A vision for the formal documentation and digitalization of sports commentators’ commentaries

One of the aspects that can fortify the engagement of a viewer or listener of a sports competition is the nature of the sports commentator’s commentary. By providing their thoughts on the actions and performance that viewers are viewing (or listeners are listening to) in real time, sports commentators can enliven a game with their wit, knowledge, personal and professional expertise. In other cases, comments might be irritating, off-putting, excessive, or ill-timed. Independent of the quality of a sports commentator’s comments, we advocate for the formal documentation and digitalization of past, present and future comments, as textual and audio-visual files for use in academic sport communication studies. Although this might be achieved using AI, its limitations need to be considered. Provided that issues related to commentaries’ rights can be resolved, as well as issues related to data access and use, and digital ethics, our proposal would allow for decades-old historical records to be developed and digitized, allowing commentaries to be appreciated, scrutinized, studied, and applied by all stakeholders. Lessons are drawn from the digitization of political commentary. These commentaries would not only serve as a learning training set for students and would-be sports commentators, but also as an audio aid for those with visual impairment. Finally, they could be used for business purposes by broadcasters who would be able to better understand commentaries that increase fan viewership and therefore optimize their return on investment.