Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry makes a shot at the buzzer. Photo / Getty
Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry makes a shot at the buzzer. Photo / Getty
OPINION:
Joel Kulasingham runs through the big news from the extremely online world of sport.
The tech company changing the way fans watch sport
All sports fans can relate to the FOMO of missing buzzer-beaters, a historic sporting moment or a just a plain old close finish. No more, saysan American company called Buzzer* that's offering fans a new way to watch live sport.
Buzzer, founded by former Twitter employee Bo Han, lets fans pick and choose the sporting moments they want to watch. Fans will get notifications – all personalised via the app – when something they won't want to miss is about to happen (a close game, a superstar athlete putting in a big performance). Then fans decide if they want to pay for it in something of a micro pay-per-view model.
Buzzer is a new sports app based around live viral moments. Photo / Buzzer
Han says the company wants to eliminate the "momentary panic or FOMO" from missing out on these "fleeting" live sporting moments.
"The genesis around Buzzer has been how do we really become that last mile between a leaned-in or would-be interested fan to these live and ephemeral moments in sports?" Han told The Athletic.
It's the next step in the TikTok-ification of sport, except monetised as live sporting bites. The way that it could change – and possibly negatively impact – the way we watch sport, sporting business models and sport as a whole, could be pretty significant if it starts to become more widespread, just like streaming has done with various industries.
But in an era of sport and pop culture over-saturation and dwindling attention spans, an app like this might just have a future.
*Buzzer is only available in the U.S. but is looking to expand internationally.
Israel Adesanya's YouTube channel - reviewed
"Let's go evil Kai," Israel Adesanya yells at his TV screen as he watches his teammate Kai Kara-France beat Askar Askarov, the No 2-ranked UFC flyweight in the world.
The UFC middleweight champion is filming a video for his YouTube channel – a perfectly entertaining and occasionally insightful side project – where he reacts to fights in real time, speaks his mind on a variety of topics, and offers an unfiltered view into the man behind the 'Stylebender'.
In the octagon, Adesanya is one of the best and most skillful fighters on the planet – he moves with the elegance of a ballerina and hits like a truck. On YouTube, he's just a normal, likeable dude who has a lot of opinions on fighting.
An athlete telling their story on social media isn't ground-breaking, but very few put in the care and creativity that Adesanya and his team does into consistently releasing fresh and interesting videos. Simply put, along with being one the biggest sports stars in the world, Adesanya is also making some of the best athlete content on YouTube right now. He's the content champ.
Verdict: Just straight up good content, ya know? Four and a half subscribes out of five.
A 'sports' take on Will Smith's slap (because why not)
The slap was pretty funny - and nothing more. Photo / AP/Microsoft Paint
So A LOT of people saw that Will Smith thing – and everyone seems to have a take. So it is only appropriate that this column churns out another one.
What do the Oscars, Hollywood drama or "assault" have to do with sport, you might ask. Well, it has nothing to do with it. Just like the slap has nothing to do with the free speech debate, or that it's somehow a metaphor for how Trump got elected, despite some of the cursed takes to appear in the Twittersphere.
It's merely two entertainers, who've known each other for decades, getting into an extremely public disagreement – what's a slap shared between friends? As someone who watched it live as it happened, I thought it was nothing more than hilarious – and one of the most awkward and strange things I've seen in a long time. It felt like sports. That is, after all, what makes live TV so appealing: the ever-present chance that things might not go to script.
Chris Rock will be fine. Will Smith will be fine. The Oscars will be fine. No one is getting cancelled, which isn't a real thing anyway. It really isn't that serious.
Anyway, as long as it's established that the slap was just a funny thing that happened, and kinda scary for a split second and definitely not a cool thing to do, but then super funny again, then I think we're all going to be OK. Sit back, grab the popcorn, and just enjoy the memes.
Will Smith slapping Chris Rock to the sound of Simon Jones to Michael Clarke in 2005. pic.twitter.com/57lTBOaMjy
