Recently the major European football clubs tried unsuccessfully to form a Super League promising to “deliver excitement and drama never before seen in football”. A bank would invest 4 billion dollars, expecting earnings of 5 billion a year from broadcasting rights. Imagine football matches at Netflix, that is why some called it Soccerflix.
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BRIEFING: “Footballers as dancers”, Alkis Raftis, President of International Dance Council at UNESCO, The CID Circular – May 2021
Fans watching football are supporters of a team, they want their team to win, they are there to cheer it. Under this project spectators would focus more on the game itself and less on who wins it. They would not really be tied emotionally to a team, but only look for thrills in the show. Players would be regarded even more as superstars performing for the audience.
This brings in mind dance performances, where there are no winners and losers, no goals to score, no adversaries. People watch mainly dancers in the leading roles, their dexterity and grace, their physical and artistic feats, achieved through long practice and talent.
They enjoy the story, the music, the creativity of the choreographer. Dancers compete with themselves, not with each other.
If footballers are gradually regarded as dancers, why don’t dancers become like footballers? Why don’t they earn astronomical sums? It is because dance performances do not fill stadiums. A theater has 500 seats, a stadium has 50,000. This means a hundred times more money from tickets, plus much more from sponsors, plus even more from TV rights. A footballer gets paid 1000 times more than a dancer.
Why doesn’t dance fill stadiums? Even now, with meagre financing dance offers much more than football, much more than any sport. Imagine dance financed 1000 times more, it would be glorious! It would transform society altogether. Why doesn’t it?
