As professional sports were starting to safely come back this spring, clubs did whatever they could to try and have atmosphere within their venues at home games. The coronavirus pandemic, a once in a century level disaster, meant that spectators could not be allowed in.
Cardboard cut-outs and mannequins were often brought in to fill the seats where fans would usually be. In Taiwan’s CPBL, their top professional baseball league, robots were employed, some could even play the drums! However, one soccer team in South Korea, FC Seoul used sex dolls; albeit inadvertently.
The backlash was severe, and in my opinion rather harsh and unjustified. The sex dolls were fully clothed, in team gear, in the one instance they were used, for a match against Gwangju FC. If it weren’t for observers on social media, they most likely would have never been discovered in the first place.
Obviously, the people who pointed them out, are quite familiar with sex dolls. They probably play free adult sex games in their spare time too. And it would not be any stretch of the imagination to assume that they are into the great sex games on JerkDolls. In other words, these sex toys and sex games shouldn’t be considered so taboo. The moral outrage seems a little hypocritical in this instance.
Then again, if it weren’t for the presence of signs promoting sex dolls, (huge gaffe on FC Seoul’s part here in letting that slip through the cracks), you really couldn’t tell that these were sex dolls to begin with. Still FC Seoul still got hit with a fine of a 100 won. Family friendly material? Absolutely not! Inappropriate for the K League?
Sure, but the club did apologize, saying in a statement:
“The disciplinary committee decided to take heavy disciplinary action considering the graveness of the incident, caused by the ‘real doll’, that has greatly insulted and hurt female and family fans and to prevent similar incidents going forward.”
On top of that he owners of the stadium are in the midst of investigating the incident, and this could see the club expelled from the venue.
Again, seems a bit Draconian of a punishment.
That said, FC Seoul could learn a thing or two from the Taiwanese CPBL, when it comes to filling the stands with objects in a more wholesome manner.
Or they could also follow the lead of the American Association’s Chicago Dogs, a minor league club in the USA that regularly admits a small amount of safely socially distanced fans every game.