As Japan’s sports teams prepare a cautious return to action after coronavirus suspensions, a company has developed an app that allows fans to cheer remotely for their teams playing in empty stadiums.
The Nippon Professional Baseball league is scheduled to resume on July 19, with J.League soccer expected to start a couple of weeks later, but no spectators are to be allowed in stadiums amid fears of new COVID-19 infections.
The Remote Cheerer system lets fans watching matches on television in their living rooms cheer, or boo, the players on the pitch via their smartphones, sending either a prerecorded shoutout or their own personal message.
Transmitted by giant loudspeakers, the voices they send would reverberate around the stadium in real time.
Yamaha Corp, which developed the app, tested the system at the 50,000 capacity Shizuoka Stadium ECOPA, which is mainly used for soccer, with two J.League clubs, Jubilo Iwata and Shimizu S-Pulse, taking part in the trial.
Fans watching on television were able to send their support through 58 speakers around the ground.
Viewers decided which speaker would broadcast their cheer.
“At one point during the system field test, I closed my eyes and it felt like the cheering fans were right there in the stadium with me,” stadium official Keisuke Matsubayashi said. “This system had the capability of cheering on players even in a stadium of this size.”
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