From Wimbledon to VAR, is technology making sport less dramatic?

“The drama of the player screaming and challenging him, of the audience watching the screen and waiting for an eagle eye to make a decision, all that drama is now lost.”

David Bayliss describes a scene he saw happen many times as a Wimbledon line judge – one he will never witness again.

As with many other sports that have embraced technology, so has the All England Club Waving goodbye to human line judges As of next summer, after 147 years, in the name of “utmost precision.”

But does this run the risk of diminishing the drama that Bayliss fondly remembers being involved in – and which many of us love to watch?

“It’s sad that we won’t be back as line judges,” he says. “The game has evolved, but never say never.”

He served as a line judge and umpire at Wimbledon for 22 years. It happened again when Roger Federer won his first Grand Slam tournament in 2003. He jokes that being hit with a ball at more than 100 miles per hour is “extremely painful.”

While he’s sad to see the referees go, he says it’s hard to argue with logic.

“Basically, we have a human and technology calling the same line. An electronic line call can override the human eye. So, why do we need a line judge to make a call at all?”

Of course, even before Wimbledon was announced This week, technology played a big role in the tournament with Hawk-Eye, a ball tracking system, and organizers are following the model set by others.

The ATP Tour was announced last year The human line judge will be replaced by an electronic system from 2025. The US Open and Australian Open have also abolished this system. The French Open will be the only one The grand tournament was left with the human line referees.

as BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller explainedGamers will intermittently complain about connecting over electronic lines, but there has been a consensus for some time that the technology is now more accurate and consistent than humans.

Mr Baylis acknowledges that there is a “high degree of trust in communicating over the electronic line”.

“The only frustration a player can show is not winning the point,” he points out.

Whether the technology works or not is one thing, but whether it’s worth it is another.

Dr Anna Fitzpatrick, who played at Wimbledon between 2007 and 2013, said: “The first feeling I felt when hearing the news about the Wimbledon referees was sadness.”

“The human element in sport is one of the things that attracts us to it,” the lecturer in sports performance and analysis at Loughborough University told the BBC.

While she realizes that technology can improve athletes’ performance, she hopes we will always keep it in check.

Of course, tennis is not alone in embracing technology.

Cricket is another sport in which it plays a big role, and according to Dr Tom Webb, an expert in sports refereeing at Coventry University, it is led by broadcasters.

He says that once television coverage showed sporting moments in a way that the referee could not see, it led to calls to change the game.

“I think we need to be careful,” he told the BBC.

In particular, he says, we need to think carefully about which aspects of human decision-making are automated.

In football, goal-line technology has been accepted, he says, because, like electronic phone calls in tennis, it is a measurement – ​​it’s either a goal or it’s not.

However, many people are frustrated with the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system, where decisions take a long time and fans in the stadium are unaware of what is happening.

He adds: “The problem with VAR technology is that it does not necessarily depend on how accurate the technology is. It still depends on individual judgment and subjectivity, and how the laws of the game are interpreted.”

Naturally, there is a temptation to think of technology as something new in sports.

Anything but that, according to Professor Steve Huck of Sheffield Hallam University, who says the sport has always evolved with the innovations of the time, with the Greeks even adapting the sprint in the ancient Olympics.

“Since the beginning of the sport, it’s been great, but we also wanted it to be fair.

“This is what these technologies are about. This is the trick we have to do right.”

Technology continues to add to the landscape of sports – think of the 360-degree photography used to illustrate Dramatic conclusion To the men’s 100-meter final at this summer’s Olympics.

While it is true that some traditional jobs, such as judge executives, may be disappearing, technology is also fueling the creation of other jobs – especially when it comes to data.

Take, for example, the Opta sports analysis system, which allows both athletes and fans to receive streams of data to measure performance, a process that AI accelerates.

While it may not be quite the same as a tennis player’s emotional outburst in front of a line umpire, its proponents say it allows for a more intense connection of its kind, as people are able to learn more about the sports and players they love.

Of course, the frequent controversies over systems such as VAR provide ample scope for technology to stimulate the heart.

“People love sports because of the drama,” says Patrick Losey, chief scientist at Status Perform, the company behind Opta.

“Technology makes it somewhat stronger.”