Why the glut of live football is a lockdown lifesaver

Empty stadiums, fake crowd noise, round-the-clock coverage — and still fans flock to live football. Since the resumption of the English Premier League and other competitions in England last June, I’ve been binge-watching games the way others have lapped up Netflix costume dramas — and I’m not alone.

Under lockdown, football and other sports seem to serve a heightened purpose. The live match — and discussion of it on messaging apps, social media and podcasts — takes on renewed significance in the lives of fans whose working lives have been upended. Footballers have become entertainment’s key workers, living in a Covid-free bubble where testing is regular because the show must go on.

For those now “living at work”, switching on a game provides a clear cut-off to the working day. Indeed, some of the aspects that turned viewers off during the resumption of matches last summer — the packed calendar, multiple kick-off times in a day — are now making life bearable for fans stuck in their homes.

Average audiences for BT Sport’s Premier League matches are up 13 per cent, while viewing numbers across all the channel’s sports events are up 51 per cent, reflecting the rise in household uptake and the closure of pubs and other public venues. Sky Sports reported a record UK audience for last month’s Manchester United-Liverpool fixture. Armchair fans are also turning to Now TV’s one-off or monthly passes to Sky matches, and Amazon Prime’s occasional games.

For Musa Okwonga, a Berlin-based writer and football podcaster, during the first lockdown “the evenings began to stretch on with a fearful emptiness and endlessness; the return of football changed all that. All of a sudden, my friends and I had so many new stories to enjoy, so many more scores to argue over.”

The fake crowd noise that accompanies live matches can be switched off, revealing eerie, echoing acoustics. It also allows fans to hear the shouting of teams’ socially distanced coaches and substitutes. Their rallying cries seemed invaluable in helping my team, Manchester City, invite mistakes by Real Madrid in a Champions League game on August 7. A few months later the levels of animosity between the City staff and their FC Porto counterparts were very audible in their group stage encounter. 

Another way to tune out the fake crowds is to join the YouTubers who attach themselves to many clubs and create your own “watchalong”: make a video call, sync your feeds of the game, mute the TV and let the biased coverage be your own. It proves that the social benefits of watching football are as important as the matches themselves.

Nevertheless, the sport’s culture of intolerance has intensified in lockdown. What Okwonga calls the “pillow talk” banter of closed WhatsApp groups has slipped on to open social networks. Racist abuse of players has increased, with the likes of United striker Marcus Rashford suffering in particular. A host of professional bodies last week called on Twitter and Facebook to take tougher action against online hate.

The sport faces other tests too. The huge broadcast fees secured by leagues depend on the resumption of the usual match-day experience. Elite clubs, deprived of sizeable match-day income, are still angling for a breakaway European Super League while others have been forced to take out loans. Prestige tournaments such as the European Championship, already postponed by a year, might be delayed further. Football’s Covid-free bubble and the release it offers for fans could easily burst.

Says Okwonga: “I can never forget the health risks that so many in football are taking to provide this spectacle, and so I will never feel a sense of entitlement about watching it. Though we don’t deserve to be watching sport in the middle of all this, I am so glad that we can.”

Fans everywhere are pining to be back in the throng of a football crowd, even as they know that the end to limits on stadium attendance could be a long way off. Football may be different when it emerges from lockdown — but after nearly a year of watching their favourite spectacle from their living rooms, fans will be hugely grateful for its return.

murray.withers@ft.com