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[Men_in_Boxes]

Theory: All of todays most successful modern sports leagues are terrible games to watch. They were all designed 100+ years ago when throwing a ball through a peach basket was considered wild.

Why aren't we seeing interesting spectator sports pop up that are designed with todays knowledge and technology in mind?



I just watched this show. It was scripted garbage. However, it did get me thinking that something interesting could grow out of it. Consider the following idea...

*4 - 6 "teams" are randomly dropped in the wilderness on a 5 mile by 5 mile grid.

*Teams are comprised of 10 players.

*Each team has a prebuilt compound with walls like this...

*Teams must survive by hunting and searching for food, firewood etc...

*Teams are given soft sword like weapons that put paint on opponents they strike. Get hit, you're removed from the game.

*The 4-6 teams must survive + wage war on one another until there's one team left.

*Politics, assassins, warfare, survival etc are all captured using cameramen, positioned cameras, and drones.

*Offseaaons would see teams retain previous seasons players as well as a % of new blood.

Who the **** wouldn't watch this?! Why is no one challenging 100+ year old sports with this survivor, Game of Thrones type stuff? Why are billionaires spending money trying to get the XFL and USFL off the ground when it's all more of the same? Videogames have taken the next step. Why are sports so flat footed?! Happy Sunday y'all!

 

[Dr. Claus]

You really can't figure out why something as complicated and needlessly resource heavy as this wouldn't be popular to watch and isn't being greenlit?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

You really can't figure out why something as complicated and needlessly resource heavy as this wouldn't be popular to watch and isn't being greenlit?

What's resource heavy and complicated? You don't even have to provide food. You wouldn't have to pay most of your players early on either. I guess cameras are expensive? You would need a lot of those.

 

[AJUMP23]

This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Sports are interesting because they require skill and work to be good at them. Football basketball baseball soccer require teamwork and practice.
individual sports require sacrifice and dedication. Sports are interesting and always will be. From running and jumping to shooting a ball throwing a ball running with a ball.

you are not dumb but this thread is a lapse in judgment.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Seems pretty much like Survivor and its popularity basically. Also Naked & Afraid is right up this sort of alley, with rankings across shows/teams/individuals even.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

This is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. Sports are interesting because they require skill and work to be good at them. Football basketball baseball soccer require teamwork and practice.
individual sports require sacrifice and dedication. Sports are interesting and always will be. From running and jumping to shooting a ball throwing a ball running with a ball.

you are not dumb but this thread is a lapse in judgment.

Um, this sport would have everything you listed plus strategic and interpersonal drama you don't get in traditional sports.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Seems pretty much like Survivor and its popularity basically. Also Naked & Afraid is right up this sort of alley, with rankings across shows/teams/individuals even.

Survivor is all politics with stupid weekly games that are mostly luck half the time.

This is a war as sport.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Survivor is all politics with stupid weekly games that are mostly luck half the time.

This is a war as sport.

Then you probably want something more like this batshit craziness, have a go at Shrove Football. No crafting, just balls out -

Played over two days every year since at least 1667, the match involves the entire town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire (population 9,000) aiming to move a specially-designed leather ball that’s a bit bigger than a standard European football through the streets, to one of two goals north and south of the town centre.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Sports are fine.

Only problem I have is some sports (like hockey) have retarded divisions and playoff formats which the league loves to change every 10 years because they can never get it right.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Then you probably want something more like this batshit craziness, have a go at Shrove Football. No crafting, just balls out -

That's an interesting tradition/competition but it's not really close to what I'm describing.

 

[bender]

Your idea isn't easy consumable in 2-3 hours. Everyone would abandon the survival aspects of your sport in favor of quickly trying to find each other and twat opponents with "paint swords".

 

[bitbydeath]

We’re at a time where testosterone is generally viewed as evil.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Your idea isn't easy consumable in 2-3 hours. Everyone would abandon the survival aspects of your sport in favor of quickly trying to find each other and twat opponents with "paint swords".

Of course it would be. These popular shows like Alone and Outlast are condensed into 45 minute episodes. This sport could be that only interesting.

Getting into battle early would also not be advisable as war would quickly diminish your ranks while peaceful teams would maintain full strength while working on resource gathering.

 

[bender]

Of course it would be. These popular shows like Alone and Outlast are condensed into 45 minute episodes. This sport could be that only interesting.

Getting into battle early would also not be advisable as war would quickly diminish your ranks while peaceful teams would maintain full strength while working on resource gathering.

To be successful, sports need to be live and allow for in person spectatorship.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

To be successful, sports need to be live and allow for in person spectatorship.

Says who?

What was always so doesn't always need to be.

You're all tuning into this concept the moment it pops up on Amazon. There is no man alive that wouldn't want to at least check out the pilot.

You could also have gender and age represented on screen so women and old people can connect. Every team needs to have 4 women and at least 1 member older than age 60.

It would be a fascinating watch.

 

[bender]

Says who?

Says the person who wants to challenge traditional, 100 year old sports. You need avenues to gambling, tv rights and merchandising to challenge those sports. Your concept would support none of that.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

Ive seen professional tag played live on tv.

Talk about an exhilarating modern sport

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Says the person who wants to challenge traditional, 100 year old sports. You need avenues to gambling, tv rights and merchandising to challenge those sports. Your concept would support none of that.

Why aren't we allowed to gamble on this sport? Why wouldn't TV companies bid for TV rights? Why wouldn't this sport do merchandizing?

This concept could support everything you just said it couldn't.

 

[bender]

Why aren't we allowed to gamble on this sport? Why wouldn't TV companies bid for TV rights? Why wouldn't this sport do merchandizing?

This concept could support everything you just said it couldn't.

You want to gamble on a sport that could take days, weeks or months to complete a "match" that would need to be pre-recorded and condensed to fit in a television time slot?

 

[Dr. Claus]

What's resource heavy and complicated? You don't even have to provide food. You wouldn't have to pay most of your players early on either. I guess cameras are expensive? You would need a lot of those.

The land? The resources required for bases, survival, crafting? The time to gather said resources? The time and resources to replenish the previous season's used resource?

This seriously is not at all dinging some major bells in your skull?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

You want to gamble on a sport that could take days, weeks or months to complete a "match" that would need to be pre-recorded and condensed to fit in a television time slot?

There's plenty of gambling that requires bettors to wait weeks or months at a time. All sports need to be condensed to fit into a TV time slot.

Again, where's the issue?

The land? The resources required for bases, survival, crafting? The time to gather said resources? The time and resources to replenish the previous season's used resource?

This seriously is not at all dinging some major bells in your skull?

Have you watched any of these survival shows? How expensive do you think it would be to find a 5x5 mile plot of land in North America and build 4 to 6 basic wooden forts on them while 60 people run around larping on them?

This is happening boys. PM me to invest at the ground level. Only need ~$700 bucks to get the National War League up and running for 2 season minimum. Also going to need duct tape and your cell phones to get started.

 

[Lasha]

Why aren't we allowed to gamble on this sport? Why wouldn't TV companies bid for TV rights? Why wouldn't this sport do merchandizing?

This concept could support everything you just said it couldn't.

Regulators wouldn't allow mass gambling. Too many people would know the outcome ahead of time. Producers would need to edit the massive amount of footage for entertainment which gives them way too much influence in affecting odds. Bettors would have zero ability to bet with knowledge since the "sport is too random".

Your concept sounds like a combat oriented edition of a survival reality show. The concept definitely could work as a tv series if the liabilities of dropping women and old people into a fight with men could be settled. It wouldn't be of much interest to a sporting crowd because the variance is too wild and you can't follow it in the same way.

 

[bender]

All sports need to be condensed to fit into a TV time slot.

 

[Durien]

Sports are fine.

Only problem I have is some sports (like hockey) have retarded divisions and playoff formats which the league loves to change every 10 years because they can never get it right.

I love hockey and have been watching for decades. I agree with you about the divisions. I wish they would just leave the divisions alone. If I could make one change, it would be less games. I think in a sport like this they play way too many games. I would change the schedule to 3 games a week max and no back to back games. I think the traveling, especially for northwest teams are grueling. If you look at the Atlantic, they practically cross the street to play games against each other while the west coast practically has to fly everywhere.(Canucks have it a little better now that they play games against Seattle like 2 1/2 hours away).
I think just a schedule change could help limit the injuries. They helped with the icing rules change but the players need to rest but the NHL will not allow a revenue hit by removing games.

 

[jufonuk]

Then you probably want something more like this batshit craziness, have a go at Shrove Football. No crafting, just balls out -

Calico storico



I have no idea of the rules. But they have a massive fight before the match starts. Then it's like a batshit cross between rugby/football (UK) and basketball.

But anytime someone tries to score they get half a point so they have to stop the other players from scoring

 

[Lasha]

I love hockey and have been watching for decades. I agree with you about the divisions. I wish they would just leave the divisions alone. If I could make one change, it would be less games. I think in a sport like this they play way too many games. I would change the schedule to 3 games a week max and no back to back games. I think the traveling, especially for northwest teams are grueling. If you look at the Atlantic, they practically cross the street to play games against each other while the west coast practically has to fly everywhere.(Canucks have it a little better now that they play games against Seattle like 2 1/2 hours away).
I think just a schedule change could help limit the injuries. They helped with the icing rules change but the players need to rest but the NHL will not allow a revenue hit by removing games.

The NHL needs to play fewer games, ditch the OT point, and maybe play one less playoff round. The sport has become so bloated and feels like an experiment in engineered parity. Too many meaningless games. Too many shit teams kept in the hunt by OT point. Weird divisional structure.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Crazico

That is bananas.

 

[jufonuk]

That is bananas.

But strangely addictive. One day I would love to watch a live match.

 

[Nobody_Important]

heh


hand egg cross line. yay.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

Why aren't we seeing interesting spectator sports pop up that are designed with todays knowledge and technology in mind?

As mentioned above, you're describing a TV show, rather than a sport.

Sport is, as I understand it, experiencing a boom. Record breaking revenues and domestic sports (US and UK at least) extending their reach around the world to bring in ever larger audiences and growing revenues from multiple sources and the potential to become the only events that advertisers can use to reach an audience viewing en masse at the same time.

The thing your version of sport misses, is the live event part, which is very important in sport.

Sports do get edited to highlights for TV, but live sport is the most sought after viewing experience, either televised or in person. Not knowing the outcome of what will happen as it unfolds in front of you isn't the same as watching something that happened yesterday, or even over the past week, even if nobody's told you the final score.

You're describing a sort of reality TV that really wouldn't be very interesting without serious editing of what would be presumably hundreds of hours of footage from many cameras making for thousands of hours of footage that packaging as a story would likely be required to turn into compelling TV.
All reality TV stuff that sport doesn't really have.

You don't generally watch sport because you're interested in whether two players are still friends or how being on rival teams despite growing up together makes a game important, or because you know a player is having a tough time and you want them to do well. You'd probably need that sort of thing for your sport because otherwise you'd have endless footage of people focused on the same events over and over. No fighting happening? Great, let's watch two guys repair a fence/cook a meal/sleep/fishing.

Sport tends to focus on a particular athletic skill which is generally very easy to understand and yet is tricky to master. If we look at one part of your idea, fighting with swords, and look at fencing, an already recognised Olympic sport, the problem your version has is that it would doubtlessly end up with a couple of guys trying to smack one another without enough skill for it to seem extraordinary. Fencing is two people squaring up, who've spent years honing their skills to do a very specific thing within a specific framework (rules of the sport). Your thing doesn't really work in the way that sports work.

I'm not a fan of sport, but your idea reads like you're not either, and so I think you've described something you'd like to watch and said it could be a sport. I don't think it could be.

 

[k_trout]

 

[DKehoe]

Part of the reason football is the world’s most popular sport is that it’s so accessible. You can kick a can about and be playing a version of it. So while a kid will probably never be as good as the professionals they see they can imagine themselves as those stars when they play.

What you’re describing is solely a TV product, basically reality TV. People can’t play it recreationally. Maybe people would get into it as something to watch but you’re not going to replicate the same connection as something people grow up playing.

 

[IDKFA]

Watching a group of people pretending to be Machiavelli and hitting eachother with foam swords doesn't sound like an appealing sport. In fact, it doesn't sound like a sport at all.

It sounds like a rejected idea for a reality TV show.

Sorry, OP. I wouldn't be interested in this at all.

Now, replace the foam swords with real, medieval weapons with real risk of death and it might peak my curiosity.

 

[funkygunther]

todays knowledge and technology

*Each team has a prebuilt compound with walls like this...

*Teams must survive by hunting and searching for food, firewood etc...

*Teams are given soft sword like weapons that put paint on opponents they strike. Get hit, you're removed from the game.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Most people who watch sports just want to enjoy a relatively bloodless fight that’s simple to follow and understand.
You average football watcher doesn’t need, nor want, anything more than “ball goes left - ball goes right - ball goes into goal - dopamine+adrenaline rush - reptilian brain sees all those baboons wearing different colors as enemies - all is right with the world” in their Sunday.

While big sports are politics-heavy, all of that happens off the field and is seen in a different light according to whose net the ball goes in during the next match.

 

[Spaceman292]

That would be boring even if they used real weapons

 

[Spaceman292]

Then you probably want something more like this batshit craziness, have a go at Shrove Football. No crafting, just balls out -

That's fucking stupid.

 

[Coconutt]

 

[Maiden Voyage]

I prefer skateboarding over other sports.

 

[Kilau]

Mans really came after my hoops with some Steam early access type survival crafting game show.

 

[Lord Panda]

Replace all the people in those teams, in OP's post, with UFC fighters / Martial artists. Also remove the bases, the hunter gathering, the plastic swords, the drama and all the unnecessary fluff. Just plonk these teams of fighters in a slightly larger Octagon, and last team/person standing wins.

 

[DKehoe]

Replace all the people in those teams, in OP's post, with UFC fighters / Martial artists. Also remove the bases, the hunter gathering, the plastic swords, the drama and all the unnecessary fluff. Just plonk these teams of fighters in a slightly larger Octagon, and last team/person standing wins.

Multi-person MMA has been done a bunch of times now. From what I've seen it basically always comes down to whichever team can eliminate someone first and then the numbers advantage is too much for the other team to overcome.

 

[MHubert]

Theory: All of todays most successful modern sports leagues are terrible games to watch. They were all designed 100+ years ago when throwing a ball through a peach basket was considered wild.

Why aren't we seeing interesting spectator sports pop up that are designed with todays knowledge and technology in mind?



I just watched this show. It was scripted garbage. However, it did get me thinking that something interesting could grow out of it. Consider the following idea...

*4 - 6 "teams" are randomly dropped in the wilderness on a 5 mile by 5 mile grid.

*Teams are comprised of 10 players.

*Each team has a prebuilt compound with walls like this...

*Teams must survive by hunting and searching for food, firewood etc...

*Teams are given soft sword like weapons that put paint on opponents they strike. Get hit, you're removed from the game.

*The 4-6 teams must survive + wage war on one another until there's one team left.

*Politics, assassins, warfare, survival etc are all captured using cameramen, positioned cameras, and drones.

*Offseaaons would see teams retain previous seasons players as well as a % of new blood.

Who the **** wouldn't watch this?! Why is no one challenging 100+ year old sports with this survivor, Game of Thrones type stuff? Why are billionaires spending money trying to get the XFL and USFL off the ground when it's all more of the same? Videogames have taken the next step. Why are sports so flat footed?! Happy Sunday y'all!

I would watch a show like this... But what makes it a sport, and not merely a competition/game show?

 

[AJUMP23]

I am pretty good at putting a ball through a peach basket. I like traditional sports.

 

[daveonezero]

That isn’t a sport or a game.

That is a long extended role play session with cameras documents the events.

It’d be boring without fake drama.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I would watch a show like this... But what makes it a sport, and not merely a competition/game show?

Some definitions of sport...

an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

a contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of rules and compete against each other

an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition

I knew I was right. Some of y'all need to go back to the 4th grade when this was covered. Not a single definition included betting or a live aspect.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

I'll just leave this parody of English sports here

 

[Rival]

You want me to watch a bunch of weirdos run around the forest with wooden swords killing each other with paint? I could just record me and my friends typical weekends.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

That isn’t a sport or a game.

That is a long extended role play session with cameras documents the events.

It’s be boring without fake drama.

Everything is boring without fake drama. You're not watching any sports with pro bono athletes and no trophy on the line.

It's called game design people!

 

[Lasha]

That's fucking stupid.

yeah you want the Georgian OG version: Lelo



Its basically village v village. The less formalized events sometimes see rucks cleared with a horse.