Wrestling with technology audiences politics and the ecosystems of attendance during COVID-19

Using a mixed methodology of case study analysis, qualitative methods  and semi-longitudinal data analysis, this research asks how professional wrestling’s ‘techNo-fix’ (Huesemann & Huesemann. 2011. TechNo-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment) response to COVID-19 sought to remedy real or perceived voids in cultural and sporting  participation since the global emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in March 2020. It considers the extent to which emerging, technologically driven models  of event attendance are indeed ‘fixes’ at all, and identifies what such  ‘fixes’ have therefore presupposed was ‘broken’, primarily in the social  and/or aesthetic contract between performer and audience. The research  examines spectator-performer and spectator-spectator relationships in  live-broadcast events where in-arena audiences function as a form of  paratext to the event-proper. In conclusion, the article considers to  what extent these ‘techno-fixes’ are, in-and-of-themselves, responsible  for creating emergent political, economic and ecological issues that  require careful critical attendance for arts, culture and entertainment  in a post-Covid landscape.