La Liga's Digital Fans Look Absolutely Insane
By Scott Rogust
Professional sports leagues have slowly began returning to play following the hiatus caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Even though games are commencing across the globe, no fans will be allowed to attend until further notice. We've already seen Bundesliga use cardboard cutouts and the Korean Baseball Organization utilized stuffed animals to fill up the empty seats in stadiums.
But for La Liga soccer, they introduced "digital fans" to occupy the stands during Thursday's match between Sevilla and Real Betis, and they look atrocious.
Here’s a look at La Liga’s virtual fans. Empty seats would look better. Woof. pic.twitter.com/CtpfcYQPuO
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 11, 2020
The year is 2020, but those "fans" look like they came off a PlayStation One or Nintendo 64 from the mid-1990s? Was this seriously the best La Liga could come up with?
In an interview with The Athletic, La Liga's audiovisual director Melcior Soler said that they were working with EA Sports' FIFA team and Norwegian technology specialists Vizrt to create these fans in order to "trick" the human eye into thinking the stadiums are filled. Yeah, believe us when we say that we were far from fooled.
In fact, the virtual fans disappeared during close up shots and video replays!
La Liga started playing today with superimposed fans in the stands.
— Occupy LF (@OccupyLF) June 11, 2020
Looks weird, but much better than empty stands.
Do you agree?? ?pic.twitter.com/zUgBiwT7tt
Yup, not worth it. NBA, we'd like you to seriously reconsider using NBA 2K video game fans to fill up your seats in Walt Disney World if it ends up looking like this disaster.