I can definitely see that someone who 'lived' his team or code would could support this. That's the fanatic, though. There are many different levels that support can take, from the all-encompassing fan that consumes every bit of information but that would also go down throughout the levels to people that watch every game and follow some 'off-field' occurrences all the way down to people that watch just the games. Do these other levels of fans not deserve some form of consideration?
That's not the fanatic, it's the casual too. The most casual sports fan isn't the one that watches a game every weekend and doesn't follow any news, such a person would be extremely rare, not to mention not really all that casual. The casual sports fan has a team they support and follows them in the news, checks the results and perhaps rarely watches a game. The type of person who needs to watch every game to the point of taping them and watching them later is certainly not a casual sports fan.
There's probably also something in the fact that due to the permeation of an election result into most facets of our life that makes the result of the election the important part of the equation, not the drama in the see-saw of the score. I recognise that there are some people that would find that thrilling, but I'm also certain that the final results per electorate as pure stats, whether real-time or post result, would also be enough to satisfy them.
For a sports fan, sports results permeate most facets of their lives too. As a kid when you make a bunch of friends that follow the same sport, it becomes pretty much impossible to avoid the fallout on Monday at school (or later, at work) when your team loses badly. From very early on, a tradition is established that results get "discussed" (gloated about, downplayed, etc) more or less straight away. Of course, the results are also broadcast on the nightly news, in the paper the next day, and of course in social media. Social media is particularly great because sport is a live event, in real time, and it can be discussed in real time. Millions of people can say "Wow, did you see that!" at the exact same moment. This can not happen in any of the media you're trying to conflate with sport.
To avoid results, they have to avoid talking to friends, avoid the news (and commercial TV altogether since sports results are often in the advertisements for the nights news), and avoid social media. And god help you if you follow a local team, you'll know the result from the car horns.
You never see "In tonight's news,
is Luke's father". You never see movie spoilers on the front page of papers or in TV advertisements. Friends will always ask you if you've seen X movie before discussing the twist. You probably get spoilers in social media from time to time, but I'm with you that we should do as much as we can to stamp these out. I don't think I've personally ever been spoiled on something major through social media.
The difference between how sports results and movie plot points are discussed and disseminated is already established. It's not something we can make a little rule about and expect enforcement, because it's just so different from how it happens in the rest of the world.
Not always. Let's take Japan, for example then. Usually, a game is expected to have about a 70% or more sell-through rate in their first week of shipping, with a precipitous decline after that. This is to an extent that games that are not sold within the first month usually get heavily discounted due to lack of interest and a high used game sellback to stores. Some popular games will have much longer tails but for many games, their first week in the sales charts will be their last and only. As this consumption rate more closely reflects a weekly sporting event, should this mean that game spoilers in Japan would be given the same conditions as sport?
Fun fact: In size, a mote of dust is halfway between the earth and a sub atomic particle. It might be fast for a game, but 70% within a week is nowhere near the consumption rate of sport. Not even slightly close. For it to be analogous to a game, almost everyone would have to be playing it at the exact same time at the exact same speed. It's just not comparable.
Outside of whether sport is a spoil-able or not, the internet sometime could do with not assuming that everyone operates to the same schedule that they do. You don't always have to describe the twist ending, you don't need to always name the character that does or talk about that thing that happened was more awesome because you didn't expect it. Sometimes a little bit of self-moderation and consideration for other can go a long way. I also enjoy not discussing certain things until someone has seen or played something; it's far more enjoyable to talk about reactions and feelings when they've gone in unaware as opposed to asking someone "did you enjoy that bit I told you about?"
Agreed, I don't think anyone in this thread has tried to say "there are no spoilers in sport, and by the way there are also no spoilers for movies or games." Sport is a different beast and the onus is on the viewer to avoid any news channels (GAF included) if they really want to delay their viewing for a particular game. This is not a controversial statement, and one that the sports fans in this thread agree with.