This paper provides an argument about the ways in which technology is allowing new kinds of access to sports information and sporting experience. Deliberately adopting a broad approach, the paper considers the perspective of the athlete and the spectator. Initially, it is argued how convergence within cyberspace and other digital technologies tends towards providing a more interactive and immersing sporting experience for the spectator. The paper proceeds to articulate ways in which specific kinds of application are providing the means by which more interactive spectating experiences are becoming manifest, focusing upon the possibilities of utilising virtual reality to construct sport. The spectating experience is premised upon providing a mentally engaging, but physically passive encounter of an event. As such, it is suggested that there is somewhat of a paradox in terms of what might be expected to take place between the athlete and the spectator in the context of new technology. With the use of virtual reality, the role of the spectator becomes increasingly integral in the creation of the sporting event. In contrast, the athlete becomes increasingly less situated within the traditional context of competition. Indeed, new technology would appear to be removing the athlete from the limitations of the arena or stadium and to fragment game-play. Such effects, it is argued, are underpinned by the rationale driving performance-based, competitive sport. The ambitions of standardisation being central to such a rationale, necessarily promotes circumstances where athletes compete under increasingly alienating levels of control and determinism. The final section critiques the ends of such tendencies, questioning the benefits of virtual sport and the construction of the inactive-passive spectator. In conclusion, it is argued that the sports arena provides an infinitely wanting context, but one that is very necessary to provide meaning and value to sporting events for spectators. Thus, to dissolve the arena and to abstract sporting competitions from their location would, arguably, render sport impoverished of necessary values, despite them only being able to be experienced by a small proportion of spectators. Moreover, to remove the athlete from the competitive environment would be to misunderstand the salience of sports being located within space and time. Despite the conceptually attractive contexts of virtual reality, it is suggested that something might be amiss from sporting experiences that are constructed entirely within such contexts. In order for the virtual to have meaning, there must exist a non-virtual to which one can relate and be present. Consequently, it is necessary for new information technologies to take into account the dangers of providing immediacy and convenience at the expensive of experiences that require commitment and difficulty.

Key words: Convergent technology; innovative internet application; video/game analysis; digital broadcasting, virtual reality, sport; spectator.