Comment on Why do sports commentators talk soft bullshit?

• drphungky@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This is hilariously false. It’s a major vs minor sport thing and having a population of talent to draw on. Top top top euro soccer announcers are just as amazing as top top top US basketball and football announcers, but as soon as you start watching a handball broadcast there is very little separating it from a rowing broadcast or a darts broadcast or whatever. Sometimes you get a good play by play announcer but color is almost always rough, because it’s insanely hard, not because Americans are bad at it lol.

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  • Baines@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    so you genuinely think there isn’t a styalistic difference in us sports broadcasting versus eu?

    when the big paying sports in the us choose a more drama focused / player driven narrative you think this isn’t by choice?

    or do you think the rest of the world does this too?

    because it’s super noticeable in multiple types of sports and not all of them are smalltime

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    • drphungky@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I absolutely agree that US broadcast networks show more player centric fluff portions than English or Spanish broadcasts (the only other languages I’ve watched). But the original post was more about surface level analysis, and that’s more about audience size and quality of broadcasters IMHO. But yeah, fluff is crazy annoying. I hate US Olympic coverage when I can juxtapose it with BBC.

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  • wjrii@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think what they're saying is that there is a certain tolerance for silence from the Play-by-play and analyst in a football (soccer) broadcast in Europe. Part of it is style, but another part is simply the cadence of the game and the way crowd noise works. American fans tend not to (sonically speaking, and in aggregate) sort of hum and buzz in time with the tension of the play, and frankly most of our sports don't have that same rhythm. Football and baseball in particular would be bad TV if they were announced the way soccer can be, doubly so with the weight of audience expectation. I do think an ice hockey broadcast can sort of sound like a soccer broadcast on meth, though, and thinking about the structure and cadence of play, that makes sense. In some sense, they're the same sport with a different config file. :-)

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    • drphungky@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Well frankly I don’t think the original point was super well made, since folks are talking about entirely different points now, but I’d agree with soccer, and tennis and golf in particular really being comfortable with far more silence in broadcasting - but that’s true on both sides of the pond. But the idea that surface level analysis is unique to American sports coverage is pretty false in my experience. Every sport I know a lot about seems covered at surface level - every sport I don’t know a ton about seems covered great. But I’ll say despite knowing a ton about amfootball the broadcasting is still pretty impressive. The soccer analysis I’ve seen is pretty good too but I’ll admit my depth of knowledge is much shallower. But there is definitely a size of audience and sportscaster population issue as well, because small sports I know a lot about have much worse coverage.

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