In 2004, I competed in the Athens Paralympics in wheelchair
basketball. I was not a starter. I played mostly in the round robins and the
highlight of my entire Paralympic experience was scoring 7 points in the first
quarter against Mexico, which landed me very briefly on the high scorer board.
My mom has a photo of this high-scorer board. Along with that photo, she also
got bruises up the backs of her legs from tensely pressing her
calves against the seat, and a sore throat from cheering that took weeks to
clear up. A few days later, my family watched me stand on a podium and receive
a bronze medal: an experience that they never could have even dreamed of during
the early years of hospital stays, half-body casts and surgeries.
The game I was in would never have been shown on TV and at
the time webcasting didn’t exist, but my parents were able to share this
moment because they had the means to travel from Canada to Greece. Thousands of
parents, friends and supporters of the athletes who will compete in the London
2012 Paralympic Games this summer, however, do not. Those who cannot afford to
visit an expensive city like London are banking on the fact that the
Paralympics will be webcast. The
good news is that they will: the
U.K. Channel C4 will be webcasting many of the events with a professional feed
complete with colour commentators. Here, however, is the bad news: unless you
live in the U.K., you will never get to see it.
If you ask C4 why they have restricted the feed to a U.K.
audience, they will tell you that they don’t want to interfere with other
countries’ television broadcasting rights. (That sound you hear is thousands of
Paralympians snickering at once). The channel with the broadcasting rights in
your country will provide coverage, they say. This is all well and good if you
live in a sport-mad country like Australia, but less good if you live in
Canada, where CTV (the channel with the Olympic and Paralympic broadcasting
rights) had to be publicly shamed into airing the Vancouver 2010 Paralympics’
Opening Ceremony, even though it took place in their own country. And it’s even
less good if you live in, say, India or Africa. Or if you play a sport that is not one of the Paralympic marquee sports like wheelchair basketball.
Given that most countries will not be offering
up-to-the-minute Paralympic coverage, and given that a webcast is an entirely
different medium than television and its picture quality and reliability do not
compete with television, the true reason the Paralympics are not being webcast
worldwide is a financial one. C4 is so protective of its market that it does not
even release made-for-web videos to a non-U.K. audience. It does not see an incentive to work with
other broadcasters to ensure that the Paralympic Games can be seen. But there
are some very compelling reasons why they should. Here’s why.
Because the people
who need to see Paralympic sports are the ones with the least access to it.
It is not an exaggeration to say that involvement in wheelchair sports (or any Paralympic sport) saves
lives. People who play wheelchair sports at any level have fewer hospital
stays, fewer secondary complications, less depression, more independence and
greater employment. But it’s more than that. During the Paralympics, you will
hear over and over again how an athlete’s involvement in his or her sport was
the number one factor in their adjusting to life after acquiring a disability.
When you hear Paralympians say that they would not be here if not for sport,
this is not an exaggeration in the least. There are thousands of athletes at a
recreational level who could tell you the same story.
These athletes could also tell you that they initially
resisted becoming involved in wheelchair sports because they did not think it
would be competitive. And then, one day, they came out to a wheelchair basketball practice and saw someone sink a long three-pointer, or saw a head-on collision at a wheelchair rugby game, and the spark was lit.
Today, thanks to webcasting technology, that spark can be lit at 3 am in front
of a computer screen. It can be lit in a developing nation where there is not
yet a single sports wheelchair. (During the webcast of the 2010 World
Wheelchair Rugby Championships, 1 in 6 viewers were from countries that did not
have a wheelchair rugby team). Once every four years, people with disabilities
from around the world have a chance to see wheelchair sport played at its very
best and so see what they might also be capable of. Without a webcast, many
will never get this chance.
Because the
Paralympics deserve to be seen. When parasports are shown on TV or reported
about in newspapers, if they are shown at all, they are generally framed by
able-bodied journalists who are not experts. Lacking expertise in the
technicalities of the game, the journalist must resort to the old clichés about
how inspirational the athletes are, about how much they’ve overcome. It’s not
the journalist’s fault that they are not equipped to interpret wheelchair
sports, but the end result is that the sport never gets a chance to speak for
itself. Nor is it the fault of
television executives that there is not the market to put a full wheelchair
basketball gold medal game on during a time when people would conceivably watch
it. Thanks to the webcast, however, people have a chance to see a full game
presented the way it is. The game is not a human-interest story, but a fully
realized sport with its own intricacies, strategies and feats of athleticism. The
viewer can make up his or her own mind.
We’ve seen over and over that when people see wheelchair
sports, they fall in love with them. The professional wheelchair basketball
league in Europe plays to packed crowds. The 2010 World Wheelchair Rugby
Championships made $40,000 in ticket sales. But a barrier exists in wheelchair
sports that able-bodied sports don’t face, which is that before you can get
someone to watch a game, you must get them past the stereotypes they hold about
people with disabilities. A highlight package on the local news will not
overcome this barrier, but a webcast can.
Because the
Paralympic community deserves more. I work for a wheelchair rugby team and
that sport has some of the most dedicated fans around. At every tournament, friends and families and volunteering, fundraising and cheering in the stands. It makes sense. Say that you are a mother who nearly lost a son in a
car accident, who was told by a doctor that he had become a quadriplegic, who
supported him as he re-learned basic life skills, who watched him transform
from someone barely able to sit up in bed to someone representing his country
on a world stage. Imagine you have seen all that and you don’t have the money
to travel to London. Imagine that someone tells you that you will not be able
to see your son competing at his most proud sport moment because some television channel might kind of sort of maybe possibly want to do a 15-minute highlight
package two weeks after the Paralympics are over. You would find that answer
unacceptable, and so do I.
Now say that you are a Paralympic athlete. You moved
thousands of miles away to train with the best coaches. You got up at 5:30 a.m.
for years. You routinely push your body so hard that you throw up. You have
been to 8 countries in the past year just to qualify. And now say someone tells
you that, though the technology exists, your friends and family will not be
able to see you represent your country on the world stage. You would find that
answer unacceptable, and so do I.
Webcasting is a developing technology and it raises many
important questions about broadcasting rights. These must be discussed. But it
also raises new solutions, and none of these solutions involve apathy. C4 could
sell its webfeed to other broadcasting companies. It could sell individual events
30 minutes after the match is over in iTunes. A major sponsor could step in to
cover the cost of the bandwidth and ensure that Paralympic sports can be seen
worldwide. From a purely financial standpoint, it’s in C4’s best interest to
get this right. It seems better to make the webcast available worldwide and
profit off the advertising, than to have Paralympic fans access the
webcast via other means.
The Internet is a global medium and the Paralympics are a
global movement. Both are evolving rapidly and there are many kinks to work out
along the way. But if the Paralympics are about anything, they’re about
refusing to accept the easy answer, about proving someone wrong when they tell
you it can’t be done or it’s not possible. The London 2012 Paralympics deserves
to be seen, and every athlete, supporter and ever stranger should be loud
enough to demand it.
And here’s how.
1)
Ask C4 Paralympics to make the webcast for the
London 2012 Paralympics viewable to people in every country. You can reach them
on Twitter (@C4Paralympics), on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/C4Paralympics)
or via their website (http://www.channel4.com/4viewers/contact-us)
2)
If C4 will not show Paralympic sport outside its market, then the
broadcaster with the official broadcasting rights in each country must do so. In
Canada, this is held by CTV. Contact them on Twitter (@CtvOlympics), Facebook
(Facebook.com/ctvolympics), or via their website (http://www.ctvolympics.ca/contactus.html)
There are 100
days to the Paralympics. Let's make those 100 days count.
