes gain great fame, but now, more than ever in sports history, the masses can influence which athletes attract public attention, thus shaping the democratization of sport.

A Short History of U.S. Sports and Media

It is not a foregone conclusion that certain sports will always command mass public attention. A century ago, the most popular sports were baseball, horse racing, boxing, and bicycle racing. Back then, the NFL and NBA, current TV ratings kings, did not even exist.

But things change, including public tastes, trends in media, and technology. Examples of each:

• Public taste. Cycling faded as a U.S. spectator sport as many people switched to cars for transportation and the popularity of auto racing increased.
• Media trends. When ESPN wanted to reach younger viewers, the network invented the X Games and either created an appetite – or fed one that already existed – for such sports as snowboarding, skateboarding, and BMX biking.
• Technological change. The NFL’s stratospheric growth in popular coincided with TVs arriving in practically every American home, where tens of millions saw how well the sport fit the new medium.

 

 

How the Past Informs the Present

The same three forces shape today’s changing sports media landscape. These days, to borrow some words from political philosophy, “people have the power” to democratize sports, i.e., make more people, competing in more sports, more visible to more audiences.

For example, streaming has let small colleges and high schools share their sports team’s events with far-flung audiences. And just about any parent with a cell phone can put junior’s U-6 soccer match on Facebook Live or YouTube.

When it comes to systematized and automated exposure of grassroots and school sports – and importantly, the athletes who compete at that level – Pixellot leads a revolution. The company’s cameras at more than 17,000 courts and fields deliver higher quality than streaming and cell phones, plus the ability for athletic programs to access and organize clips for training and promotion purposes.

Pixellot enables live viewership of more than 100,000 games per month and has passed the 1 million mark in games produced, spanning the “Big Four” North American sports – football, basketball, baseball, and hockey – as well as softball, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, and more.

Perhaps most importantly, Pixellot powers a virtuous cycle: Audiences want to see more grassroots sports events and a wider array of athletes. Pixellot provides an unprecedented amount of such video, in turn generating increased demand, in turn creating greater opportunity for athletes to appear on screen before families, communities, and scouts at the next level.

With such power to popularize a wider variety of sports, you might view Pixellot as making the sports world safe for democracy.