At a historical juncture in which the world of entertainment appears to be constantly evolving, with new forms of spectacle always seemingly on the verge of popping up out of nowhere, one might wonder whether the peculiar entertainment modes of wrestling could also be applied to other forms of sport, even the more traditional ones, thus revolutionising once and for all the world of sporting competitions and forging a hybrid entertainment genre that mixes spectacle and action, unpredictability and dynamism, thus satisfying the tastes of an audience that is increasingly eager for exciting spectacles to be consumed in the comfort of their own homes, in front of their television screens, or through the new functionalities offered by the latest generation of smartphones and tablets. To understand exactly in which direction the entertainment of the future will go, one could venture a parallel with the functioning of algorithms on the internet and social media.
A peculiar functioning
These content regulators, which decide almost autonomously what to show to a given person, or what content should be included among the first search results, are not based on the quality of the content to be shown, but on compliance with certain rules that privilege other characteristics, other peculiarities, often far removed from what is commonly defined as ‘quality content’. The algorithms that regulate the functioning of Google, for instance, might decide to show before all others a content or an Internet page that has had more interactions, more shares, or in any case to reward a given website that contains a certain number of links to authoritative sites. These are therefore quantitative, not qualitative criteria, which take into account above all the concrete reactions and tastes of the public that interacts with them.
The tastes of the public
In this sense, the opinion of the public is of fundamental importance in order to identify those pages and websites that will appear before all others. To be successful on the Internet, in short, the objective quality of a content counts for almost nothing anymore. What matters is that the content is produced in a certain way, following precise rules, and that there are references within it to portals or sites that are already ranked very high. This specific attention to the tastes of the public has not only been noticed on the Internet: revolutionary ideas based on quantitative criteria, on the amount of attention they are able to attract, are also beginning to circulate in sport. One only has to think of the (for the time being faded) idea of the Super League, an elitist competition between the world’s biggest football clubs, a sort of European NBA, which would only include the so-called big matches between the continent’s strongest and most renowned teams, which are also those that would inevitably attract a greater number of interested spectators. The project has been temporarily shelved, but it is not certain that something equally revolutionary might not present itself in the future. If the public begins to express interest in hybrid forms of entertainment, such as wrestling, someone will start working on putting together a football league or a basketball league based solely on spectacle, as if they were real television shows, with a script, a beginning and an end already predetermined.
People’s opinions and tastes, after all, are completely unpredictable, and one can never say with certainty what they will lead to in the future. In the (for the moment remote) event that people’s tastes change radically, we could find ourselves in front of hybrid spectacles between sport and cinema, in which the sporting competition becomes fictitious, and in which every development is decided in advance, also according to the expectations and tastes of an increasingly demanding public. It does not seem like such a far-off scenario, if one looks at other hybrid forms of entertainment that are already consolidated: just think of online betting, an ever-expanding universe that has for some time now begun to offer revolutionary game modes that allow players to place their sports bets in real time, thus creating a new genre of online entertainment based on a deep immersion in the reality of sport. In this way, the portal has created a way to elevate the quality of participation in sporting events to a new level of evolution. The site also offers valuable guides and helpful reviews to find the most reliable online sports betting sites, including those dedicated to horse racing.
Even in the days of the internet and social media, the avenues of entertainment are truly endless.
