I still believe that getting access to sports news and commentary would be one of the sure-fire ways to get more people in the Fediverse. But even after all these years, Reddit, Twitter and Instagram obviously completely dominate the space.

In the US, the NFL is starting in a couple of weeks and the NBA will come back in October. There is also the European Football (Soccer) leagues which started this month, so the thought came to mind again: what could we have that could make the conversation around professional sports more interesting…

  • Specific apps or sites that act as a multi-platform client, to let you follow short clips from Loops, or posts from specific communities or athletes?

  • Real time scores and match threader bots?

  • A (local, user-controlled) recommendation algorithm to manage different news sources?

  • Integration with fantasy leagues?

Maybe I am barking at the wrong tree and/or the majority of people here do not care about it enough, but I would like to hear some ideas to see if there is anything we could do.

  • 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦@rblind.comEnglish
    17·
    9 hours ago

    I think it’s just not having critical mass. I’m still stuck on Reddit for MLB stuff, because they have:

    • gameday threads with box scores that update in realtime
    • active conversation under each gameday thread

    The fediverse just doesn’t have that. Another issue is that inter-server federation slows things down. People are generally refreshing during the commercial breaks, and they want to see everyone’s takes and reactions on that last bad call right now, not in five minutes. In five minutes, the game has moved on. I wonder if building a cool sports app around matrix/xmpp would work better? The play by play feed could update instantly, conversations could be threaded around the plays, etc. It would also be easier to develop some kind of betting bot. Not for real money, of course, but a lot of my friends announce positions and we just track everyone’s win/lose rate in our local circle.

    To the folks saying it’s a demographics issue, not a tooling one: if that was the case, how come the fediverse has attracted a grand total of zero e-sports people? These are tech folks, often more closely aligned with our values than nascar guys for example, but the fediverse hasn’t attracted a single one. That’s what makes me think the problem is that it’s harder to have conversations around real-time data and events on the fediverse.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      LiveThreadBot@sopuli.xyz did provide live scores for me during the FIFA World Cup. I did try to come out and comment on a couple threads. So a score of 1.1 out of 2 on this criteria?

    • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
      10·
      8 hours ago

      I think it’s just not having critical mass.

      It’s definitely a huge part of the issue. Also demographics. The techy slant the Fediverse has does not seem to have a huge overlap with sports. That’s why I can mostly survive on Lemmy when it comes to Formula 1 discussion (although it’s still sparsely populated) while football (soccer) is much less active here.

      how come the fediverse has attracted a grand total of zero e-sports people?

      Hey, I post discussion threads for The International (Dota 2) every year, and usually get some replies and discussions in them too! I would say it’s even somewhat close to the activity level football (soccer) sees, though less than F1.

      But in general I think Esports is just less popular overall than regular sports, so that’s your answer.

      • 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦@rblind.comEnglish
        5·
        8 hours ago

        Edit: autocorrect

        Another problem might be lack of algorithm. No, hear me out! Sure, the Algorithms on big social media lock us all in our little bubbles. But even there, I often have a moment of “Why on earth is that in my recommended?” I personally don’t care about e-sports, so I had absolutely no idea it was even happening anywhere on fedi, and would be unlikely to find out unless I went looking. I wonder how many sports enjoyers are on Lemmy, all assuming “Lemmy isn’t a sports place”, so they never look for sports content, and thus never find any? I enjoy a couple twitch streamers and some VTubers, so occasionally youtube goes “yolo” and throws some kind of e-sports thing my way. I never click it, but I am vaguely aware that DOTA2 is an esports thing that exists and people care about it, and sometimes a big event or tournament or something happens, and I could follow it on YouTube or Twitch if I wanted to. But because Lemmy has no algorithm and I would never subscribe to an e-sports sub myself, I’ll just never encounter it here.

        PS: I’m not old and out of touch. I’m completely blind and out of touch with esports because it intersects in zero ways with anything I can perceive, participate in, or care about. LOL