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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

The positive and negative effects of the media on sport

by

Anand Rampersad Ph.D
324 days ago
20240408

Beck and Bosshart (2003) state a "sym­bi­ot­ic re­la­tion­ship" ex­ists be­tween the me­dia and sports. They claim that "both sports and mass me­dia keep try­ing to reach peo­ple as spec­ta­tors, fans, and con­sumers; both ac­tive­ly af­fect the au­di­ence as well as the ad­ver­tis­ing mar­ket (in­clud­ing the spon­sors)".

Sports pro­vide on-field ac­tion, and the me­dia pro­vides a win­dow for glob­al in­ter­ac­tion. Gadiya [2023] as­serts that the "dy­nam­ic part­ner­ship has not on­ly el­e­vat­ed sports to un­prece­dent­ed pop­u­lar­i­ty but has al­so trans­formed the me­dia land­scape it­self".

Gadiya (2023) notes: "The first-ever in­ci­dence of sports cov­er­age came way back in 850 B.C.E af­ter the Greek Homer wrote about a wrestling match be­tween Ajax and Odysseus." How­ev­er, "sports writ­ing be­came preva­lent in the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry when Amer­i­can writ­ers start­ed writ­ing ex­clu­sive­ly as sports­writ­ers and sports jour­nal­ism be­gan to pro­lif­er­ate af­ter 1850 af­ter the in­tro­duc­tion of base­ball and the new­found in­ter­est in the team sports that it gen­er­at­ed" [Gadiya 2023]. The medi­um of sports cov­er­age has al­so evolved with tech­no­log­i­cal changes from ra­dio to tele­vi­sion to the dig­i­tal age along with the print for­mat.

Es­son (2020) notes that there are sev­er­al pos­i­tive ef­fects of the me­dia on sports:

· Tele­vi­sion mon­ey gen­er­ates high in­come lev­els for top-lev­el pro­fes­sion­als, mak­ing a sport more ap­peal­ing to spon­sors. It in­creas­es com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­creas­ing the fi­nan­cial gain of a sport/sports per­former [e.g., golf, ten­nis, foot­ball]. Stan­dards of per­for­mance con­tin­ue to im­prove. More mon­ey is avail­able to im­prove sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

· Me­dia fo­cus can lead to in­creased stan­dards in per­for­mance and im­proved be­hav­iour due to in­creased me­dia fo­cus, there­by cre­at­ing pos­i­tive role mod­els and sport­ing celebri­ties. Tech­nol­o­gy goes hand-in-hand with this, al­low­ing ret­ro­spec­tive dis­ci­pline for foul play missed by the match of­fi­cials.

· In­creased par­tic­i­pa­tion lev­els with­in a sport, as tele­vi­sion cov­er­age en­cour­ages oth­ers to take it up, e.g., cy­cling as a re­sult of the Tour de France or foot­ball as a re­sult of World Cup cov­er­age.

· More vari­a­tions of a sport make it more 'me­dia friend­ly,' lead­ing to more match­es/fix­tures for fans, e.g., Twen­ty20 crick­et. Rule changes can speed up the ac­tion and in­crease ex­cite­ment/en­ter­tain­ment in a sport.

· It can help chal­lenge myths and stereo­types, e.g., that women can't box or play rug­by union.

Es­son [2020] al­so notes that the me­dia can have sev­er­al ad­verse ef­fects on sport:

· There are in­equal­i­ties in cov­er­age. More pop­u­lar sports like foot­ball gain cov­er­age at the ex­pense of mi­nor­i­ty sports like hock­ey or squash. Cer­tain pres­ti­gious events, such as Test crick­et and Ry­der Cup golf, are now avail­able on­ly on satel­lite TV, which re­quires a paid sub­scrip­tion. His­tor­i­cal­ly, men's sports have re­ceived more cov­er­age than women's sports.

· High-pro­file sports stars have lit­tle pri­va­cy. The de­mands of me­dia and spon­sors for in­ter­views, per­son­al ap­pear­ances, and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact high-lev­el per­form­ers.

· More breaks in play for ad­verts dis­rupt the spec­ta­tor ex­pe­ri­ence. Us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to re­view de­ci­sions can slow down play with­out re­solv­ing con­tro­ver­sy. For ex­am­ple, DRS [crick­et], VAR [foot­ball].

· Na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies and sports per­form­ers lose con­trol of their events to broad­cast­ers and spon­sors. A sport's tra­di­tion­al na­ture can be lost; for ex­am­ple, rules and tim­ings can be adapt­ed to suit tele­vi­sion de­mands. The me­dia con­trols the lo­ca­tion of events, kick-off times, and, some­times, play­ing sea­sons (e.g., Su­per League rug­by switched to a sum­mer game; ICC T20 World Cup Fi­nal at 10.30 am Caribbean time to fa­cil­i­tate mar­kets in oth­er parts of the world such as Asia, Eu­rope, and Aus­trala­sia).

The 'sym­bi­ot­ic (dy­nam­ic) re­la­tion­ship' be­tween sports and the me­dia will con­tin­ue to evolve. How­ev­er, it is es­sen­tial to heed Es­son's (2020) ob­ser­va­tions of some dis­ad­van­tages of me­dia cov­er­age of sport.


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