Who Needs The Game? The Audience Becomes The Show

Back in the late 1940’s, before the days of televised sports,  my father designed something called “card stunts” for football games at his (and my) alma mater, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  It involved a whole section of the stadium holding up a series of colored cards in a carefully choreographed show so that the audience on the other side of the stadium saw images and words created by the individual cards.

You may have seen some card stunts in video or photos from major events in China or Korea.

Watching the closing ceremony at the London Olympics reminded me of how big a deal this used to be.  My dad was given an honorary  athletes letter sweater for his work and got to design card stunts for the 1947 Sugar Bowl.

Now The Olympics has updated this entertainment concept by placing a computer controlled LED screen adjacent to every seat in the Olympic Stadium, essentially turning the audience into a high definition video screen.

Oddly enough, the card stunts from the 1949 Sugar Bowl had the same definition.  They just didn’t cost millions of dollars and they made the audience participants rather than observers.

The cost for a last minute ticket to The London closing ceremonies?  $2300.00

The cost of of a 1947 Sugar Bowl Ticket-$3.00

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