Place-Based Spectatorship, Toronto Raptors Basketball, and the Jurassic Park Outdoor Watching Area

Background: When the Toronto Raptors competed in the 2019 National Basketball Association playoffs, fans in Toronto participated in a collective spectating experience by watching games in an outdoor space called Jurassic Park. Analysis: This article analyzes how journalists depicted the Jurassic Park watching area as an assemblage of human and non-human matter. In these accounts, bodies and sounds collectively transformed the space into an intimate and emotionally resonant place. Conclusions and implications: These depictions recognize the agency of non-human matter but expose a settler colonial conceptualization of Toronto as a place. They also expose the impermanency of fan-based unity and long-term environmental effects of the waste spectators produce.