Wave (audience)
Televised instances at many matches of the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico brought it to a global audience and led to the name "Mexican wave" in English-speaking countries outside North America.
In The Game of Our Lives, a 1981 book about the Oilers' 1980-81 season, journalist Peter Gzowski described this routine, which did not yet have a name but was already a standard in Henderson's repertoire: "He will start a cheer in one corner and then roll it around the arena, with each section rising from its seat as it yells.
"[4] Robb Weller, a cheerleader at the University of Washington from 1968 to 1972 and later co-host of the television show Entertainment Tonight, indicated in September 1984 that the school's early 1970s cheerleading squad developed a version of the wave that went from the bottom to top, instead of side to side, as a result of difficulties in getting the generally inebriated college audience members to timely raise and lower cards: Actually ...there were two Waves.
A letter to the sports editor of The New York Times claimed,[17] "There are three reasons why the wave caught on at Michigan Wolverine games: It gave the fans something to do when the team was leading its opponent by 40 points, it was thrilling and exciting to see 105,000 people in the stands moving and cheering, and Bo Schembechler asked us not to do it."
The following spring, fans who had enjoyed the wave in Ann Arbor introduced it to the nearby Tiger Stadium in Detroit.
[citation needed] On September 18, 1984, in the Monterrey metro area suburb of San Nicolas de los Garza, at the Estadio Universitario, the Mexican national team played a friendly match against Argentina, ending in a 1-1 draw.
Former Mexico head coach Bora Milutinovic confessed that everytime he visited another stadium around the world he always thought of the fans in Monterrey.
Now, when I am in stadiums around the world and I see 'waves' where people express their joy at seeing good football, it always reminds me of the fans of the north" The wave was broadcast internationally during the 1984 Olympic football (soccer) final between Brazil and France on August 11, when it was done among the 100,000 in attendance at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
[citation needed] A silent wave was created during a blind football match between Turkey and China during the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games.
[citation needed] Prior to the redevelopment of the Melbourne Cricket Ground between 2002 and 2006, spectators seated in the Members' Stand (reserved for members of the Melbourne Cricket Club) would refuse to engage in the wave, and would be booed by other spectators at the ground, before the wave would resume on the other side of the stand.
Such a feature is also observed at Lord's, another cricket ground, where the Members in that arena also rarely participate and are booed by the crowd.
[31] On 23 June 2019, during the Rocket League Championship Series (video game e-sports) Season 7 Finals at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, the audience set a new record for a longest continuous wave lasting for 28 minutes and 35 seconds.
[32] The previous record was 17 minutes and 14 seconds set by Tube and their fans at a concert at the Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya, Japan on 23 September 2015.
