Last updated on November 22, 2022
The last ‘regular’ day in Las Vegas, Nevada was Friday, March 13, 2020. That weekend, Governor Steve Sisolak closed Las Vegas for an indefinite amount of time. The Strip was empty, streets were silent, and sport stadiums were closed. Here in Vegas, we have multiple sports teams. Some of the most commonly known teams are the Las Vegas Golden Knights for hockey, the Las Vegas Lights FC for soccer, and our newest team, the Las Vegas Raiders for football.
With Covid-19 going around, almost all sports leagues of all kinds of sports postponed their season for an unknown time: it’s hard to tell when the pandemic will subside. What did that mean for athletes? Like most of us, professional athletes of all sports kept training in their homes, regardless of the season getting cancelled. The reason is because there was no way to tell when the leagues would open back up, so taking an extended break would be like playing with fire: risky. Moreover, some athletes got more involved with videogames, while others, like our Golden Knights, got closer with their families, and helped their fans stay fit during quarantine. As the days went by, jokes and memes went around the internet basically saying that people in the same household are getting bored of each other. All their favorite shows have been watched, games have been played repeatedly, and sports games are still postponed. Finally, what seemed like a never ending amount of time, sports were back open to watch again, but this time they were different.
Excited to watch games again, sports fans were not allowed to go to the stadiums. In other words, teams played against each other with no audience cheering them on. This opened the door to positives and negatives. The positives were that the viewers could hear everything the players were saying. However, they could also hear all the cuss words and insults they said to each other in a heated moment. To solve this problem, artificial crowd noise had been implemented for the viewers to get the full experience of the game. Some people argue that a real audience makes the game, while others argue that the fans aren’t essential to the game.
What can we expect in Vegas? We can continue to expect what we have been seeing with Golden Knights games: no crowd, but artificial, crowd noise. We can expect the exact same with the FC Lights games and their upcoming games. With regards to our Raiders, the new stadium is mostly finished. Unfortunately, their preseason games have been canceled, and their next game is on September 13 against the Carolina Panthers. All things considered, we should be grateful that we have something to watch again.
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