Posted on 09/22/2010 8:08:58 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Virtual fans line the stands to watch the Triestina-Padova match in Trieste, Italy, on Saturday.
Fans of Triestina, a professional soccer team from the northern Italian city of Trieste, were greeted with a surprise Saturday when they arrived at the team's stadium for a game against Padova.
For the first time in four years, nearly every seat in the "Colaussi" stand, which runs along one side of the field and faces the television cameras, appeared to be taken. That stand alone, which holds 10,000 fans, would have nearly doubled the team's average attendance from the previous year.
On television, the crowd looked impressive. But in person, the scene looked a bit strange. The fans were clad in scarves and winter coats—unusual for a balmy September afternoon. They failed to make a sound when the home team ran out on the field and didn't budge when the match ended in a scoreless draw.
Turns out there was a good reason for this: These "fans" were actually two-dimensional images of fans printed on a giant sheet of vinyl and stretched across the empty seats.
"It's a virtual tribune, with virtual fans," says Marco Cernaz, Triestina's general manager. "We'd love to have a full stadium with real supporters. And we've done everything we can to get people through the gates. But the reality is that we can't. This way at least we create a bit of atmosphere, a bit of theater."
If you've ever showed up to a major sporting event only to be bummed out by the sight of empty seats, take heart. The Italians are on the case.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The fans are all registered Democrats, thanks to ACORN
s/off
...and they vote for democrats.
Actually this is a great idea. I’m sure all those fans got to see a very exciting game.
Wait till Obiewankabummer gets hold of this. Hell, they can just send TOTUS to talk to the virtual fans, and he can stay on the golf course.
Probably better for all of us.
I wonder if they had a sound track complete with Vuvuzelas.
Butbutbut, liberals told me that everybody in the world loves soccer so much! There’s no way those seats are ever empty!
Hey, soccer is a great sport, and it is not the bastion of liberalism that you profess. If anything, I suggest you have a talk with baseball and football fans, seeing as how they outnumber soccer fans by quite a large margin in the United States, it would be fair to say, it was their votes that put the Democrats in power.
Soccer is lame. Americans don’t like it or want it. It is shoved down our throats periodically and we are told to like the taste, but no one’s buying.
Further, you are completely wrong/deluded/blinded by your fandom. It’s the left who is/was always droning on and on about how “idiot redneck NASCAR/football fans are just too dumb to get soccer”, just do a quick search of FR for World Cup-era articles a few months back.
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