‘We don’t need no stinking smartphones!’ Live stadium sports events,mediatization,and the non-use of mobile media

Abstract

The continuing institutional interpenetration of the sports, media, and digital technology industries makes professional sports an unlikely setting for protest against the use of media. Yet, major stadiums and arenas are serving as sites where the deepening reach and influence of media in lived social and cultural experiences are reflected upon and debated. Drawing upon the concept of mediatization, this article analyzes conflicts over the spread and use of smartphones by spectators during games, showing how the saturation of social spaces by mobile media is cause for objection by selected fans and sports powerbrokers. Strident calls to cease using smartphones are a response to intensifying levels of connectivity, enabled by the installation of sophisticated wireless communications networks and telecommunications services in stadiums and arenas. This situation is indicative of concerns about the link between the use of constantly connected mobile devices and an uneasy sense of being ‘alone together’ in social life, with live stadium sports events idealized as moments where social connection can be forged through the non-use of mobile media and disconnection from telecommunications networks.

Keywords

disconnection mediatization debates mobile media non-use smartphones sports media stadiums Wi-Fi networks

‘We don’t need no stinking smartphones!’ (Cuban, 2011). This is the typically blunt assertion of American businessman, investor and television personality, Mark Cuban. The context for his opinion in this instance is his ownership of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Dallas Mavericks and his observations as a fan who attends games. While Cuban embraces digital technology in his business and personal life, he objects to smartphone use by spectators in the arena during basketball games, believing they are a distraction from the on-court action. NBA games should be, in his mind, an environment where people put down their devices to create and enjoy the shared excitement of sporting spectacle: ‘People can’t clap while they’re holding their phones’ (Cuban quoted in USA Today, n.d.). Cuban is far from alone in his beliefs, as highlighted by the evidence and case studies presented in this article.

The significance of Cuban’s advocacy and debates over mobile device use during sport events are twofold. First, they indicate that stadiums and arenas are becoming more than facilities for hosting athletic competitions. Sizable investments in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Australasia, and Southeast Asia are transforming stadiums into sophisticated wireless technology infrastructures that support extensive telecommunications networks and mobile media services. For example, the Wi-Fi network installed in the new home of the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers, Levi’s Stadium, carried 3.3 Terabytes of data generated by approximately 30,000 connected fans during the opening regular season game of 2014 (Kapustka, 2014a). Reflecting a trend toward installing and extending wireless communications, the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG, 2015) in Australia has announced the installation of a new AUD$45 million high-density Wi-Fi network and IPTV (Internet Protocol television) system to service a stadium with a 100,000-seat capacity. The publicity-driven technology boosterism associated with record data traffic and ‘state-of-the-art’ wireless networks is underscored by a series of successful television and online video advertisements produced by the American telecommunications company, AT&T. The comedic geek duo of Frank and Charlie, the ‘Network Guys’, install Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS)¹ so fans can post ‘to Instagram and Twitter and Vine and Facebook’ from their mobile devices in basketball arenas and American football stadiums, accompanied by catch-phrases such as ‘mobilizing your world’.²

Second, and more significantly, Cuban signals that sports stadiums and arenas are spaces where the interweaving of social life and mobile media is witnessed and publicized. The crystallization of this reality in sports connects with anxieties about the consequences of living in urbanized environments that feature ubiquitous mobile, sensor, and screen technologies (Andrejevic and Burdon, 2014). These technologies allow the harvesting and commodification of site-specific user data, and alter the relationship between user agency, location, and communication (Wilken and Bayliss, 2015). This situation is symptomatic of an unsettling conundrum identified by Nick Couldry (2012) about life in mediatized worlds. It is increasingly difficult to conduct social life in myriad domains without media, yet the question of how to live well with media is uncertain and the subject of ongoing conflict and ambivalence (p. 207). As an exciting and ritual form of everyday life (Carey, 2009; Dunning and Elias, 1986), sports offer a valuable context in which to examine contending individual and collective responses to the ‘saturation of social space by media’, especially given the implications of this saturation for the quality of social life in late modernity (Couldry, 2012: 207). The spaces of stadiums and arenas further emphasize this use-value because of their historical association with iconic meanings, sensory stimulation, and the physically proximate expression of intense emotion (Bale, 1994).

The question of whether sports fans should or should not use their smartphones during games is not a concern of this article. Rather, the objective is to show how the smartphone is a potent symbol for reflection and debate about how deeply media technologies and practices should be embedded into the conduct and experience of social life and, more specifically, sports events. Two key case studies are presented that position mobile media devices as both the objects and bearers of mutually negotiated meanings (Hepp and Krotz, 2014a; Silverstone and Haddon, 1996). One involves an organized protest by (association) football fans against a new stadium Wi-Fi network and mobile phone use in the Netherlands, which attracted international news attention. The other examines the public arguments of Mark Cuban and events in the NBA. Also helping to guide my analysis are interview data drawn from two managers of major stadiums charged with handling the operation of Wi-Fi and DAS networks, as well as a digital sports media consultant who services professional sports teams, leagues, and stadiums in three countries.³ The collected evidence suggests that there are contestable limits to the power of institutionalized mediatization processes and the acceptance of their logics by citizens. Such contestation is a welcome counter-point to the advertisements and marketing of the digital technology and telecommunications industries, which promise a cornucopia of wireless connectivity built from ever-faster mobile broadband services and multiplying forms of social media and entertainment (Mosco, 2014).⁴ The mobile phone may have already achieved the status of a ‘social fact’ (Ling, 2012), but the frequency, intensity, and locations of its use and non-use remain crucial matters for deliberation and dispute across a range of settings. Studying the inevitable mix of resistance, desire, and occasional strangeness that accompanies the diffusion of the smartphone into the experience of sports is necessary, particularly if the touchstones of livable and socially rewarding futures are to be understood (Clark, 2014; Silverstone and Haddon, 1996).

Mediatization and sport

The concept of mediatization is used here to frame and analyze responses to the growing use of smartphones by spectators in sports stadiums and arenas during live games. Claimed to represent ‘part of a paradigmatic shift within media and communication research’ (Hepp et al., 2015: 315), mediatization processes are the subject of a rapidly expanding literature and set of debates initially emerging from European social theory and communications and media studies (e.g. Couldry, 2012; Hepp, 2013; Hepp and Krotz, 2014b; Hjarvard, 2013; Lundby, 2009, 2014). Mediatization is arguably best understood as the theorization of media transformation over time, focused on the expanding influence of media institutions, practices, and technologies on a diverse collection of social settings, including politics, civil society, religion, popular culture, art, and the environment. Approached as a meta-process, or a ‘long-term process of processes’ that affects everyday life and identity, the impact of mediatization travels alongside globalization, commercialization, and individualization in the passage of modernity (Krotz, 2014: 137). The term itself is defined in a variety of ways. However, the heavy concentration of power enjoyed by the media, digital technology, and telecommunications sectors under the conditions of global informational capitalism indicates that an institutional perspective offers a convincing justification for its utility (Livingstone and Lunt, 2014):

Mediatization is defined as the process whereby culture and society to an increasing degree become dependent on the media and their logic and this process is furthermore characterized by a duality in that the media have acquired the status of a semi-independent institution in society at the same time as they become integrated into the very fabric of social life in other social institutions and cultural spheres. (Hjarvard, 2013: 153)

The conjunction of wireless connectivity, smartphones, and mobile media is, therefore, treated as evidence of an institutionally generated phenomenon that potentially disrupts the lifeworld of sports spectators, affecting the familiar patterned social interactions that occur in the course of live stadium events.

While the subject of intermittent passing mentions, sports have received little detailed attention in the study of mediatization. This is a surprising omission due to the symbiotic relationship between professional (mostly men’s) sports and the mass media that developed over the course of the 20th century. Often rejecting a media-centric perspective, four decades of research has sought to understand the role of sports media within ‘the vast array of social and cultural structures, struggles, relations, practices, and meanings’ that extend far beyond it (Hutchins and Rowe, 2012: 185). Indeed, the term media sport (Wenner, 1998) is shorthand for the naturalization of an institutionalized interpenetration that moves across and between a series of social and cultural spheres. This process is, for example, observable in the early popular press and broadcasting (Boyle and Haynes, 2000), media events (Real, 1975), national audiences (Jhally, 1984), television formats and industries (Altheide and Snow, 1979; Rowe, 2004; Whannel, 1992), cultural politics (Gruneau and Whitson, 1993), global flows of media and labor (Miller et al., 2001), and celebrity culture (Whannel, 2002). This interaction and the structural inequalities that flow from it continue throughout a series of globalized media cultures and transnational mobilities (Rowe, 2011; Thorpe, 2014). Acknowledging this tradition of scholarship, Kirsten Frandsen (2014) has begun to rectify the neglect of sport in the mediatization literature by stressing the historical relationship between sport, television, and ‘intertwinement of both social and economic dynamics’ in Northern Europe (p. 535). She argues that sports constitute a specific cultural field that features dynamics distinct from those found in politics, education, or religion. Her analysis eschews an account of media transformation that treats sports primarily as a commodity, instead stressing the role performed by civil society movements in the development of sports in Scandinavian countries. Frandsen also outlines that a feature of mediatization is a worrying polarization of access to media resources, as evidenced by many women’s sports that struggle for television coverage, sponsorship, and financial resources (p. 539). This observation intimates that an absence of media may actually signify social developments that deserve greater attention.

The theorization of mediatization has been criticized for its totalizing implications. This problem is partially attributable to the common sense appeal of a term that appears to capture something meaningful about societies in which large-scale media institutions play an obvious role (Jensen, 2013). The term points only toward an intensification of media relations and conditions: ‘there is something or someone that is becoming ever more “-ized”’ (Deacon and Stanyer, 2014: 1036). According to David Deacon and James Stanyer (2014, 2015), mediatization processes tend to be treated as ‘innately powerful’ when they encounter assorted social practices and actors:

… [T]he clear assumption that a narrow set of agents have a strong effect on all manner of social, cultural, political and economic practices … Here we are confronted by a narrow set of possible behavioural responses to the agents of mediatization. The supposition is that all political actors adapt to, internalize and accommodate media logic. (Deacon and Stanyer, 2014: 1035)

These arguments have been sharply refuted (Hepp et al., 2015). Yet, it is difficult to deny the claim that mediatization research often confirms the role of ever more institutionalized media power and practices. In combatting this propensity, a wider range of responses and reactions to the diffusion of media technologies and relations throughout social, cultural, and political settings must be explored, including cases where mediatization is resisted, contested, or absent (Deacon and Stanyer, 2014: 1035–1036). Such an approach widens the frame of inquiry to consider how differing responses to the presence of media are evidence of variegated social contexts and differing cultural dynamics. It also recognizes that mediatization has reshaped many fields of human activity, but, in turn, the varying actions and responses of actors in these fields influence the development of media institutions and processes (Livingstone and Lunt, 2014: 705).

This article responds to the call for a broader range of responses to mediatization to be examined. It focuses on the non-use of mobile media and disconnection from mobile communications networks in the experience of live sports. Non-use (Goggin, 2006; Hjorth, 2015) and disconnection (Light, 2014) are rarely considered in the relation to mobile media, despite the variable dynamics and orders of social cohesion and division that cohere around mobile devices (Campbell and Ling, 2011). A lack of attention to different types and degrees of non-use and disconnection can be substantially attributed to the immense and heavily publicized popularity of smartphones. For instance, the number of mobile broadband subscriptions reached 2.3 billion globally in 2014, an almost fivefold increase since 2008 (International Telecommunication Union (ITU), 2014). This remarkable speed of diffusion, it is said, positions the smartphone as a ‘powerful accelerator’ of mediatization and an ‘undeniable indicator of the expanding presence of mediatization’ (Miller, 2014: 217). Such robust claims are consistent with the current promotion of mobile media innovation in sports markets globally, leveraging the ‘second’ and ‘third’ screen media habits of fans and audience members (Hutchins, 2014).

These claims may well be accurate. But an overwhelming emphasis on acceleration and innovation obscures the diversity of responses to the expansion of mobile media into a range of social spheres and experiences, including conscious disengagement with the smartphone at specific moments and in particular spaces. Wyatt et al. (2002) argued over a decade ago that non-use of media plays a notable, albeit largely ignored role in the development of socio-technical systems. The non-use of media technologies needs to be investigated due to the fact that

… [W]e are in danger of uncritically accepting the promises of technology. Defining people only as producers or as users of technologies confirms the technocratic vision of the centrality and normativity of technology. Users of technology also need to be seen in relation to another, even less visible group – namely, non-users. (Wyatt et al., 2002: 25)

The continued existence of such groups highlights that there are limits to the reach and power of mediatization processes. Considering those individuals and groups who contest the ‘organizing logic’ of networks – even as they exist and live in media-rich environments – also serves to avoid technological determinism in the analysis of media transformation (Mejias, 2013). As will be shown, this is a useful mindset when attempting to critically analyze contemporary professional men’s sports given that leagues and games are often characterized by heightened spectacle, commodification, and connectivity.

‘Fuck Wi-Fi, Support the Team’

These are the words printed on a large banner held aloft by PSV Eindhoven fans during their team’s opening home match of the 2014–2015 season in the premier division of Dutch football, the Eredvisie.⁵ PSV Eindhoven hosted NAC Breda at Philips Stadion, winning the game six-goals-to-one in front of approximately 34,000 spectators. Reports of the result competed with news about an organized protest staged in two sections of the stadium inhabited by many of the most vocal PSV Eindhoven fans. The demonstration discouraged spectators from using a new stadium Wi-Fi network that offered free Internet access for smartphone users. The objective of the main banner was to stop fans checking their smartphones and ‘support the team’ as the on-field action unfolded. Located behind this banner were multiple fans holding placards aloft displaying the Wi-Fi symbol with a red cross running through it. Fliers were distributed at the game and other banners appeared that read, ‘You can sit at home’ and ‘Stand united’ (Guardian Staff, 2014). The unusual nature of this protest was recognized far beyond the confines of Philips Stadion, attracting news coverage in England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Norway, Romania, Czechoslovakia, the United States, Brazil, Uruguay, and Australia.

Examination of the reactions sparked by this protest indicates that its significance is about more than novelty value. Two main features can be identified in news and fan responses. The first centers on a conflict over the emergence and impact of new rituals of mobile phone use in face-to-face and public settings (Ling, 2008). There are a group of fans and spectators – conspicuous non-users – who feel that the use of smartphones during games erodes the experience of live football, diminishing the affective power of stadium spectacles that are reliant on shared focus, heightened emotions, and vocal expressiveness (Bale, 1994). Wi-Fi networks allow frequent interruptions to this collective focus as the attention of smartphone users is broken by the intermittent checking of social media services such as Twitter and Facebook, live match statistics, fantasy sports, fluctuating betting odds, and other live sports results. This capacity creates tension between those fans who claim to maintain a singular and intense focus on their team and the game, and those who split their attention between the game and their smartphone. The actions of the latter are said to detract from the experience of the former. Consistent with the character of traditional masculinized fan rhetoric, the smartphone functions as a symbol that emphasizes the commitment of ‘true’ fans (non-users) when compared to ‘mere’ followers and spectators (users) (cf. Ruddock et al., 2010).

The distinction outlined above is evident among fans posting to online club message boards and social media platforms, consistently expressed in vulgar terms. For instance, the first response to a news story about the staging of the demonstration on PSV Network (a PSV Eindhoven fan site) reads, ‘And rightly so, we come to the football! Fuck Wifi!’ (PSV Network, 2014). Similar sentiments are evident in the United Kingdom. A discussion about the protest that appeared on the fan message boards for English Premier League club, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (FC), prompted the following response, ‘There is no place for stadium wide WiFi at football stadiums. Want internet access outside of the home? Then fuck off to Starbucks and leave the football to the fans’ (Spurs Community, 2014). The Guardian newspaper’s football Facebook page featured a series of comments in response to the actions of PSV Eindhoven fans. Most expressed support, including, ‘A football stadium is more like home, for football fans, who the fuck needs fucking wifi at a FB [football] stadium’ (Facebook, 2014). Comments like this one sit adjacent to others conveying more benign opinions, although these were also expressed in terms of fan dedication: ‘well, on the other hand, I have my season ticket for my club and I regularly use [my] phone to check starting 11 of my club and opponent and check results on other stadiums in the league’ (Facebook, 2014).

The responses of football fans provided fodder for provocative comment pieces published in the tabloid press. The London Evening Standard published an article under the headline of ‘Forget emails and Facebook statuses … just watch the game’:

PSV Eindhoven’s fans hate the internet. Good. Not long ago the club introduced wi-fi at the Philips Stadion, thinking that the atmosphere for home ties might be improved if more supporters could stare gormlessly at their phones, checking their emails, looking at cat gifs and filming the football so they could put it on the internet. But the club were wrong … There is nothing quite so depressingly infantile as a crowd of adult football supporters all filming and live-tweeting a match on their poxy little iPhone screens, gawping not at the game itself but at their own self-important, I-was-there online memorial to it. (Jones, 2014)

This statement is a performative renunciation of mobile media and its diffusion throughout live football. It is also a backhanded acknowledgment that this social terrain is noticeably uneven, ranging from those who stay proudly disconnected through to those who take photographs and access Twitter. For example, a reported 17,000 of the 34,000 fans in Philips Stadion on the day of the match used the Wi-Fi network (Campbell, 2014). The other 17,000 spectators relied on mobile spectrum to use their smartphone, left it on but untouched in their pocket or bag, switched it off during the game, or did not carry a device. This was also more than a matter of individual choice for some fans, leading to coordinated protest action in support of a shared match-day experience that openly rejects Wi-Fi connectivity. The variation at work here suggests that the mediatization of stadium sports is an undetermined phenomenon, despite the continuing encroachment of mobile media technologies and telecommunications infrastructures.

The second feature of the protest links mediatization to the broader institutional operation and cultural framing of sport as a commodity in the global media and telecommunications industries. As Lawrence Wenner (2014) identifies, this framing hails sports fans almost exclusively in terms of their identity as consumers, thereby devaluing citizen identities and excluding those unable to afford access to media sport spectacles. Calls by PSV Eindhoven fans to disconnect from the Philips Stadion Wi-Fi network reflect growing complaints about the ‘gentrification’ of their team’s home ground, which extends to a ban on standing during the game (Guardian Staff, 2014; Stadium DB.com , 2014). It is a stance that extends to calls to dismantle the Wi-Fi network by some supporters (Rosenblatt, 2014). Spectators worldwide presently face rising ticket prices, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC, 2011: 5). The expense of upgrading stadiums and installing multi-million dollar Wi-Fi networks contributes to increased costs on match-day, including parking, entry, food, drink, and merchandise. Smartphones are valued mechanisms in the distribution of frequent advertising and sponsor messages in these environments: ‘… [S]ocial media is increasingly the engine driving interaction, hype and interest. Engagement through Internet and mobile phones can help to bring people to live matches and encourage them to purchase merchandise’ (PwC, 2011: 23). User data analytics sourced from spectators shape further appeals to spend money. According to the manager of a major stadium that features a Wi-Fi network, these activities require careful thought as they risk bombarding ‘customers’ via their smartphones:

… [O]ur philosophy is what’s the experience like for the customer. Maybe we don’t want to scream to everyone to come on to our mobile app. But if you’re coming on to our Wi-Fi for free … we give thought to the way that we can monetize or get the data … But we try and limit bombardment and annoying and irritating our fans wherever we can. We won’t always get it right, but we’re very conscious that if we’re screeching at you, you’re not going to come back or you’re just going to tune out. (Interview with author, 30 September 2014)

This explanation articulates a range of contested responses to the operation of a Wi-Fi network and smartphone use during live sports, including distracted fan attention (‘annoying and irritating’), non-use (‘not going to come back’), and disconnection (‘tune out’). Similar to events in the Netherlands – minus the demonstration – these issues revolve around the dilution of live sports experiences by mobile media in hyper-commodified sporting spaces.

A fascinating side-note to the match between PSV Eindhoven and NAC Breda occurred just 4 days after its completion. Having announced a series of comeback shows in London, musician and singer-songwriter Kate Bush called on those purchasing tickets to refrain from using smartphones, tablets, and cameras during her performances. Possibly connected to preventing circulation of footage on sites such as YouTube, her request was nonetheless couched in terms of maximizing connection with her audience:

It would mean a great deal to me if you would please refrain from taking photos or filming during the shows. I very much want to have contact with you as an audience, not with iPhones, iPads or cameras. I know it’s a lot to ask but it would allow us to all share in the experience together. (Bush, n.d.)

This appeal distinguishes between non-mediatized and mediatized modes of contact and sharing, with the shared affective experience of a concert valued over the sharing of media content by attendees with their distant contacts. News of Bush’s request recalled complaints by other musicians such as Johnny Marr and The Yeahs, Yeahs, Yeahs about mobile media practices during live shows and triggered debate about what it is to feel completely ‘in the moment’ during a concert (Ellis-Petersen, 2014). As the following section shows, such discussions tap into anxieties about how to generate meaningful shared social experiences when smartphones offer increasing levels of personalized media production, use, and consumption (Hjorth, 2012).

‘People Come To Forget They Have A Phone’: Mark Cuban and basketball

Celebrity owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, wants people to put away their phones during live basketball matches (Boudway, 2014). He has intermittently prosecuted his case for the non-use of mobile devices since 2010 on his personal blog, Blog Maverick, and during interviews for national news and sports media outlets. In keeping with Cuban’s bombastic performances on the US reality television show, Shark Tank, these opinions are expressed directly and provoke reaction in online forums. Despite occupying a very different position in the hierarchy of media sport, Cuban’s arguments overlap with many of the concerns expressed by football fans in the Philips Stadion case discussed above. He believes that smartphones are a source of spectator distraction, undermining the uniqueness of fan experiences, emotional connections, and game atmosphere (Cuban, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014). Cuban has a particular concern with the creation and protection of treasured sporting memories built from shared moments. The outcome is an idealization of live arena basketball and a determination to have fans ‘put down’ their smartphones in order to mark NBA games as ‘communal’ spaces and moments (USA Today, n.d.; Riches, 2013; Sports Geek, 2014). These arguments also feature apparent contradictions. Cuban has amassed a personal fortune as a technology, film, and television entrepreneur, and contributes energetically to the mediatization of professional basketball: ‘The mavs [Mavericks] use as much if not more tech than anyone’ (Cuban, 2014). The Dallas Mavericks’ 21,000-seat arena, the American Airlines Center, features a Wi-Fi network, although Cuban wants to ‘do everything possible to give people no reason to use it’ (quoted in Kapustka, 2014b). The Mavericks use real-time data analytics to assess player and team performance, and are the first NBA team to introduce 360-degree replay technology in 5K-resolution on their court’s overhead scoreboard. Cuban personifies corporate media power and operates a digital technology-rich professional sports franchise, but chooses to contest media logics when it comes to smartphone use during games.

Cuban’s advocacy for the non-use of mobile devices and disconnection from readily available Wi-Fi networks involves a combination of business acumen and a romanticized view of live sports. His commercial rationale stems from the knowledge that the successful presentation of live sports involves managing the relationship between screens, including television, tablet, smartphone, and scoreboard screens (Hutchins and Rowe, 2012: 76). The simultaneous distribution of game related content across multiple screens produces complementary, contending, and fractured forms of fan attention. Corresponding with sports industry trends, Cuban knows that live arena games are competing directly with the ‘at-home experience’ where people can watch games on large-screen, high-definition broadcast television in the comfort of their living room (PwC, 2013: 3). Smartphone screens cannot compete with television for size, picture, or sound quality, meaning that special efforts must be made to draw spectator attention away from their mobile devices:

There is a huge value to everyone collectively holding their breath during a replay … You lose that if people are looking down at their handhelds … Even worse, if you are afraid of HDTV [high-definition television], why in the world would you try to replicate an experience that you can’t possibly improve on using a phone, iPad or hand held device? I would be very concerned that someone is going to decide that it’s just easier to stay home to get all the video they want. The fan experience is about looking up, not looking down. If you let them look down, they might as well stay at home, the screen is always going to be better there. (Cuban, 2010)

In Cuban’s thinking, the experience of live basketball also dovetails with a counter-intuitive need that many people have – a reason not to use their smartphone. The ubiquity of mobile media devices throughout social space, and their constant call on people’s attention, connects with a desire to take a break from their use. He claims that NBA games offer a context in which it is permissible for spectators to put down their phone and direct attention elsewhere: ‘You go places so you can just stop staring at your phone and we want a Mav[ericks] game to be getting away from all that, as opposed to being just one more place to use your phone’ (Sports Geek, 2014).

The arguments presented here typify Cuban’s talent for spruiking his business interests and attracting publicity. However, his instrumental motivations are paired with a nostalgic idealization of live sports characterized by shared emotions, moments, memories, and family experiences. His belief in these moments perpetuates a ritual view of sport that sees spectators reliant on each other for the affirmation of communitas (Serazio, 2012). According to Cuban, this cherished collective phenomenon is diminished by smartphone use during games:

People come to games because they want unique experiences … It’s being the 6th man and supporting your team. It’s high-fiving or hugging the person next to you that you don’t know because your team just hit a big shot. Most importantly, it’s the look on the face of your child, or your date, and the everlasting memories that are created from games. Doesn’t everyone remember their first game with a parent? Has anyone in the past 5 years ever supplemented their memory of that event with a [mobile] device mention? (Cuban, 2014)

Cuban presents variations of this case throughout his public statements, exhibiting business sense laced with heavy-handed sentimentality (even likening a basketball game to a ‘great wedding’ in one instance).

Not all NBA owners agree with Cuban’s views and are instead pursuing an accelerating mediatization of the live game. The most prominent of these figures is Vivek Ranadivé, another tech-entrepreneur and leader of the ownership group for the Sacramento Kings. Displaying a similarly prodigious talent to Cuban for self-promotion, Ranadivé claims that basketball is a ‘big data problem’ (Fox Business, 2013) and promotes a techno-utopian vision of ‘NBA 3.0’ (Riches, 2013). His futurist postulations involve a ‘complete rethinking of how fans interact with and follow the game’, including the use of wearable devices such as Google Glass by players in game warm-ups, a dedicated social network for Kings fans, and real-time location tracking of spectators via the team smartphone app in the arena (Boudway, 2014; Riches, 2013). Ranadivé promises that the Kings’ new arena, presently under construction, ‘will be the smartest building on the planet’ with the ability to ‘cater to every whim’ of fans as it ‘checks into’ them (Luery, 2015). He and Cuban are opposed against each other in news coverage about the merits of mobile media use during games. Whereas Cuban treats the smartphone as a ‘wireless leash’ (Qiu, 2007) that holds fans back from a satisfying live arena experience, Ranadivé views this leash as enabling the surveillance and commodification of consumer sentiment during the game: ‘If a fan has a cold pizza, I know it’ (quoted in Boudway, 2014). The argument here is about the degree to which mobile media should infiltrate the social ritual of basketball spectatorship. Cuban’s answer is the temporary suspension of smartphone use during the passage of a game, thereby marking out a shared time and space. Ranadivé is investing in a hyper-mediatized sports experience where engagement with the game is synonymous with mobile media use: ‘I completely reject the notion that a fan looking at his mobile device is not an engaged fan … I want to know play-by-play, I want to know every metric’ (quoted in Boudway, 2014). Unlike the case discussed in the previous section, however, no one is questioning the commodification of sport or the gentrification of arenas, particularly as Ranadivé and Cuban embody and profit from the institutional legitimacy of media processes and power.

Conclusion

The actions of PSV Eindhoven fans and the pronouncements of Mark Cuban reflect anxieties about what it means to live well with media and achieve rewarding social experiences. As popular events, live sports are a setting in which the conflicts and negotiations that flow from these anxieties are observable at a scale transcending quotidian face-to-face interactions. More specifically, the evidence presented from professional football and basketball highlights consequences of ‘the expanding presence of mediatization’ resulting from the diffusion of mobile media devices and telecommunications infrastructures (Miller, 2014: 217). These case studies show that selected groups and individuals contest this expansion openly, and that a range of possible responses exists in addition to acceptance.

Foremost among the responses detailed in this article is the spirited expression of a desire for meaningful social connection with others through mobile media non-use and disconnection (Light, 2014). For selected fans, the sharing of affective sporting experiences is prioritized over access to mobile media content and services. The choice to focus exclusively on watching the game is articulated in terms of a shared investment in the team, event, and/or moment. These expressions are arguably connected to an unease felt by some people about the rapid growth in mobile phone use and wireless connectivity. As Sherry Turkle (2012) identifies, there exists a paradoxical sense of being ‘alone together’ in contemporary society. Mobile users are offered constant connectedness via their phones, but, as a result, ‘rarely have each other’s full attention’ when in each other’s company (p. 280). Social interactions have become ‘pauseable’ as people stop and look down at their mobile screens to check emails, texts, social media updates, and app notifications (p. 161). A disjointed mix of intimacy and isolation actively foregrounds those social moments and spaces where shared and unbroken attention is anticipated and enjoyed. Sports spectatorship stands out in this regard, privileging and idealizing a form of physically proximate togetherness that generates an emotionally charged collective focus. The events, actions, and arguments detailed in this article represent a visible defense of this privilege, asserting that there are limits to how far mobile media should extend into the experience of live games.

Noting the fan protest staged in Philips Stadion, professionals involved in the international marketing and business of sports stadiums are beginning to ask, ‘Is Wi-Fi destroying the fan experience?’ (Xperiology, 2015). That this question is even posed speaks to the contested character of media transformation and responses to mediatization processes. This examination of the non-use of smartphones reveals that such processes are energetically rejected, subject to variation according to cultural and social context, and resisted by unexpected sources, including celebrities whose reputation is based on corporate media enterprise.⁶ The pursuit and valuing of social experiences that exist beyond the reach of media networks are a significant, albeit under-examined component of life in mediatized worlds. These are also phenomena that can be overlooked in media saturated environments such as professional sports where a fast-growing industry fascination with wireless connectivity, mobile media, and new forms of social and media entertainment obscure such lived realities.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Janine Mikosza for her comments on drafts of this article and to the industry informants who generously shared their time and expertise. Thank you also to Alison Anderson for her assistance in the organisation and coding of the interview data.

Funding

The research presented in this article was supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, ‘The Mobile Media Moment: Investigating the Pivotal Role of Sport in Mobile Media Content, Markets and Technologies’ (FT130100506, ).

Notes

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