Panthers Tracks: Virtual fans? No fans? Expect a new experience watching Carolina on TV
The 2020 football season is going to be one we’ve never seen before.
Key players may test positive for the coronavirus, and will have sit out for at least a week; sometimes longer. And there will be few, if any, fans in the stadium.
The Jacksonville Jaguars were the first team to announce that they would hold only 25 percent of fans in the stands. The Los Angeles Rams informed their fans that there would be few or no fans in the stadium.
And the Panthers emailed their Personal Seat License owners last week that only a reduced number of PSL owners would be granted seats. There will be no single-game tickets.
That could change depending on the Panthers’ future discussions with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as Mecklenburg County’s health department. North Carolina is in Phase 2 of its reopening plan because the number of lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to rise.
If the number of coronavirus cases continue to spiral out of control and reach, say. Florida’s numbers, the state may force the Panthers to play in an empty stadium. NASCAR is doing it. Major League Baseball is doing it. So is the NBA.
For now, it appears some fans will be in the stands, but the gameday experience for the Panthers will be drastically different from the close-to-full Bank of America Stadium we’re used to seeing on Sundays. It’ll be quieter. Momentum shifts that rally from crowd noise won’t be there. At least, not for the players to hear.
Major League Baseball’s restart and “spring training” have already shown this.
Tuesday, the Atlanta Braves played the Miami Marlins in an exhibition. The game was tied 9-9 in the ninth inning when Matt Adams hit a walk-off home run for the Braves.
In a normal circumstance, the crowd would have been on their feet. Cheers would have been deafening. Players would celebrate.
But the only sound was fake cheering on the PA system which echoed more like a golf clap.
FOX has said it will experiment with virtual fans at baseball games, beginning with this weekend’s national broadcast. It’s unclear whether the network will do the same for football games.
The viewer experience won’t be the same.
— Jonathan Alexander
Required reading
+ Panthers to have ‘reduced seating’ at games this fall, team tells PSL owners
+ Panthers, other NFL players want coronavirus answers before they start training camp
