Background: With the full-spectrum introduction of VAR technology at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, electronic technology, especially, that where television broadcasting technology nurtures sports events, has become commonplace, becoming an indispensable part of contemporary sports events. People are accustomed to accepting the judgments from the all-new “electronic God” angle of view which coincident the concept of hyperreal put forward by Jean Baudrillard (1994), such as Hawk-eye, Goal-line technology, and VAR. Nevertheless, today, even the judgement of the performance of referees, linemen and sports commentators could be reserve for the electronic technology (Wei, 2019). The 'sheer' authority enjoyed by referees in previous sports games has long been superseded by electronic technology, which has almost become the media's 'ultimate' myth of contemporary sports events (Wei, 2011). The traditional relationships among referees, athletes, coaches and sports fans have undergone profound changes due to the involvements of electronic technology. At the same time, sports events themselves are undergoing fundamental changes (Wei, 2016). For instances, tennis fans have begun to rhythmically use “slow-clap” so that the outcome of the Hawk-eye penalty could be checked; VAR technology almost smashed the linear structure of traditional football games by cutting a game into diversified emotional wild pieces and runaway rhythms.
Methodology: The study borrows Roland Barthes' Mythologies (1972) to examine how electronic technology has become the 'ultimate' myth in contemporary media sports. Umberto Eco's quasi sign and mirror image sign theory (1976) are introduced to investigate the unilateral presentation of electronic technology. Stephanie Marriott's co-presence concept could partially explain the origin of the aforementioned ultimate myth. Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1981), Marvin Minsky's concept of telepresence (1980), and Zhang Yibing's Far-topia (2018) are wielded to meet the postmodern illusion of justice brought by electronic technology.
Conclusion: The wide-ranging employment of electronic technology such as VAR in sports events is the 'ultimate' myth of contemporary media sports, which practically replaces humanism mainly focused on referee decisions. The origin of myth is the illusion of 'co-presence' in audience perception. However, no matter how advanced electronic technology is, quasi sign and mirror image sign are nothing more than the unilateral representation of the sign, which cannot thoroughly supersede the sign itself. This is the postmodern illusion of telepresence overwhelming the present presence from the perspective of semiotic phenomenology. There may be a separation between the presentation subject and the representation subject. Therefore, electronic technology cannot bring the categorical “fairness” and meet the needs of narrative justice. The humanism of replacing sporting events with electronic technology and “cyborg” which combines human and computer is debatable. Sport competitions still require human referee’s penalty to maintain a presence of “humanism”.