More cameras, more microphones… the debate between spectacle and privacy opens: "It has become a matter of selling morbidity"

The final of the last US Open ends and the defeated, Aryna Sabalenka, congratulates the new champion, Coco Gauff, leaves the court with elegance, maintains her manners in the hallways, reaches the locker room and there, with the door closed, she transforms and breaks his racket with rage, angry, unleashed. She thinks she's already alone, but no.. We are all watching it. «Those images should not have come to light. “It's a private moment in an empty locker room,” says Judy Murray, former tennis player and former coach of her sons Jamie and Andy Murray.

The Athletic-Real Madrid match on the first day of the League is about to begin and the local team players form a group in their locker room so that the captain, Iker Muniain, can pray the Lord's Prayer.. The ritual comes from afar and is broadcast for the first time. Those present, it seems, do not know that they are live. «The locker room is something personal, something private, something for us. You can be praying and you don't want anyone to find out. We players have pet peeves that we don't want to come to light.. I don't like it, I feel uncomfortable,” says the team's and Spain's goalkeeper, Unai Simón.

These are two examples, but there are many, more and more. Where is the limit? In pursuit of the spectacle, cameras and microphones are invading spaces around sport that were until now inaccessible – changing rooms, benches, call cameras, service cars… – and multiple protagonists have already shown their discomfort.. Last November, Sky Sport Italia even showed Juventus goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny naked in the preview of a match and he later appealed to his rights.. Entertainment vs. privacy. A growing debate that goes beyond modesty and that, according to the protagonists, has a long history. In some ways it is changing the sport.

«In my opinion, it affects performance. I have never agreed with there being cameras during time-outs, but putting them in the locker room seems horrifying to me.. The communication between a coach and his players changes, everyone's way of behaving changes, everything is more artificial, more tense, everything is different,” argues Jota Cuspinera, former coach of Fuenlabrada, Zaragoza or Estudiantes, who remembers the beginning of the controversy in basketball.

“That 'Put the microphone in there!'”

«When they started recording the timeouts they assured us that it was to better explain the game and almost all the coaches accepted.. Aíto García Reneses, for example, already said no, that he would pay the fines if necessary, but that he did not want to be recorded. He was right. With that mythical 'Put the microphone in there!' “We already saw from Ramón Trecet that what mattered was not the game, it was the morbidity,” argues Cuspinera, who remembers when cameras began to enter the locker rooms and his players decided, as a protest, to receive them “naked.”. «By the fifth game the cameras were already waiting outside. The locker room is our living room or, rather, our bathroom. No stranger should enter the bathroom with you without consent.. Furthermore, what does it do to record a player who has just lost and is sunk? “We have gone from selling sports to selling pure morbidity,” Cuspinera proclaims.

The multiplication of images of athletes before and after their games, in training or even at home with their families is the response to the dominant paradigm a few years ago.. From the times when the fans could attend training and chat with the stars – football, tennis, motorcycling… – they became secretive and the link was broken.. The solution was to make the proximity profitable: now by paying you can witness interiors, once again feel the athletes as close. The international success of documentaries such as Drive to Survive or Sunderland 'Til I Die is an example; In Spain, the best example is the popularity of Movistar after its The least expected day.

«They are two different paths. In documentaries we can edit the images, direct ones are something else.. There it is more difficult to find the balance,” explains Pablo Ordorica, marketing director of Movistar.. «Young people don't want an open plan, they want to be in the action. Soon we will see an on-board camera in the directors' cars and we will hear what they say to their cyclists through the live earpieces.. It makes sense, but it will surely change communications. Furthermore, this loss of privacy must compensate the teams financially,” says Ordorica and he is right.. In the last Tour de France, the organization already wanted to emit the sound of the earpieces as if they were Formula 1 radios and several teams – including Movistar – refused because the reward did not reach 1,000 euros.. Real Madrid voted against the entry of cameras into the locker rooms because, although the League promised that it will allocate a portion of the television rights to it, it has not yet been defined how the distribution will be.. What if it's really not worth it?

“There will be legal conflict”

Athletes sell their image rights to their teams, to competitions, to television stations and to date there have never been any official protests.. But in the not too distant future, perhaps someone will come to the conclusion that, in the signed contract, it was not included in the locker room, for example.. And a complaint may arise for violation of the right to privacy.. “There is no jurisprudence on the matter, but I believe there will be,” says José Domingo Monforte, a lawyer specializing in Sports Law.

«The right to honor, privacy and image has constitutional rank, is personal, individual and incontrovertible. For someone to violate it there must be express consent and the scope of that consent has never been assessed. Contracts for the transfer of rights are usually general. It's one thing to allow them to film me playing and another thing to be naked in the locker room. “When an athlete understands that his honor has been compromised, there will be a legal conflict,” the lawyer concludes about the open debate. Entertainment vs. privacy. Where is the limit?