‘TAPPING IN TO A HUGE
ONLINE AUDIENCE is,
to me, A SMART MOVE’
I
COMMENT
MATTHEW SHEAHAN
VIRTUAL REGATTA EVENTS ARE PLAYED BY PEOPLE IN THEIR TENS OF THOUSANDS
AND ARE DRAWING NEW PEOPLE INTO THE SPORT. WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE?Matthew Sheahan
is head of
performance
sailing at
Sunset+Vinen recent weeks I’ve had to make up all kinds
of bogus excuses as to why it is absolutely
necessary to look at my phone before I go
to sleep.
“Checking that I’ve set the alarm
correctly,” is a favourite, but I’m not sure my wife still
believes me.
The honest answer is that now the Volvo Ocean Race has
started, I’m making sure that I don’t go head to wind or hit
a coastline overnight.
So aside from dealing with my conscience, the next
problem is that I’ve got to somehow string this out until
June, when the VOR fleet is due to finish its
circumnavigating endeavours in The Hague.
I don’t play computer games, but the Virtual Regatta
events are different. Racing on the same course as a real
fleet and dealing with the same weather puts the
comments from the real- life crews into perspective and
brings the race alive.
On Leg 2, talk of struggling around the St Helena High
pressure and agonising over when to cut the corner and
gybe for Cape Town
struck a chord as I
pondered over the
same issues. And,
given the 84,000
other players, I was
clearly not alone.
Getting that decision
wrong cost me 17,000
places and had me feeling Team Brunel’s pain.
The success of Virtual Regatta and its list of real life
races continues to grow, along with the online audience.
So when World Sailing announced that it had struck a deal
with the Paris-based company to run an online sailing
World Championships, I was impressed.
For our world governing body to recognise the potential
of tapping into a huge online audience, many of whom
don’t sail and know little about it, seemed like a smart
move to me. Yet the backlash of negative comments from
some within sailing took me by surprise.
According to them, online sailing games will stop
people going out sailing and harm our sport.
Are you kidding?Did the development of Liveline graphics in the
America’s Cup result in a drop on sailing club
memberships? Of course it didn’t.
Did more people outside our sport look at it and
comment on how exciting and cool it looked? Yes, and
in their thousands.
And as for drawing sailors from the sidedecks to
their sofas, I refuse to believe that someone who has
been engaged in the real deal afloat would choose to
hang up their boots, sell their boat and buy a 50in TV
screen instead.
From what I’ve seen among non-sailing friends and
work colleagues, it is the games that draw them into the
sport. Some are already talking about making a trip to the
Volvo Race’s Cardiff stopover to see the real boats. And this
is just the start.Crowd pleasers
At the recent World Yacht Racing Forum we heard how the
eSports world is worth US$100 billion annually, turning
over more than the film industry, it is claimed. And while
many of the games are fantasy types and not linked to real
sports, there are others that are. The football game FIFA 17
is said to be the 13th biggest in the world.
And there are live events too. The Counter Strike Global
Offensive tournament filled a 17,000 seat stadium as
spectators came to watch well-paid professionals shoot
their way to some serious prize money. (If you’re tempted,
tickets to the ELeague Major 2018 in January cost $120 a
head for the three-day event in Boston).
And while it’s unlikely that sailing could pull such a
crowd, who’s to say that it wouldn’t be possible to run an
eSailing championships where some of the best amateurs
were racing against the worlds top offshore navigators
and tacticians?
Sitting, watching and listening to some of the world’s
best describe their tactics and strategy in a real-time
eSailing race that related to the kind of sailing I do – be it
windward-leeward or round the cans – is something
I’d want to watch, especially if the race was in my
home waters.
But for all those who are still shaking their heads at the
thought of crowds of people sitting down watching others
play games, I’ll finish with one word: chess.24 February 2018