Author’s Note: The purpose of this is a combination of fun rant, illustration of a general failure mode, that I am going to eventually use this for something in at least some worlds, and the fact that a decent number of workers at Google read my blog and it would be nice if they actually went and fixed some of this or added some of the features.
https://eventvods.com/featured/lol is a website that has solved all of these problems for professional League of Legends. They embed the youtube videos of games in ways that hide the video progress bar and let you select games without seeing the scores. It's always surprised me that nobody has solved these problems for more conventional sports.
Similarly vods.co does the same thing for the Super smash brothers series
It's insane that a community of about 100k-200k people can be better than a multi million fandom corporation with literal billions of dollars in revenue but here we are.
I came here to make a very similar comment, about a different esport. Afreeca TV, the south korean starcraft channel, uploads 3 vods for every single best-of-3 match no matter what. If the match didn't run to 3 games, the third vod will be carefully tailored to look legitimate, with an appropriate thumbnail and length.
It's been this way in the broodwar scene since like, 2005 with gomtv.
I even heard (possibly false) that ATV is trying to get youtube to allow them to hide viewcounts on their videos, so that people can't be spoiled by noticing that the third vod has one hundredth the views as the first two. I don't know if this is true, but it's definitely plausible.
the korean language vods are also padded with advertisements out to absurd lengths, so that the vod length conveys no information either way about the result of the match. They aren't doing this with the english language vods, but I suspect that's because the english localization team is much smaller and the ATV decision-makers are unaware of the issue. I expect it to get corrected soon.
They actually have risen to the truly herculean effort that it takes to *actually not spoil the audience*, rather than just trying to make a defensible effort.
It's genuinely really sad that this is not the case for the supposedly more respectable and legitimate sporting events that the Western world consumes
Zombiegrub adds extra time to her YouTube sports casts (SC2) to avoid time based spoilers. I wonder if YouTube penalizes watch percentage on the videos though (which would disincentivize other people posting sports from doing the same to avoid spoilers).
Rich Eisen frequently discusses how the ticker at the bottom ruined SportsCenter as you already have seen how the game ends so who cares now about the delivery of highlights.
I hate to say it but I sometimes pirate games to get around some of these issues. I also have a TiVo that's sole purpose is to record OTA Steelers games. I've never been able to get around the stupid ticker at the bottom telling me scores of other games when I try to watch multiple games as once though.
I'm also very happy that almost no one in the US cares about MotoGP so I don't really have to worry about spoilers for that. (and to their credit, they created a link you can bookmark for their website that doesn't show race spoilers: https://www.motogp.com/en/videos/spoiler+free)
Rant; I'm still miffed from a spoiler ~40 yrs ago. I'm watching (with my dad) the 1980 Olympic semi-final hockey game between USA and USSR. It's on tape delay on ABC. In between the second and third periods the local news caster appears on the screen. "Stunning upset as USA men's hockey, beat the Russians, details at six." It's hard to express the amount of sports joy that I lost.
I went and rewatched it on youtube today. Thankyou youtube and thankyou Al Michaels. Great call! I'm a Buffalo sports fan and Mike Ramsey is, one of many, all time favs.
This might be your most important post ever. I did put up a literal barrier to hide the scorebar during football season when switching back and forth between 2 games that overlapped. A couple minutes with some cardboard and a utility knife was more than worth the time investment. Keep it on the same shelf as your TV and then flip it up when desired, at least if your TV is on a shelf and no one in the house minds a strip of cardboard laying in front of the TV.
And yes, it is impossible not to be thinking about whether there's enough time for a comeback. I was thrilled that youtube solved the long game or extra innings problem, automatically recording the entire game no matter how long it is (most of the time); it seems like it should be relatively easy also to have an option not to show the total length of game.
Well written article, thank you for it. Your "Bonus Round: Hiding The Score Bar" is my biggest issue. When I am watching NFL games, I am very likely going to go back and watch at least one other game that is being played simultaneously at a later time (or watch the recap on YouTube) and I don't want the score spoiled for me. You mention that you considered putting a physical barrier on your TV to block it, and that is exactly what I have done (for my tablet, which is where I watch most of my sports). I have a folded piece of paper that I put up in front of it that blocks it. It constantly needs adjusting and I would very, very much prefer to not have to do that.
Google Fiber tried to convince me to give up cable. I asked about watching TV and they said "Use YouTube TV!" And without more detail all I could think of was how my son is addicted to YouTube and will literally skip meals and sleep to watch it if we let him.
Is "YouTube TV" a decent way of watching network / broadcast / cable television?
Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The notion that information exists that you explicitly do not want to access is extremely alien to them.
I have a related problem that I don’t even know how to formulate. My favorite team is depressingly bad. Often when I watch their games, they get blown out and I regret spending a few hours watching them. So I ask my wife (who doesn’t watch sports) whether the game will be worth watching. That’s it, just that one bit of information. If she says yes then I watch it. But this changes the experience, because a comeback is no longer as surprising.
Is there a way to avoid depressing games without spoilage? I mean this both in the information theoretical sense as well as the technical, practical sense.
Analogously I would suggest that YouTubeTV should add a random amount of time to the end of each recording. I hate when I fast forward through commercials (I use Hulu Live TV) and see that I’m near the end of the broadcast - even though I don’t know exactly how much time is left, it still lets me know that I’m close.
Huh, what team? I'm a long suffering Buffalo sports fan. (Bills and Sabres) So some people might say the following is because I am a Buffalo fan, but my idea is,
Happiness is a 500 sports team.
If your team loses all the time it sucks, however if you do manage to beat someone... Well Dang that game was a great ride, and you don't want to miss it. So a few great rewards, but much losing... which is expected so it doesn't really hurt that much.
Now if your team wins all the time, it can also be not so great of a ride. When your team wins, well it's absolutely good, but they win all the time and you expect them to win, and well it's not as great of a ride. On the other hand if they lose, well that totally sucks more than when your not so good team loses. So lots of 'shallow' highs and a few deep lows. (My reference for this is the Bills teams of the early 1990's.)
Now if you have a 500 sports team. Well Dang there's an even chance they'll win ever week/game and that's great. And if they do lose, well they are only a 500 sports team, and it doesn't hurt as much as if they were actually a strong favorite to win.
Finally, you can ignore this whole post, because my Bills are expected to be good this year, and I couldn't be more excited. (I'll claim this is excitement for the season and not each game... which I think is a different thing in sports.)
I've had .500 teams, good teams and bad teams. There's some good things about .500 teams but I've enjoyed things more when we were 'in the hunt' for a pennant or championship, or at least a playoff spot. Hope and faith, they call it. And I want that to be meaningful.
Watching the Wisconsin Badgers is interesting because you're worse than your real rivals most of the time, but most games you win, but also college football has the thing where if you're supposed to crush and you have a close one that's kind of a loss. It works.
Yeah I had a parenthetic line in the post, that said 500 was my first guess and 600 might be better. but I cut it out. You totally want your team to get a bit of luck at the end of the season and win it all!
I know little of college athletics, except I was employed at Vanderbilt for several years... and they seem destined to be the perpetual underdog... much losing.
https://eventvods.com/featured/lol is a website that has solved all of these problems for professional League of Legends. They embed the youtube videos of games in ways that hide the video progress bar and let you select games without seeing the scores. It's always surprised me that nobody has solved these problems for more conventional sports.
Similarly vods.co does the same thing for the Super smash brothers series
It's insane that a community of about 100k-200k people can be better than a multi million fandom corporation with literal billions of dollars in revenue but here we are.
Because the people involved actually care about it and have the freedom to fix it.
There might be someone at ESPN that cares about this and is capable of solving it. Probably several someones. They'll never get permission.
How hard would it be to do this for arbitrary YouTube videos?
I came here to make a very similar comment, about a different esport. Afreeca TV, the south korean starcraft channel, uploads 3 vods for every single best-of-3 match no matter what. If the match didn't run to 3 games, the third vod will be carefully tailored to look legitimate, with an appropriate thumbnail and length.
It's been this way in the broodwar scene since like, 2005 with gomtv.
I even heard (possibly false) that ATV is trying to get youtube to allow them to hide viewcounts on their videos, so that people can't be spoiled by noticing that the third vod has one hundredth the views as the first two. I don't know if this is true, but it's definitely plausible.
the korean language vods are also padded with advertisements out to absurd lengths, so that the vod length conveys no information either way about the result of the match. They aren't doing this with the english language vods, but I suspect that's because the english localization team is much smaller and the ATV decision-makers are unaware of the issue. I expect it to get corrected soon.
They actually have risen to the truly herculean effort that it takes to *actually not spoil the audience*, rather than just trying to make a defensible effort.
It's genuinely really sad that this is not the case for the supposedly more respectable and legitimate sporting events that the Western world consumes
Zombiegrub adds extra time to her YouTube sports casts (SC2) to avoid time based spoilers. I wonder if YouTube penalizes watch percentage on the videos though (which would disincentivize other people posting sports from doing the same to avoid spoilers).
Example here: https://youtu.be/Cd_J3NSvmZk?t=3503
Rich Eisen frequently discusses how the ticker at the bottom ruined SportsCenter as you already have seen how the game ends so who cares now about the delivery of highlights.
When I watched sports I'd still want to see the highlights.
I hate to say it but I sometimes pirate games to get around some of these issues. I also have a TiVo that's sole purpose is to record OTA Steelers games. I've never been able to get around the stupid ticker at the bottom telling me scores of other games when I try to watch multiple games as once though.
I'm also very happy that almost no one in the US cares about MotoGP so I don't really have to worry about spoilers for that. (and to their credit, they created a link you can bookmark for their website that doesn't show race spoilers: https://www.motogp.com/en/videos/spoiler+free)
Rant; I'm still miffed from a spoiler ~40 yrs ago. I'm watching (with my dad) the 1980 Olympic semi-final hockey game between USA and USSR. It's on tape delay on ABC. In between the second and third periods the local news caster appears on the screen. "Stunning upset as USA men's hockey, beat the Russians, details at six." It's hard to express the amount of sports joy that I lost.
That might be the actual worst spoiler of all time.
I went and rewatched it on youtube today. Thankyou youtube and thankyou Al Michaels. Great call! I'm a Buffalo sports fan and Mike Ramsey is, one of many, all time favs.
This might be your most important post ever. I did put up a literal barrier to hide the scorebar during football season when switching back and forth between 2 games that overlapped. A couple minutes with some cardboard and a utility knife was more than worth the time investment. Keep it on the same shelf as your TV and then flip it up when desired, at least if your TV is on a shelf and no one in the house minds a strip of cardboard laying in front of the TV.
And yes, it is impossible not to be thinking about whether there's enough time for a comeback. I was thrilled that youtube solved the long game or extra innings problem, automatically recording the entire game no matter how long it is (most of the time); it seems like it should be relatively easy also to have an option not to show the total length of game.
Well written article, thank you for it. Your "Bonus Round: Hiding The Score Bar" is my biggest issue. When I am watching NFL games, I am very likely going to go back and watch at least one other game that is being played simultaneously at a later time (or watch the recap on YouTube) and I don't want the score spoiled for me. You mention that you considered putting a physical barrier on your TV to block it, and that is exactly what I have done (for my tablet, which is where I watch most of my sports). I have a folded piece of paper that I put up in front of it that blocks it. It constantly needs adjusting and I would very, very much prefer to not have to do that.
Google Fiber tried to convince me to give up cable. I asked about watching TV and they said "Use YouTube TV!" And without more detail all I could think of was how my son is addicted to YouTube and will literally skip meals and sleep to watch it if we let him.
Is "YouTube TV" a decent way of watching network / broadcast / cable television?
Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The notion that information exists that you explicitly do not want to access is extremely alien to them.
I have a related problem that I don’t even know how to formulate. My favorite team is depressingly bad. Often when I watch their games, they get blown out and I regret spending a few hours watching them. So I ask my wife (who doesn’t watch sports) whether the game will be worth watching. That’s it, just that one bit of information. If she says yes then I watch it. But this changes the experience, because a comeback is no longer as surprising.
Is there a way to avoid depressing games without spoilage? I mean this both in the information theoretical sense as well as the technical, practical sense.
You could ask your wife to add randomness to her answers.
Nice idea.
Analogously I would suggest that YouTubeTV should add a random amount of time to the end of each recording. I hate when I fast forward through commercials (I use Hulu Live TV) and see that I’m near the end of the broadcast - even though I don’t know exactly how much time is left, it still lets me know that I’m close.
Yes, exactly.
Huh, what team? I'm a long suffering Buffalo sports fan. (Bills and Sabres) So some people might say the following is because I am a Buffalo fan, but my idea is,
Happiness is a 500 sports team.
If your team loses all the time it sucks, however if you do manage to beat someone... Well Dang that game was a great ride, and you don't want to miss it. So a few great rewards, but much losing... which is expected so it doesn't really hurt that much.
Now if your team wins all the time, it can also be not so great of a ride. When your team wins, well it's absolutely good, but they win all the time and you expect them to win, and well it's not as great of a ride. On the other hand if they lose, well that totally sucks more than when your not so good team loses. So lots of 'shallow' highs and a few deep lows. (My reference for this is the Bills teams of the early 1990's.)
Now if you have a 500 sports team. Well Dang there's an even chance they'll win ever week/game and that's great. And if they do lose, well they are only a 500 sports team, and it doesn't hurt as much as if they were actually a strong favorite to win.
Finally, you can ignore this whole post, because my Bills are expected to be good this year, and I couldn't be more excited. (I'll claim this is excitement for the season and not each game... which I think is a different thing in sports.)
I've had .500 teams, good teams and bad teams. There's some good things about .500 teams but I've enjoyed things more when we were 'in the hunt' for a pennant or championship, or at least a playoff spot. Hope and faith, they call it. And I want that to be meaningful.
Watching the Wisconsin Badgers is interesting because you're worse than your real rivals most of the time, but most games you win, but also college football has the thing where if you're supposed to crush and you have a close one that's kind of a loss. It works.
Yeah I had a parenthetic line in the post, that said 500 was my first guess and 600 might be better. but I cut it out. You totally want your team to get a bit of luck at the end of the season and win it all!
I know little of college athletics, except I was employed at Vanderbilt for several years... and they seem destined to be the perpetual underdog... much losing.
Amazing post. If they did this all I would sign up!