If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
The old thought experiment is predicated on the notion that sound requires perception, not just airwaves, so no perception, no sound.
That seems to be the thinking behind those bemoaning the prospect of spectator-less spectator sports. What meaning will they have without those who provide the gate, the soundtrack, the inspo, the raison d'être? The 2014 US Open champ Marin Čilić said a spectator-less Open might as well be called practice.
“it’s always going to be… in the years to come, ‘Oh, you know that guy won the US Open in 2020 without the fans,’ said Cilic, who has joined Novak Djokovic’s Adria charity tour of the Balkans — along with Borna Coric, Grigor Dimitrov, Dominic Thiem and Alexander Zverev — June 13 through July 5 as regional tuneups get underway for the resumption of the tennis season. The mini tour may or may not have spectators, depending on the restrictions in the four Balkan locales that include Djokovic’s native Belgrade and Montenegro.
I think, however, there will be no need for asterisks regarding any lack of spectators at the Open. Here it’s important to consider the roles of the player, the fan and their actual relationship. First, the player of any sport plays primarily for himself. Oh, you might be able to become a good or even a great player playing because your father wanted you to, or your mother or because a sibling couldn’t, but will you be a happy one? The amount of effort to sustain being an elite athlete is such that no one can do it unless he really wants it badly for himself.
So the athlete — no matter how selfless — has to play in large part for himself. He doesn’t need an audience to do that. For every athlete who feeds off the crowd as a kind of showman, there are those who play better without one, which is also true of performing artists. A spectator-less Open will benefit the latter, but then the former have long had an advantage so consider it an evening of the score, or deuce.
Now consider the fan, who is different from a spectator. The spectator is an opportunist at an event. He may take a rooting interest for the moment or he may be an impartial observer. He may become a fan or an aficionado. But mainly he’s there because he had the opportunity to be there. Such a participant is unlikely to fire any player.
In contrast, the fan is like a lover falls for a player for reasons he knows not of. He may have seen him in person. He may not have seen him except on TV. Either way, he doesn’t know the player. All he knows is that something about the way the player plays, something about him touches his soul. That’s true whether he’s in the stands or miles from an arena.
So what function does the in-person fan/spectator serve? Apart from the obvious monetary one — and that is no small consideration, albeit one that could be offset in part by TV advertising revenues — the fan provides the soundtrack, the barometer of play. You can tell the rhythm of a match — who’s got the big mo — by the way the crowd reacts. There’s a certain thrill to that.
But there’s also something magical about sitting in a near-empty arena watching a sport distilled to its essence — the people playing it.
The question about whether or not the witness-less falling tree making a sound is, of course, the wrong question. It’s not about whether it makes a sound but about whether anyone cares since there’s no one there to perceive it.
There will, however, be plenty of fans in our sports-starved coronavirus culture who’ll be perceiving their favorite players from the safe perches of their homes. Will they care if there are no spectators in the stands? I doubt it.