While motivations for watching sport vary, there is an undeniable universality to aspects of the viewing experience.
Regrettably, your favourite team cannot participate in every game. This leads to a classic dilemma: your team isn’t playing, but you still want to watch the game, and supporting no one is boring, so, who do you support? Who is worthy of your emotional investment for the next two hours? Often, it’s barely a dilemma. You inevitably support the underdog, hoping against hope they will pull off an upset, praying that by offering your support you’ll witness a miracle. It’s almost inherent.
When Japan defeated the Springboks during the World Cup’s opening weekend, the prevailing reaction was a blend of hysteria and euphoria. It was heralded as the biggest upset in World Cup history, perhaps in rugby history. Some even believe it was the biggest upset in sporting history.
This was never even supposed to be a particularly interesting game. South Africa were supposed to win comfortably. Japan might mount a passionate, though futile, resistance, but South Africa were always meant to be far too good. Except, that didn’t happen.
When it became apparent the game might stray from this preordained script, 30,000 …show more content…
Because underdog success is by definition unexpected, this may increase the excitement of rooting for an underdog. Put simply, people may root for underdogs for the simple reason that unexpected victories are more emotionally satisfying than expected victories; conversely, expected losses are not as hard to take as unexpected
Regrettably, your favourite team cannot participate in every game. This leads to a classic dilemma: your team isn’t playing, but you still want to watch the game, and supporting no one is boring, so, who do you support? Who is worthy of your emotional investment for the next two hours? Often, it’s barely a dilemma. You inevitably support the underdog, hoping against hope they will pull off an upset, praying that by offering your support you’ll witness a miracle. It’s almost inherent.
When Japan defeated the Springboks during the World Cup’s opening weekend, the prevailing reaction was a blend of hysteria and euphoria. It was heralded as the biggest upset in World Cup history, perhaps in rugby history. Some even believe it was the biggest upset in sporting history.
This was never even supposed to be a particularly interesting game. South Africa were supposed to win comfortably. Japan might mount a passionate, though futile, resistance, but South Africa were always meant to be far too good. Except, that didn’t happen.
When it became apparent the game might stray from this preordained script, 30,000 …show more content…
Because underdog success is by definition unexpected, this may increase the excitement of rooting for an underdog. Put simply, people may root for underdogs for the simple reason that unexpected victories are more emotionally satisfying than expected victories; conversely, expected losses are not as hard to take as unexpected