Sport, Media, Culture : Global and Local Dimensions 9781136344848, 9780714652993

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Sport in the Global Society GeneralEditor: ].A. Mangan

SPORT,MEDIA, CULTURE

SPORTIN THE GLOBAL SOCIETY GeneralEditor: J,A. Mangan The interestin sportsstudiesaround the world is growing and will continueto do so. This uniqueseriescombinesaspectsof the expandingstudy of sport in the global society,providing comprehensiveness and comparisonunderone editorial umbrella. It is particularly timely, with studies in the cultural, economic, ethnographic, geographical,political, social, anthropological,sociologicaland aestheticelementsof sport proliferating in institutionsof higher education. Eric Hobsbawmoncecalled sport one of the most significant practicesof the late nineteenthcentury. Its significance was even more marked in the late twentieth centuryand will continueto grow in importanceinto the new millennium as the world developsinto a 'global village' sharingthe English language,technologyand sport.

Other Titles in the Series Football, Europeand the Press Liz Crolley and David Hand Sport and Memory in North America Edited by StephenG. Wieting The Futureof Football Challengesfor the Twenty-FirstCentury Edited ky Jon Carland, Dominir Makolm and Michael Rowe Football Culture Local Contests,Global Visions Edited by Cerry P. T. Finn and Richard Ciulianotti Franceand the 1998 World Cup The National Impact of a World Sporting Event Edited by Hugh Daunceyand CeoifHare Scoringfor Britain InternationalFootball and International Politics, 1900-1939 PeterJ Beck Shapingthe Superman FascistBody as Political Icon Aryan Fascism Edited by JA. Mangan SupermanSupreme FascistBody as Political Icon Global Fascism Edited by JA. Mangan

Making the Rugby World Race,Gender,Commerce Edited by TimothyJL Chandlerand John Nauright Rugby'sGreatSplit Class,Culture and the Origins of Rugby LeagueFootball Tony Collins Sportin AustralasianSociety Pastand Present Editedby JA. Mangan andJohn Nauright SportingNationalisms Identity, Ethnicity, Immigration and Assimilation Edited by Mike Cronin and David Mayall The RaceGame Sport and Politics in South Africa Douglas Booth Cricket and England A Cultural and Social History of the Inter-war Years Jark Williams The GamesEthic and Imperialism Aspectsof the Diffusion of an Ideal JA. Mangan Sport in Asian Society Pastand Present Edited by JA. Mangan and Fan Hong

SPORT, MEDIA, CULTURE Global and Local Dimensions

Editors

ALINA BERNSTEIN Tel Aviv University

NEIL BLAIN Universi~y

oj Paisley

~ 1 Routledge

!~

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First publishedin 2003 in Great Britain by ROUTLEDGE 2 Park Square,Milton Park,Abingdon, Oxon, OXI4 4RN 270 MadisonAve, New York NY 10016 Transferredto Digital Printing 2009 Copyright © 2003 Routledge Website:www.routledge.com British Library Cataloguingin PublicationData Sport, media,culture- (Sport in the global society) 1. Mass mediaand sports I. Bernstein,Alina II. Blain, Neil, 1951306.4'83 ISBN 0-7146-5299-7 (cloth) ISBN 0-7146-8261-6(paper) ISSN 1368-9789 Library of CongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Sport, media,culture: global and local dimensions/ editors, Alina Bernstein,Neil Blain. p. em. Includesbibliographicalreferencesand index. ISBN 0-7146-5299-7(cloth) - ISBN 0-7146-8261-6 (pbk.) 1. Massmedia and sports- Cross-culturalstudies.2. Sports - Social aspects- Cross-culturalstudies.I. Bernstein, Alina. II. Blain, Neil, 1951GV742.S6632003 070.4'49796-dc21 2002151346 All rights reserved.No part ofthis publication may be reproduced,storedin or introducedinto a retrieval system,or transmitted,in anyform or by any means,electronic, mechanical,photocopying, recording or otherwise,without the prior written permissionofthe publisherofthis book. Publisher'sNote The publisherhasgoneto greatlengthsto ensurethe quality of this reprint but points out that someimperfectionsin the original may be apparent.

Contents

SeriesEditor's Foreword

Vll

Sport and the Media: Alina Bernsteinand The Emergenceof a Major ResearchField Neil Blain The Olympic Games: Twenty-First Century Challengesas a Global Media Event

Nancy K. Rivenburgh

What'sin a Name? MuhammadAli and the Politics of Cultural Identity

31

Amir Saeed 51

From Pig's Bladdersto Ferraris: Media Discoursesof Masculinity and Morality in Obituariesof StanleyMatthews Garry Whannel

73

New Media Sport

95

RaymondBoyle and RichardHaynes

Meeting the Industry: An Interview with Alex Gilady Attribution of Failure: A GermanSoccerStory

Alina Bernstein lIS Hans-JoergStiehlerand Mirko Marr 139

'Witchesof Our Age': Women Ultras, Italian Football and the Media 'We Got Next': Imagesof Womenin Television Commercialsduring the InauguralWNBA Season

Rinella Cere 166

StanleyT. Weardenand PamelaJ. Creedon 189

Fitba Crazy?SaturdaySuperScoreboard and the Dialecticsof Political Debate Beyond 'Media Culture': Sport as DispersedSymbolic Activity

Hugh O'Donnell

211

Neil Blain

227

Notes on Contributors

255

Index

257

Series Editor's Foreword

Nietzscheonce observedthat there is no way of telling what yet may becomepart of history, adding that perhapsthe past is still essentially undiscovered.In the index to J.M. Robert'srecentA History of Europe there is no referenceto 'media', the two referencesto sport are limited to 'pan-Hellenic games' and 'Roman games' respectively,! and while 'culture' is a little more generouslyconsideredwith 11 references,there is only one reference dealing, highly selectively, with a single postSecondWorld War manifestation,namely 'internationalyouth cultures in the 1960s and 1970s'.2In the postscript, 'Facing the Twenty-First Century',there is a fleeting and parsimoniousmention of the 'influence of Europeangames,arts and music the world round'PClearly spaceis in short supply in a panoramicstudy of Europefrom the earliestmoments to the more recent moments,but the miserly considerationof modern sport in A History of Europe in the light of twentieth-century developmentsinter alia in the relationship between sport, media and culture, not to mention the evolution of thesephenomenaas individual manifestations,is surely a shortcoming. Sport, Media, Culture: Global and Local Dimensionsgoessomeway to repairingan analyticallesion in at leastone major historical survey.Repair was required. The days when sport as an elementof mainstreammedia attention was marginal are long gone. The populist celebrity cult with images of icons like David Beckham everywhere, the scandal of internationalmatch-fixing in cricket - that once most dignified of games (overlooking the self-serving behaviour of W.G. Grace, the brutal aggressionof the odd Englishmanin Australia and the occasionalboorish 'pommy-bashing'of Australians in England) - the recent clumsy and carelessfinancial mishaps of the world's first FA, earlier and recent political manoeuvresand machinationswithin FIFA, the odious publicity that trails in the wake of the IOC and, not least, the seismiceruption of Rupert Murdoch and othersover the global sportsterrain, have ensured the political, financial and cultural media 'headline' exposureof sport aroundthe world. Shrewdly,one recentcommentatoron the relationship betweensport, media and culture has as the subtitle to his book on the subject'The Unruly Trinity';4 the unruly invariably attractattention.

Vlll

Sport, Media, Culture

Then thereis the impactof new technologieson the relationshipwith far-reaching consequencesfor consumer involvement with the availability, processingand absorptionof information in a plethora of new forms. Technological innovation is changing the relationship betweenpublic, sport, media and culture almost daily - for better or worse, dependingon individual expectations,demandsand responses. As Alina Bernstein and Neil Blain state, therefore, with pinpoint accuracy- the relationship between media and sport in the modern global culture is a story that, to use an appropriatemetaphorin this sporting context, will run and run. One admirable virtue of Sport, Media, Culture is that it provides a detailed considerationof their enmeshed relationship in Europe and beyond Europe which compensatesfor superficial considerationssuch as thoseof Roberts. It makesthe soundargumentthat sport in the contemporaryworld - east, west, north and south - is a primary cultural force and the further argument that the growth of modern sport is most satisfactorily understoodonly when sport, media,culture,economicsand ideology are all born in mind. This is a sensibleassertionthat adds width to more narrow analyses. Future, general surveys of the modern world will hardly be thought complete without a proper considerationof sport, culture and media with their varied, inescapableand powerful impact. 'The unruly trinity of sport, culture and the media is not, like its spiritual counterpart,threefacetsof the same,stableentity. Instead,it is a more dynamic metaphorof contestedpower and proteanforms.'5 For this reason alone the plea in Sport, Media, Culture to bring togetherin all their complexity,sport, culture, economics,ideology and technologyin any adequateattempt to comprehendthe contemporary significanceof sport in the 'global village' is well made. ].A. Mangan International ResearchCentrefor Sport, Socialisation,Society University ofStrathclyde October2002 NOTES I. 2. 3. 4. 5.

See].M. Roberts,A Histo~y ofEurope (Oxford: Helicon, 1995), p.622. Ibid., p.596. Ibid., p.S80. D. Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unru!y Trini~y (Buckingham: Open University Press,1999). Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media, p.171.

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Sport and the Media: The Emergenceof a Major ResearchField ALINA BERNSTEIN and NEIL BLAIN

In the United States, according to Kinkema and Harris, 'there are occasions when as many as ten sporting events are televised simultaneously'.lMany recent developmentswithin mass sport have beenguided by economicconsiderationsthat can easily be traced back to the media, and especially television. Sport for its part has also transformedthe media.2 The relationshipbetweenmedia and sport has becomeof particular interestto media scholarsover the last decade.However, as sport itself has been of interest in a variety of other disciplines, the study of the ways in which media and sport interact crossesboundariesand can be found in literature concernedwith the sociology of sport, history of sport, genderstudies,cultural studies, journalism, leisure studiesand beyond. For scholars interested in the media in particular, sport is important as a popular contentof the media, which can also shedlight on a range of related issues central to media studies. Much of the writing on sport and the media addressesgeneralissueswithin media studies, such as the vast field of representationand identity (some commentatorssee sport's most important contribution to society as symbolic) and globalization,as well as aspectsof the political economy of the media (here the focus may well be institutional or economic, rather than concernedwith symbolic processes). 'Theory' as a category is addressedexplicitly at the end of this collection. Neil Blain suggestssome approachesto theorizing the relationship between the symbolic functioning of sport and the domainsof culture, and of media culture in particular. He arguesthat the symbolic developmentof sport is most satisfactorilycomprehended when culture, sport, media, economicsand ideology are all maintained as strong terms in the debate.This is an argumentagainstcompound constructionsthat subsumesport beneaththe envelopingcategoryof

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Sport, Media, Culture

media ('media-sport'or 'mediasport').The argumentthat emergesat the end of this volume is that sport'sdispersalthrough variouszonesof culture and modes of reception reconstitutesit as a primary cultural force, even if the media drive some of its central cultural and social roles. The rest of this introduction puts the broad field of 'theory' on hold to concentrateon some individual topics (where appropriate,in the contextof their own specific theoreticaldimensions). There is a textual emphasisin the study of mediatedsport that is in keeping with an emphasis existing in media studies in general. However, two further sub-topics of media sport have also been explored, albeit to a lesserextent. Theseare the media production of sport and the matterof audiencesfor mediatedsport. It is importantto stress that the boundaries between these three domains (textual, production, reception) are often blurred and although they can be discussedseparately,the fact that they interact with one another in practicehasbeenrecognizedin much recentresearchinto mediasport. In this collection, three contributions addressformal concernsin the televizationof sport. Nancy Rivenburghlooks at recentphenomena such as 'plausibly live' television reality and 'remote production'. Raymond Boyle and Richard Haynes examine further recent developmentssuch as interactivity. Hans-JoergStiehler and Mirko Marr considerthe television rhetoric of national soccergames.Hugh O'Donnell looks in detail at an exampleof that under-analyzedsport medium, radio, considering structural and discursive aspects of a football phone-in. Three of these contributions also consider questions of representationand identity in sport. Overall, and despite the broad range of this collection, the sub-headingsbelow are grouped around this very large domain of research;though the authorsjust mentioned, and Alina Bernstein's interview with Alex Gilady, also address economicand technologicalmatters. The categoriesexploredhere are necessarilyselective.For example, we have not included a categoryon religious identity and media sport. In the context of countries such as Britain and France, analysesof Muslim identity and sport are still too few. This fact is partially redressedby Amir Saeed'scontribution on Muhammad Ali and his Muslim fan base,which we refer to in more than one subsectionbelow. We note that in writing about sport and the media, 'race' has figured particularly as an American theme. But while some of this race-based

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

3

identity writing does indeed hold much relevancein the UK, France and elsewhere,the question of religion-based identity - especially Muslim identity - is at least as important where the developmentof British and French and some other Europeancultures are concerned. This is likewise bound to be of growing importancein North America and elsewhere.However, the currentvolume of writing associatedwith thesethemesdeterminesthe categoriesbelow. STUDIES OF MEDIA AND SPORT: CENTRAL THEMES

The study of media and sport has developed mainly since 1980, flourishing in the 1990s. Over the past decade interest in sport in general and specifically its interaction with the media has grown immensely,as the long list of publicationsin this area testifies. There are many non-academicbooks in this area, including biographiesand autobiographiesof athleteslike Michael Jordan3 and broadcasterslike Les Keiter,4 and there are a variety of professionalguides aimed at teachingthe 'techniques,skills, and operationsnecessaryfor successful 5 entry into the field of sportscasting'. There has also been a very rapidly growing quantity of academic writing. Many publications concerned with sport in general also include chaptersfocusing on mediatedsport; a reflection on the fact that sport and the media have becomeassociatedto such an extent that it is often difficult to discuss sport in modern society without acknowledgingits relationshipwith the media. Indeed,in recentyears the study of media sport has become a central theme within the sociology of sport6 and other books on sport generallyalso addressthe media.7 For example, Schaffer and Smith suggestthat the articles in their volumeS 'blur the boundariesbetweensports and other forms of popular culture'9- they often engagewith the media. Toby Miller examines the way sport allows men and women (although mostly men) to consider their looks, vitality and their relationshipto their genderin ways that would be taboo in any other context.lO His discussionpays special attention to the way celebrity is constructedaround the world and considersthe role of the media in relation to the body and the nation. Academic journals, often not especiallyfocused on media matters, nonethelessfeature articles about media and sport-relatedstudies.II Recent media-focused books on sport suggest the range and

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Sport, Media, Culture

distribution of topics typical of the field, with production-orientated work, textual analysis and audience-relatedresearch.12 Much recent research into mediated sport is concerned with the marketing and commodificationof sport; with media treatmentsof gender,race and sport; with nationalism and globalization; and with violence, fandom and audienceexperiences. Multi-disciplinary approachesto mediated sport, such as Garry Whannel's marshalling of media studies and sociological!cultural studies perspectives,have been increasingly common.I] Whannel considers the ways in which masculinity and male identity are representedthrough images of sport and sport stars. This historical and case study-basedbook traces media narratives of sporting stars from the pre-radio era to the present specialist television channels, newspapersupplementsand websites,exploring a range of masculine types, from muscularChristiansto 'New Lads'. In his contribution to the presentcollection, Whannel arguesthat, in an era in which both moralitiesand masculinitiesare perceivedby many to be in crisis, sport holds a central place in contemporaryculture and sportsstarsbecome the focal point of discoursesof masculinity and morality. Boyle and Haynes'recentbook synthesizesa slightly different series of subject approachesin an analytical accountof how the media have come to exerciseconsiderabledominationover how sport is organized, performed and regarded.14 The strand of media studies that investigatesthe businessdimensionof the media is a prominentfeature of their work, which examinesthemessuch as the function of sport as a central media content provider and sport's relationships with sponsorship. Their account is broadly based, marrying textual, theoreticaland political-economicdimensions. In the presentcollection Boyle and Haynesjuxtaposea number of developmentsin the technologyand delivery of sports content in the media with considerationsboth of the commercialdrives behind sport and also the cultural importance of sport as 'a rich arena of myth, image,narrativeand a compulsiveworld of story-telling'. Their themes articulate a growing concern that the values of business,especially international conglomerate business, in both cases often closely associatedwith the media developmentof sport, sit very uneasily beside traditional sporting values; just as the globalizing world of conglomerate sport presents challenges to its local dimensions. Rivenburgh'sanalysis in this collection (further discussedbelow) of

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

5

recent transformations in the nature of media and business relationshipswith the Olympic Games,raises the possibility that the Olympics may have becomesubordinateto the larger advertisingand entertainmentindustry. Alina Bernstein'sinterview with Alex Gilady is a point of view from a media executive who has played the most central of roles in the internationaltelevization of sport. The concernsexpressedby Boyle, Haynesand Rivenburghare not his. On the assumptionthat it is good for academic writers to engage with views from the industry, the interview with Gilady presentsan especiallyforceful view of the logic of a commercial,globalizing approachto television sport. Gilady puts a number of topics into an interestingalternative perspective.When asked,for example,aboutBritain's ChannelFour'sattemptsto generate interest in American football, Gilady observes'Leave it, that is a negligible sort of rating, all of Channel 4 is negligible'. When asked aboutminority sportson television,his judgementis that 'Most sports are not interesting... The amountof sportsthat are attractiveto both the advertisersand the viewersis very small, very small'. It has beena significant featureof the growth of academicstudy of the media that despite often quite well-developed links between academicsand media professionalsthere often remains a large gulf betweenthe values expressedby each party. The interview with Alex Gilady is an important statementfrom a sports media entrepreneur, which representsthe view from the world of marketforces. If it jars with some other contributions in this volume, well and good, becausethe existenceof dissonantvaluesat the heartof the media-sportrelationship is to an extentthe concernof nearly every contributionhere. GENDER, MEDIA AND SPORT

The notion that in sport, physical and biological differencesinteract with social and cultural assumptionsabout genderhas beencentral to many publications within the sociology of sport.15 In recent years numerous publications have explored the role of the media in this context. Feminist writers, in particular, clearly agree that the media play a central ideological role, not only in 'reflecting', but also reinforcing, existing ideasaboutgender. That 'gender'has chiefly meanta focus on women should come as no surprise. It is 'consistentwith the lack of attention paid to other

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Sport, Media, Culture

dominant groups'.16 This is also true for the discussionof race (see below), which devotes relatively little attention to whites and whiteness.However, more recently,in the instanceof gender,the study of men and masculinity has emerged although it is still clearly influencedby feminist thought (seebelow).

Women,Media and Sport A feminist critique of sport emergedin the late 1970s and began to flourish during the early 1980s. Feminist studiesof the time explored the sex differences in patterns of athletic socialization and whether sport as a social institution naturalizesmen'spower and privilege over women. They concludedthat the marginalizationand trivialization of female athletes served to reproduce the domination of men over women.17 During the 1980s a dialogue between critical theorists in sport sociology and feminism resultedin recognitionby somescholars that the conceptof hegemonyshould be employed to analyze gender relations in sport.18 A number of authors argued that perhapsmore than any other social institution, sport perpetuatesmale superiority and female inferiority. Interestingly, Dowling argueson the basis of researchthat women are as biologically capableas men of excelling in sports.19 Over the last decadeswomen have made many advancesin organized,competitive, high performancespectatorsport, particularly in Westernsocietiesand most clearly in the United States.20 Feminist writers, however, argue that the media do not reflect this changeand so inhibit sponsorship. Existing work on women and mediatedsport tends to focus on two main issues: first, the quantity of coverage;and, second, the media portrayal of women'ssportsand female athletes.21 Recentedited books examining sport and the media tend to dedicate a substantial proportion of articles to these issues22 and, as mentioned, related articles have appearedin academicsports journals, as well as journals with a feminist orientation.

Coverage During the 1980s and most of the 1990s, researchshowed that the media persistedin covering mainly male athletes.A consistentfinding is the under-reportingof female athletes and their sporting events throughoutall massmedia/3 for example,in 1994 men were found to receive 93.8 per cent of coverageon US television.24 Since the media

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

7

are seenas helping to shapevalues/s this severeunder-representation createsthe impressionthat women athletesare of little importancein the sporting world. The claim that women tend to be 'symbolically annihiiatedlZ6 is borne out by later studies, such as Koivula's exploration of televisedsports in Swedenduring 1995/9627 and these findings likewise supported earlier studies offering similar indications.28 Yet some changesin the quantity of coverageof women's sports have been traced in major sporting events, particularly the Olympic Games: 'On its face, NBC's coverageof the 1996 Olympics seems balanced,with women receiving almost as much airtime as men.'29 Among other findings Eastmanand Billings also found that in the same summer Olympics, women's and men's events had virtually equal proportions of clock time and virtually identical numbers of medal eventswere covered.3D However, in both examples,many qualifications emerge,for exampleover restrictionson the rangeof sports in which women seemideologically acceptable. Eastmanand Billings arguethat their resultssupportthe notion that NBC executiveswere concernedaboutthe appearance of genderequity and that this concerncertainly had an impact on some aspectsof the telecast, namely those under their direct control, such as length of coverageand promos within prime time. They do howeveremphasize that, when it cameto on-site reporters,the coveragewas not balanced at all. Even in 1996 male athletesand men'ssportscontinuedto receive more salient coverageof all types than female athletes or women's events.Indeed,as both setsof researcherspoint out, the predominantly male identity of hosts, reporters and producersmight be a primary causeof knowing or unknowingbias. Women's tennis is one clear exception; a women'sevent to which television dedicatesmuch airtime. In 1999, for instance,the American cable channel HBO devoted an unprecedented70 per cent of its coverageto this sport.31

The Media Portrayal ofFemaleAthletesin Women'sSports Numbers(such as hours of coverage)are not the only important issue to considerin the context of women and mediatedsport. Qualitative differencesalso occur although explanationsas to how and why this happensvary. Saboand Curry Jansenarguethat 'the skills and strengthsof women

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Sport, Media, Culture

athletesare often devaluedin comparisonto cultural standardslinked to dominantstandardsof male athletic excellence,which emphasizethe cultural equivalents of hegemonic masculinity: power, self-control, success,agency,and aggression'.32Furthermore,whereasmale athletes are 'valorized,lionized, and put on cultural pedestals'33female athletes are infantilized by sport commentatorswho refer to them as 'girls' or 'young ladies'- male athletesare 'men'. Messner,DuncanandJensen found that commentatorsreferredto female tennisplayersby their first names52.7 per cent of the time and to men only 7.8 per cent of the time. While male athletestendedto be describedin terms of strengths and success,female athlete'sphysical strengthswere often neutralized by ambivalentlanguage.34 Furthermore, while the male performanceis often linked with power metaphors(like war) the coverageof female athletesis often framed within stereotypesthat emphasize their appearanceand attractivenessrather than athletic skill. The media tend to focus on female athletesas sexual beings rather than seriousperformers.35 It is argued that the sexualizationof female athletestrivializes them and robs them of athletic legitimacy. In their study of the 1996 Olympics, Eastman and Billings found that although the presenceof gender stereotypingwas not as overwhelming as expected,nonetheless'as traditional gender stereotypingsuggests,the descriptors applied to women athletes contained more commentary about physical appearancethan the descriptorsapplied to men athletes'36and 'what can be labeled unfortunate stereotypingcrept into the appearance descriptors'37in the network's pre-producedprofiles. Further studies have focusedon different practicesthrough which the mediaconstruct female athleticism as not only 'other than', but as 'lesser than' the male's.38 More recently, however, Eastman and Billings noted that the network's 'hosts and on-site reporters were careful to attribute women's successesand failures to the same characteristicsas men's successesand failures'.39 According to Jones,Murrell and Jackson,in their study of the 1996 Olympic Games,for female athletesplaying 'female-appropriate'sports, there was a trend toward print media accounts that focused more on describing their performance than 40 Then again, Koivula's study is less personality or appearance. positive41 and Jones,Murrell and Jackson'sfindings indicate that the 'beauty'and 'grace'of the female gymnastswere still the main point of

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

9

emphasis,despitethe US taking gold in the event.42 In his study of the representationof womenin football-relatedstoriesduring the courseof the 1996 EuropeanChampionshipsin the British popularpress,Harris writes that the messagethat is still being portrayed to women and young girls is that sport is an essentiallymale activity in which women are afforded only subordinateand/orhighly sexualizedroles.43 Basedon their analysisof television coverageof the first Women's National BasketballAssociationseasonin 1997, StanleyWeardenand Pamela Creedon'scontribution to the present volume finds mixed messagesin the account offered by television advertising. Although they detect some movement toward a greater number of nonstereotypicalimages of women in some product categoriesthan in earlier studies,this finding is complicatedby the fact that 'a new form of ghettoization' of women could be underway whereby strong or powerful women may be imagedin the contextof sport, while in other areas of life women are expected to behave within the limits of traditional ideologies. While pilot work on commercialsfor the 2000 seasonseemedto indicatea slow progressiveshift, the overall sensethat emergesfrom their study is of a continuing restriction in the'way that women are imagedin sport culture. Some women are scarcelyportrayedat all. Rinella Cere has had to engagein detective work to try to uncover the nature of the female Italian ultra soccerfan for this collection. Her analysishasrequiredher to probe both widely and deeply to try to elicit data on a sizeable phenomenon of considerable cultural and sociological interest. 'Women'sultra supportis practically invisible in the massmedia,rarely are they discussedin the sports pagesof the national newspapersor even in the three sport-dedicateddailies available in Italy'. This is equally true of both radio and television, despitethe fact that women now increasinglypresentsport programmesin Italy. It is not only in the media, but also in someacademicliteraturethat Ceredetectsa process of suppression.Her accountthereforenot only raisesquestionsabout patterns of representationin sport, but also revisits a broader epistemologicalquestion in the social sciencesabout the values that presideover the constructionof knowledge.

Men and Sport It can still be arguedthat the hegemonicform of masculinity (which providesnormativeattributesagainstwhich other forms of masculinity

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are measured) still means to a great extent avoiding 'feminine behaviour'by focusingon success,beingemotionallydistantand taking risks.44 It hasbeenarguedthat the 'studyof masculinityinevitably leads us back to issuesof femininity and sexual orientationsand the links between gender, and race, class and national identity, to the constructionof individual subjectivities'.45Sport has been viewed by some as one of men's last 'chances' to escape from the growing ambiguity of masculinityin daily life.46 Burstyn notes the centrality of professional sports in popular culture in industrial countries,especially'men'sculture'.47Sport in her accountis somethingaround which men gather regularly to celebrate exaggeratedforms of masculinity ('hypermasculinity'). Offering a critical history of the institutionalizationof sport in schoolsand in male popular culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Burstyn also addressesthe developing interaction between (male) professionalsportsand the massmedia. Indeed,over recent years some scholarshave addressedsport as a male preserveand a source of the production and reproduction of masculineidentity. McKay, Messnerand Sabo considerthree central questions:48 • How can the study of masculinities in sport be integrated with critical feminist studies? • How can researchersdeal with the tendency in critical sport sociologyto over-emphasizenegativeoutcomes?And, • How can the study of masculinity and genderbest be consolidated with analyses of race and ethnicity, social class and sexual orientation?

Men, Masculinity, Media and Sport Sabo and Curry Jansen observed a decade ago that although 'masculinity and sport have been culturally equated in the United States there is strangely very little researchinto this area'.49 In the literature that does exist it has been noted that the sports media concentrateon successstoriesaboutmen and, more specifically, on the themeof fighting back from adversity,like injury or drug addiction.50 Indeed,'the mediado not ordinarily focus on men who fail to measure up in sportsor life' Y When male athletesfall from gracethe coveragebecomesa site for

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

11

testing the challengesa fallen hero posesto the legitimacy of dominant cultural values.However, 'the net effect of the extendedcoverageis to rescue hegemonic masculinity by framing the transgressoras an anomaly, whether as a cheat, an impostor, a tragic victim of flawed judgment,or a compulsivepersonality'.52 After the Americanbasketball player Irwin 'Magic' Johnsonannouncedthat he was HIV positive, the media coveragedepicted him as 'Tragic Magic', flawed in terms of personalstrength, 'accommodating'his female groupies and sleeping with (one) too many of them.53 It is similarly argued that sports programming representsmale athletes in relation to 'competition, strength and discipline'.54 More specifically, they tend to be describedby metaphorssuch as 'pounds, misfire, force, big guns, fire away, drawing first blood, or battles'.55 Indeed, Duncan, Messner and Williams found that whereas commentatorsdescribed male basketball players as 'attacking the hoop', female basketballplayers'went to' the hoopph When discussing'masculinities'in the plural, it emergesthat nonhegemonic forms of masculinity tend to be marginalized. In fact, 'alternative or counter-hegemonicmasculinities are not ordinarily acknowledgedor representedby sports media'.57 A clear example supportingthis argumentis the very minimal coverageawardedto the Gay Olympics. Moreover, the media tends to ignore the fact that some male athletesare gay. Violence on-screen, like that in real life, is perpetrated overwhelmingly by males. Males constitute the majority of the audience for violent films, as well as violent sports such as [American] football and hockey. However, what is being 'sold' to the audienceis not just violence, but rather a glamorizedform of violent masculinity.5x The conceptof the male sports hero as a role model was brought into severedoubt in both the casesof Mike Tyson and OJ. Simpson.In the caseof Tyson, Rowe notes that 'the economic structure and cultural complexion of professionalsport interact in a manner that produces problematic forms of [especially masculine] sports celebrity'.59 The caseof Simpsonagain brought the problem of genderviolence to the forefront of America's social agendaand also called the concept of sportshero into question.ho Burstyn arguesthat the television coverage of professionalmen's sports offers an arena in which male athletes

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become public heroes, contributing to 'hypermasculine'variants of identi ty. 61 Muhammad Ali, whose celebrity and symbolic operation are analyzedin this volume by Amir Saeed,embodiesboth a considerably more complexset of valuesand hasin general-though,as will be seen, not always- enjoyedmuch more sympathetictreatmentfrom the media than Tyson. Ali's significance for this collection lies in his high visibility within a globalizing trend affecting collective identity, specifically in relation to internationaldiscoursesof race and religion. But 'Ali-ologists', as Saeedobserves,rightly tend to see him as an inclusive figure. His symbolic operation has ranged very widely, not only within American culture and counter-culturegenerally but, as Saeed'saccountmakesclear,acrossboundariesof religions, nationsand cultures. Largely becauseof Ali's developedsymbolic functioning, his mythic connectionwith the kind of masculinityrepresentedby a Tyson or a Foreman has always been constrained:he has transcendedthis category effortlessly (he was sometimesconstructedin the media as 'threatened'by the 'brutality' of boxing opponents). Stanley Matthews, a strikingly different but symbolically potent sportsman,part of whose myth emergesfrom a clash between the values of the media age and an earlier era of sport, has been metaphoricallyimportant largely within national boundaries.But like Ali, Matthews embodiesa complex range of values. Garry Whannel analyzesthe attribution - someof it self-attribution- to Matthewsof a particular form of working-classmasculinity that, by definition, is seenas sufficiently lost in the past to merit nostalgia.As with Ali, it is difficult to separatethe elementswithin the Matthewsmyth. Justas it is necessaryto discussthe fact that Ali is a Muslim in associationwith the fact that he is a black American, Matthews' masculinity is hard to detach from his working-class identity or the presumed personal characterof Staffordshireand the Potteries.In Whannel'saccountthe construction,not least by the media, of the version of Matthews by which he is remembered,is thoroughly revealed. NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE MEDIA

The question of the role that the media might assume in the constructionof collectivities, with specific focus on nations, has been addressedby several writers.62 Dayan and Katz point out the

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

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importanceof what they refer to as 'festive television',including 'epic contests'of politics and sports, most notably the Olympics, in the construction of national dimensionsof identity.63 They argue that national identity is a senseof membership,similarity, equality and familiarity, though they perceivethesemedia eventsas portraying 'an idealized version of society, reminding society of what it aspires to ratherthan what it is'.6+ Other writing concentratesjust as much on the adversarialmutual constructionsof national identity in World Cup football.65 In their accountof the media in Britain, Scannelland Cardiff refer to the nation as an abstractcollectivity, which is 'too big to be grasped by individuals'.66 The sense of belonging, the 'we-feeling' of the community, has to be continually engenderedby opportunities for identification, for which the media are potent agents,sport providing importantsymbolic material for the facilitation of such emotions.67 The significance of sport's contribution to the developmentand reinforcement of national identity has been underlined by many writers.68 If 'national identity' is a popular focus, 'nationalism' and 'nationality' are also sometimesaccompanying,if not always specified, 69 categories. 'Athletes and teams becomeour symbolic warriors defending the honor of our schools,towns or nation.'70 Sport is one legitimate arena in which national flags can be raised and other patriotic rituals exercised.71 Norbert Elias notes that 'sport continuesto constitutean area of social activity in which overt emotional engagementremains publicly acceptable'.72He further observesthat 'a level of national sentiment'can be found in the sportssectionof a newspaperwhich is hard to imagineelsewhere.Anthony Smith points out that 'other types of collective identity - class, gender, race, religion - may overlap or combinewith nationalidentity but they rarely succeedin undermining its hold'.73 It is worth observing that a few scholars extend this argumentso much as to suggestthat sport is in fact a substitutefor war.74 International professionalsport provides a compelling means by which 'the nation can be representedas positive and dynamic'.75This 'headycocktail of sport and national chauvinism'76is not seductiveto all sections of the population and in certain domains, such as the 77 Actually winning a major English tabloids, it can be unprepossessing. internationalcompetition provides a great opportunity for the nation

14

Sport, Media, Culture

to celebrate,though the role of such victories varies from nation to nation. O'Donnell and Blain point out that the French chastised themselvesafter winning the World Cup for lacking the right kind of national character to celebrate it.78 Increasing attention has been conferred upon the role of national teams and their importance for national prestige, especially as the media celebratenationalism and national identity when it comes to the coverage of sporting competitions.79 Blain et at. concludedthat 'the most universal form of expressionwe have found is the notion of the nation as one sentient being'.80 'Sportshave frequently beenusedto promotepolitical socialization within countriesand to establishprestigeand power in international relationships'.81The Olympic Gameshave been the focus of much of the writing in this context and indeed, the link between collective identity and sport has been traced by some to the Greek Olympic Games.Since that time, athletesand teams have servedas important sourcesof collective identity.82Much more recently,one of the first acts of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as separatenations was to establish Olympic committees.83 Hosting the Olympics is a particularly potent sign of national success;the 2000 Olympics conferred upon Sydney (and, more widely, Australia) a confirmation of grand assessments of progress.84 Despite their potential for producing discoursesand imagery of internationalism,85large sports eventslike the Olympics also serve as occasionsfor national 'flag-waving'.86Tomlinson proposesthat largescale internationalsporting eventsembody fundamentaltensionsseen in bodies such as the International Olympic Committee (IOC),87 seeking to represent their events as catalysts to international understanding,but at the same time producing platforms for 'the public fanning of nationalist sentiments'.88Tomlinson suggests a colourful metaphor:it is 'asif nationswantedto reachout to eachother for a handshake,while simultaneouslypuffing out their chestsin selfsatisfaction'.89 Media coverage of international sports gatherings sometimes promotes them as a form of war.90 Despite the Olympic Opening Ceremony'sshowcasingof rituals and icons meantto symbolizepeace, friendship and internationalcommunity, its structureand design also 91 Erikson actually views this as a promote a nationalistic perspective. stylized introduction to a metaphoricalwar between nation-states,92

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15

while MoragasSpaet al. believethat, 'at the very least,participationin the Olympics is seenas a presentationof national membership,ability and identity in a global arenaas expressedthrough athletic teams'.93

ImagesofNations Studies show that there is an extremely thin line between generalizations and 'crude national stereotypes' .94 Moreover, 'stereotypingcan make an easy transition into out-and-outracism'.95 Blain et al. reportthe findings of a numberof large-scalestudies96 of the imagesof nationsthrough sportscoveragein the Europeanmedia.97 In their studies of the press coverageof Italia '90 and the press and television coverage of Wimbledon 1991, Blain et al. found many examples of stereotypical images of nations and athletes who participatedin these competitions.Furthermore,their interpretation of thesefindings holds that the behaviourof both the participantsand their fans read like 'an index of the natureof nationalcharacteristics'.98 They found that although the most extreme casesof stereotypical portrayal of 'other' nations could be found in the English popular press,other national media have their own versionsof this tendency,a clear examplebeing of the coverageof the Germanteam in the 1990 Football World CUp.99 ThroughoutEurope the team was found to be presentedas the personificationof 'discipline, dedicationto work and reliability'.lIlll They were presentedas a 'machine team' and often in metaphorssuggestingmilitary character.The media were baffled if German players displayed 'flair' (a Latin quality) and concocted elaborateexplanationsof such inconsistencies. As well national teams, individual athletesare often portrayed as representingtheir nation. Nowadays,top performersin the sameteams may often competeagainst each other for star statusand to enhance their earning power.lOl In the Olympic Gamesit might seemobvious that individual athletes 'play for their country', but even in clearly individual competitionssuchas Wimbledon nationalidentity exertsan important role in the coverage, although it is less evident than in national-teamsports.1Il2 The nationaldimensionin the sport-mediarelationshipis discussed by severalcontributorsto this collection, including Hugh O'Donnell (seebelow) and Garry Whannel,and it is presentin the contributions by Nancy Rivenburgh and Rinella Cere, while the complexities of religious-nationalidentitiesare addressedby Amir Saeed.

16

Sport, Media, Culture

The contribution most emphatically focused on the national dimensionis Hans-JoergStiehlerand Mirko Marr's innovativeaccount of media responsesto the failures of the Germannational soccerteam. Employing methods from the field of social psychology and basing their approach particularly upon attribution research,Stiehler and Marr pursue the thesis that in certain circumstancessport coverage exhibits 'pseudo-scientific',or what they prefer to call 'para-rational', characteristics,for which the focus on one'sown nationalside tendsto causeproblems,compromisingthe desiredappearanceof 'objectivity'. They discussdata from World and Europeanchampionshipsin 1994, 1996 and 1998 (adding some data from 2000) in order to analyzethe institutionalization of communicationabout sport in television and examinethe logic of mediainterpretationsof sport results.Stiehlerand Marr produce detailed data on both formal aspects of television coverageand the patternof attributionsthat emergesamidstthe desire to produce a coherentand simultaneouslygratifying account of the national team's performance- not an easy task in the light of the Germanside'sperformancesin sometournamentsover the last decade. Underlying the media constructionsis a shared senseof what the Germannational side is supposedto be good at (strength,discipline, team spirit) and a sharedsurpriseat the under-performance of what is normally, inside and outside Germany, seenas a 'tournamentteam', supposedlystrongerwith every round. Though Stiehler and Marr's analysisrepresentsa groundbreaking approachto understandingsports culture, the domain of the national in writing about sport and the media is frequently addressed.We lack the spacehere to try and explore the relatively undevelopedfield of social class and collective identity in sport, though some references havebeenmadeabove(for example)to researchon the English tabloids, which does foreground class. However, the contributions to this collection by O'Donnell and Whannel redress the balance by emphasizingthe enduring class basis upon which sport in the UK requires (like the society and culture generally) to be understood, thoughboth are careful to give due emphasisto a rangeof demographic factors. O'Donnell's investigation of the themes and customs emerging from a popular Scottish commercial radio football programme- an addressto a neglectedareain literatureon the sport media- uncovers a nexus of values associating class identity with masculinity and

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

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propriety, just as Whannel discovers in responsesto the death of Matthews. O'Donnell notes a broad range of demographic characteristics in the cultural context and discourses of the programme,including religion, nationality, age and urban and rural provenances.His accountrangeswidely from the popular role of this and similar programmes to arguments about their political and democratic significance and the discussion is embeddedin sociolinguistics, drawing a variety of internationalcomparisons. At the other end of the spectrum from this determinedly local media programmeare the Olympics, as presentedin this collection by Nancy Rivenburgh'sstudy of 'media events'.It is the global reach of the Gameson television that makes them so attractive to television conglomerates,sponsors and advertisers. Rivenburgh predicts that 'international mega-events',which she observesare phenomenathat reach into other areasof provision well beyond sport, will in future multiply in the competition to achieve the status of 'global media event'. Citing coverageof the 0.]. Simpsontrial and world reactionsto the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and John F. Kennedy Jr., Rivenburgh points out that 'the increasedlinkage and co-operation amonginternationalnews organizations,coupledwith a greaterworldwide awarenessof international celebrities and political actors, allow for media eventsto more easily emergeout of news coverage'. RACE, SPORT AND THE MEDIA

The term 'race' is problematic, not least as 'there is little or no biological evidenceto supportthe useof the term at all'. 10.1 In fact, it can be argued that 'there is no such thing as "race"', however 'there is racism'.104 Put differently, 'race' is far from an innocentterm; it carries much ideological weight. The issueof racein relation to sport hasbeendealt with in academic writing since the 1960s, but has been most evident in the literature (mainly American) of recent years.lO ; Several researchersdeal with aspectsof this issue,including higher educationand the plight of black male athietesl06 and the cultural diversity on campus.I07 A special issue of the Journal of Sport and Social Issueshas also focused on race and sport.I08 It is important to emphasizethat much of the discussionof race in the media studies literature that originates from Britain and the US

18

Sport, Media, Culture

refers to media imagesof black people,so much so that the term 'race' is often assumedto have restricted reference.Existing studies in the media field generallytend to look at the representationof black people in television texts, mainly 'in dramaand light entertainment.There is very little information available on the coverageof black people in news, current affairs and documentaries' .109 Much of this work has called attention to the ways in which black people in the media have remainedlargely invisible, marginalizedto the point of insignificance, I or have beenlimited to specific stereotypes. When consideringthe media's role in relation to race and sport, Saboand Curry Jansenpoint out that: J()

Media imagesof black male athletesare a curious confluenceof athletic, racial, and gender stereotypes.The intermeshing of racial stereotypeswith imagesof hegemonicmasculinity,in effect, reflects and reinforcestimeworn racist notions about the sexuality and masculinity of black men. It would therefore appear that sport media are complicit in ... the larger institutional and cultural processesthat reproduce and exonerate white men's dominationover black men.III

In 1992, Whannelnoted that in Britain, 'the world of sport as seenon TV is a world in which ... blacksare not quite full-status Britons';112in the decadesince, this has arguably becomeless of a concern. As with the discussionof the representationof gender and national identity, what transpires is that 'issues around media representationare fundamentallyabout power and statusin society'.ILl Commentatorshave noted the existenceof a perceptionthat blacks are good at sport becauseit requires physical rather than intellectual qualities.1I4 Furthermore,when it comes to boxing in particular, the image of black boxers may be constructed in terms of 'brute animalism'.115 Davis and Harris presentan interestingdiscussionof the classic stereotypesof African-American athletes, including their stereotypingas 'deviant' compared with the stereotypesof AfricanAmerican athletes who appeal to European-Americans,in L.A. Wenner's book MediaSport.116 This is associated with black male sexualitybeingrepresented - at leastin the US context- as dangerous.ll7 The Italia '90 Football World Cup provided the media with an opportunity to describea successfulAfrican team. In subsequentyears it became clear that the successof the Cameroon team was the

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

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beginning of the emergenceof African football, which climaxed with the Nigerian team winning the football gold medal in Atlanta 1996. In 1990, the relative successof the Cameroon team was completely unexpectedby the media, as indeed was the victory of the Nigerian team six years on. 'In terms of their football, there was, initially, a noticeabletendencyto describethe Cameroonplayers by referenceto European or South American stars, present or past.'JJR Thus, in accordancewith this portrayal, the Cameroonplayer Omam Biyik was describedas 'a black van Basten'and 'an African Pele'.119 However,this approachbecameone that highlighted the differences betweenAfrican and Europeanfootball and this was where the main stereotypes revealed themselves. The Cameroon footballers were describedas 'joyful, uninhibited,enthusiastic'J20 and, like the Brazilians beforethem, they were also creditedwith bringing 'magic' to the game. Many newspapersregardedtheir playas 'temperamental','inventive', 'creative'and aboveall 'joyful'.121 In extremecases,the Cameroonstyle of play was presentedas 'irrational', 'as befits children below the age of reason'.122 Indeed,Cameroonwere describedas football's version of the 'savageinfant'. Not surprisingly then, when Cameroonwas eventually eliminated from the tournament,the coverageattributed this to the very samecharacteristicsthat madethem attractivein the first place'their ingenuousness,their lack of professionalismand polish, even their lack of cynicism, in short, a style of football which had not yet grown Up'.123 Large-scale research conducted by Sabo, Curry Jansen, Tate, Duncan and Leggett for the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angelesanalyzedseventelevisedinternationalsportseventsoccurring between1988 and 1993:124 The 1988 Olympic Winter Games; 1990 Goodwill Games; 1991 Pan American Games; 1992 Olympic Winter Games; 1992 BarcelonaOlympic Games; 1993 World University Games;and 1993 World Track and Field Championships. These seven events were broadcaston different television networks. Saboet at. analyzedsport competitions,personalprofiles and opening

20

Sport, Media, Culture

and closing ceremoniesfor their treatment of race, ethnicity and nationality and studied the racial! ethniccomposition of broadcast imagesby commentatorsand interviewers.The resultsof this extensive study showed, on the one hand, that 'producers of televised international athletic events generally are attuned to issuesof racial representationand cultural diversity' -a fact they attribute to some extent to growing awarenessof related issuesin the USA. However, while previously-documentedpatterns of media representationof black athletes were being addressed,they did find the treatment of 'Asian' athleteswas 'biased'. We shouldnote that 'Asian' is a problematicterm internationally.As Saeedet at. note: the term 'Asian' in the United Statesis usually associatedwith thoseof Far Easternorigin, for examplewith Chineseor Japanese heritageand not readily with South-Asianprovenance[the Indian sub-continent]: this suggestsan immediate difficulty with the term 'black' if applied to American Asians, a difficulty produced lls by specific social and cultural circumstances. In addition, the authors note that 'black' in some British usages incorporates'Asian' Britons despiteevidenceof its limited useas a selfdescriptorby British PakistaniMuslims and others. In the American context, as has been noted, 'black' tends to have specific African-American reference. There were many interesting findings in the 1995 American researchby Sabo et at.126 In the vast majority of cases there were no overt narrative referencesto race although ethnicity was occasionally mentioned by commentators, especiallywhen it was connectedwith some history of ethnic conflict. No evidence was found that commentatorsconstructed negative representations of black athletes,ratherblack athleteswere leastlikely to receive negative comments. Qualitative analyses of the personal interview segmentsshowedthat race,ethnicity, or nation did not appear to determine the types of stories or metaphorsthat producers and commentatorsusedto portray athletes.Although commentatorsavoided makingovert referencesto racein the caseof black athletes,they seemed less constrainedwith Asian athletesand commentatorsoften seemedto make a consciouseffort to place Hispanic athletesin a favourablelight. However, despite the high visibility of racial and ethnic minorities as athletes,whites held the greatestpresencein the broadcastingbooth.

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

21

It was observedin the openingsectionof this introduction that the 'race' focus of some American research has not been augmented elsewhereby enoughresearchon the questionof Muslim receptionof sport culture, particularly in the European context. Saeed's examinationof the Ali myth in this collection, as was noted above, addressesthis under-investigateddomain both autobiographically- in his considerationof Ali's role in his own GlasgowMuslim background - and also internationally(though Saeedalso considersthe questionof boxing and 'race'). He poses a question that well conveys the complexities of racial and ethnic identities in the globalized world: 'How can a Pakistanifamily living in Scotlandhavesuchstrongfeelings for an African-American who specializedin a sport that had no real following within South-Asiancommunitiesuntil Ali's arrival?' GLOBALIZATION, SPORT AND THE MEDIA

One of the central aspects assessedin the literature regarding globalizationis the degreeto which it is characterizedby processesand tendenciesthat take place beyond the nation-state.127 Some theorists acknowledge the evidence that although the state might seem redundantfunctionally, 'culturally and psychologically it remains of critical significancein structuringthe political and social organization of humankind'.128 We have already noted the centrality of national identity in the operationof sport as a symbolic system. Given the multiple causal logics of globalization,129 the media, though only one force among others at work, are central to any understandingof the process.130 The spread of modern sport is consideredto providean interestingexampleof globalization.131 In fact, sport sociologistsenteredthe globalizationdebateduring the 1980s,in other words from the very beginningof the concept'sfashionableness among the social sciencesin general. The discussionof global sport, which originatesmainly from North America,132takes different forms and the variouscontributorsexploremany dimensionsof the process.133 As with the theorizingof globalizationin general,this resultsin a range of literature, which is sometimes'confusing,often contradictory,and always partial'.134Writers addressingthe impact of global processeson sport may either emphasize globalization or processessuch as Americanization, modernizationand post-modernization,as well as cultural imperialism and cultural hegemony.135Wishing to clarify the

22

Sport, Media, Culture

issueof global sport, Harvey et al. developeda model of globalization that incorporatespolitical, economic,social and cultural dimensions.136 Their 'web-model'providesa theoreticalframework to enableanalyses of the influence of globalization of sport on national sport policies, taking into accountthe tensionsbetweenthe local and the global.137 One such exampleis the tensionsurroundinginternationalsportingevents that have become outlets for nationalism and where national comparisonsinevitably occur.138 Blain and O'Donnell have provided extensivetheorizationof the mannerin which the local-globaldebatein sport belongswithin post-modernismtheory.139 For some writers sport falls more convincingly into the conceptsof Americanization and cultural imperialism.l40 Much of the debate expressedin the literature on sport engagesthe issue of globalization versus Americanization. 'Arguments about the imperialist Americanizationof sport have not beenquite so straightforwardas those for film and television becausethe product is not always so clearly American'.141This is illustrated by basketball,popular around the globe (althoughnot everywhere),but not playedin its Americanversionin most countries. However, basketball is an example of American marketing headedby the National BasketballAssociation(NBA)142 that led to worldwide interestin American basketball,the peakof which was the entry of the AmericanDreamTeamto the 1992 BarcelonaOlympic Games. The hypothesis of 'Americanization' in the sport context is problematic when considering that truly international sports like football (soccer) and international events like the Olympics and the football World Cup are not American,143 but another aspect of Americanization has emergedin the literature, relating to 'corporate sport'.144 This entailsthe notion that sport hasbecomelessimportantin itself than in its capacityas a vehicle for attracting massiveaudiences and, even more than that, that sport has come to expressideas about 'competition,excellence,corporateefficiency, and what it is necessaryto do to win - ideasthat have their origins in the United States'.145 In this sensethe Americanstyle of sport has becomethe internationalexample for corporatesport aroundthe world; offering 'show-biz' elements,the ability to attract sponsorsand, not least, displaying telegenic quality. Donnelly concludesthat 'Americanizationas cultural imperialismhasat least some explanatorypower'.146 Rowe also advocatesthat for global sport, Americanization and cultural imperialism make persuasive partners,147as do others.148

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23

Globalization, Televisionand the Olympic Games From their inception, Pierre de Coubertin intended the modern Olympic Gamesto take place on a global scale.149Over the years the Gameswere transformedinto 'the most prominentregularglobal event of our times',150 most of the transformationtaking place in the last 20 years (during which time the soccer World Cup may have taken on greatersaliencefor sometelevision viewers). The current global status of the Olympics has been attributed to its media coverage,especially that of television and, more specifically, American television.151 The most important factor has been the massivesums of money that have become readily available to the Olympic movement from American networksbattling over exclusivebroadcastingrights. The IOC is an exampleof a non-governmentalinternationalbody that influencesand affects the making and changingof sport policies in different countriesl52 and the Olympic Gameshave had a major role in the mergerof professionaland corporatizedsport. This was underlined by rumours that the former IOC President,Juan Antonio Samaranch, had threatened to withdraw baseball as an Olympic sport unless American major league players were permitted to participate in the 2000 SydneyOlympics.15l We cannot addresshere a very large literature on the question of whether 'globalization' implies any degree of homogenization of cultural identities, though we might summarizevery roughly by saying that while once the emphasiswas on growing cultural similarity, now it is not. In the context of sport and in a comparativestudy of television coverageof the Opening Ceremonyof the BarcelonaOlympics by 28 broadcastersaround the world, MoragasSpa et al. found varying local perspectivesof the event. These local perspectives 'serve as an important reminder that local circumstancescan greatly colour the experienceof a global eventlike the Olympic games'.154 The researchers proclaim their most interesting finding to be the fact that while the Opening Ceremony, and by extension the Olympics as a whole, certainly has a global character,it is the local dimensionsthat sustain the broadcasters'and audience'sinterest, that is, special attention to specific performers,largely to a nation'sown performingathletes.This is in accordancewith much audienceresearchin mediastudiesand with other evidence,such as the study of news.155 The sense of complexity and ambiguity that surfaces from the existing literatureon the topic of globalizationmay result from the fact

24

Sport, Media, Culture

that this processis understoodas being 'essentiallydialectical',156 in the sensethat it embracescontradictorydynamics.Robertsonhas phrased this succinctly as 'the twofold processof the particularizationof the universal and the universalization of the particular'.157 In a mediasaturatedsociety,this processhasbecomeboth rapid and self-aware,so that, for example, during the 1998 soccer World Cup, French newspaperjournalists, invoking the characterof other fans and their countries, offered their readersa variety of explanationsas to why French fans were not ardent enough as spectators,including that France and the French were not underdevelopedenough (unlike the Paraguayans), not new enough(unlike the Croatians)and did not drink enough(unlike the ScotS).158 As noted, severalof the contributions in this collection deal with aspectsof globalization.Bernstein'sinterview with Alex Gilady, Boyle and Haynes'analysisof the technologyand economicsof media sport and Saeed'saccountof Ali are all bulletins from globalized society as, perhapsmost of all, is Nancy Rivenburgh'saccountof the Olympics. It is hoped that the international dimensions of the researchin this volume do somejustice to the scaleof the analytical challengethat the sport-mediarelationshipposesin a world marked- in its more affluent and settled sectors,at least - by more and more connectionacrossa variety of boundaries,accompaniedby a growing senseof struggle betweenthe local and the global.

NOTES I. K.M. Kinkema andJ,c. Harris, 'MediaSportStudies:Key Researchand EmergingIssues', in L.A. Wenner(ed.), MediaSport(London: Routledge,1998), p.27. 2. See G. Whannel, Fields of Vision: Television, Sport and Cultural Transformation(London: Routledge, 1992); R. Boyle and R. Haynes, Power Play: Sport, the Media, and Popular Culture (London: Addison Wesley, 2000); R. Brookes,RepresentingSport (London: Arnold, 2002). 3. D.L. Andrews,MichaelJordan, INC (New York: StateUniversity of New York Press,2001). 4. L. Keiter and D. Christianson,Fifty Years behind the Microphone: The Les Keiter Story (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,1991). 5. J,R. Hitchcock, Sportscasting(Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann,1991). 6. A. Yiannakisand M.J, Melnick (eds.),ContemporaryIssuesin SociologyofSport (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2001). 7. K. Tooheyand A.]. Veal, The Olympic Games:A Social SciencePerspective(Wallingford and New York: CABI, 2000). 8. K. Schaffer and S. Smith (eds.), The Olympics at the Millennium: Power, Politics and the Games(Piscataway,NJ: RutgersUniversity Press,2000).

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

25

Ibid., p.l5. T. Miller, Sportsex(Philadelphia,PA: Temple University Press,2001). SuchasJournal ofSport and SocialIssuesand International Reviewfor the SociologyofSport. Wenner(ed.), MediaSport; Brookes,RepresentingSport. G. Whannel,Media Sport Stars: Masculinitiesand Moralities (London: Routledge,2002). Boyle and Haynes,Power Play. See, for example,R.E. Lapchick (ed.), Sport in Socie~y: Equal Opportuni~y or Businessas Usual? (London: Sage,1996), Part II. ). Katz, 'Advertising and the Constructionof Violent White Masculinity', in G. Dines and ).M. Humez (eds.), Gender, Raceand Class in Media (London: Sage,1995), pp.133-41. D. Saboand S. Curry Jansen,'Imagesof Men in Sport Media: The Social Reproductionof GenderOrder', in S. Craig (ed.), Men, Mascu/jni~y, and the Media (London: Sage,1992), pp.169-84. L. Bryson, 'Challengesto Male Hegemonyin Sport', in M.A. Messnerand D. Sabo(eds.), Sport, Men, and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives(Champaign,IL: Human Kinetics, 1990), pp.l73-84; M.A. Hall, 'How Should We TheorizeGenderin the Context of Sport?',in Messnerand Sabo(eds.),Sport, Men, and the GenderOrder, pp.223-40;M.A. Messner, 'Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as ContestedIdeological Terrain', SociologyofSportJournal, 5, 3 (1988),197-211. e. Dowling, The Frailty Myth: WomenApproachingPhysicalEquality (New York: Random House,2000). Following Title IX - an amendmentto the Civil Rights Act guaranteeingequal funding for girls and boys sportswhich becamelaw in 1972. P.). Creedon(ed.), Women, Media and Sport: Challenging Gender Values (ThousandOaks, CA: Sage,1994)- still the most comprehensivework on this topic. SeeWenner(ed.), MediaSport; Brookes,RepresentingSport. Seediscussionin M.}. Kane and S.L. Greendrofer,'The Media's Role in Accommodating and ResistingStereotypedImagesof Womenin Sport', in P.). Creedon(ed.), Women,Media and Sport, pp.28-44. SeeM.e. Duncanand M.A. Messner,'The Media Imageof Sport and Gender',in Wenner (ed.), MediaSport, pp.l70-85 - who also cite an Australian survey showing even less attentionto female athletes. Kane and Greendrofer,'The Media'sRole'. G. Tuchman,A. Kaplan Daniels and). Benet(eds.),Hearth and Home: Imagesof Womenin the Mass Media (New York: Oxford University Press,1978). N. Koivula, 'GenderStereotypingin TelevisedMedia Sport Coverage',Sex Roles,41, 7/8 (1999), 589-603. Kane and Greendrofer,'The Media's Role', p.35. See also R. Jones,A.). Murrell and ). Jackson,'Pretty VersusPowerful in the SportsPages',Journal ofSport and Social Issues,23, 2 (1999), 183-92;and Duncanand Messner,'The Media Imageof Sport and Gender'. e.A. Tuggle and A. Owen, 'A Descriptive Analysis of NBC's Coverageof the Centennial Olympics: The "Gamesof the Women"?',Journal of Sport and Social Issues,23, 2 (1999), 171-82. S.T. Eastmanand A.e. Billings, 'GenderParity in the Olympics: Hyping Women Athletes, FavoringMen Athletes',Journal ofSport and Social Issues,23, 2 (1999), 140-70. D. Mackay, 'One for the ladies', Observer,4 July 1999. Saboand Curry Jansen,'Imagesof Men in Sport Media', p.176. Ibid., p.174. M.A. Messner,M.e. Duncan and K. Jensen,'Separatingthe Men from the Girls: The Genderingof Televised Sports', Paperpresentedat the meeting of the North American Societyfor the Sociologyof Sport, Denver,CO, 1990. Kane and Greendrofer,'The Media'sRole'.

26

Sport, Media, Culture

36. Eastmanand Billings, 'GenderParity in the Olympics', p.l63. 37. Ibid., p.l65. 38. SeeKane and Greendorfer,'The Media'sRole'; B. Shiffiett and R. Revelle,'GenderEquity in Sports Media Coverage:A Review of the NCAA News', in Lapchick (ed.), Sport in Society,pp.237-43;Duncanand Messner,'The Media Imageof Sportand Gender'. 39. Eastmanand Billings, 'GenderParity in the Olympics', p.165. 40. joneset at., 'Pretty VersusPowerful in the SportsPages'. 41. Koivula, 'GenderStereotypingin TelevisedMedia Sport Coverage'. 42. joneset at., 'Pretty VersusPowerful in the SportsPages'. 43. J. Harris, 'Lie Back and Think of England: The Women of Euro 96', Journal ofSport and Social Issues,23, 1 (1999),96-110. 44. M. Kimmel (ed.), Changing Men: New Directions in Researchon Men and Masculinity (Newbury Park, CA: Sage,1987). 45. M.D. Kibby, 'Real Men: Representationsof Masculinity in the Eighties Cinema', Ph.D. Thesissubmittedto the University of WesternSydney,Nepean(1997). 46. M. Nelson Burton, The Stronger WomenGet, The More Men Love Football: Sexismand the AmericanCulture ofSport (New York: Avon Books, 1994). 47. V. Burstyn, The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,1999). 48. J. McKay, M.A. Messnerand D.E Sabo(eds.), Masculinities, Gender Relations, and Sport (ThousandOaks,CA: Sage,2000). 49. Saboand Curry jansen,'Imagesof Men in Sport Media', p.l69. 50. SeeM.e. Duncan,M.A. Messnerand L. Williams, GenderStereotypingin TelevisedSports (Los Angeles,CA: AmateurAthletic AssociationLos Angeles,1990); Duncanand Messner, 'The Media Imageof Sport and Gender'. 51. Saboand Curry jansen,'Imagesof Men in Sport Media', p.178. 52. Ibid., p.l78. See, for example, M.J. Sloop, 'Mike Tyson and the Perils of Discursive Constraints:Boxing, Race,and the Assumptionof Guilt', in A. Baker and T. Boyd (eds.), Out of Bounds: Sports, Media, and the Politics of Identity (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,1997), pp.l02-22. 53. D. Rowe, 'AccommodatingBodies: Celebrity, Sexuality, and "Tragic Magic"', Journal of Sport and SocialIssues,18, 1 (1994),6-26. 54. R. Hanke,'RedesigningMen: HegemonicMasculinity in Transition',in S. Craig (ed.), Men, Masculinity, and the Media (ThousandOaks,CA: Sage,1992), pp.l85-98. 55. Saboand Curry jansen,'Imagesof Men in SportMedia', p.l75. 56. Duncanet al., GenderStereotypingin TelevisedSports. 57. Saboand Curry jansen,'Imagesof Men in Sport Media', p.l77. 58. Katz, 'Advertising and the Constructionof Violent White Masculinity'. 59. D. Rowe, Popular Cultures: Rock Music, Sport and the Politics of Pleasure (London: Sage, 1995), p.l16. 60. SeeLapchick, Sport in Society. 61. Burstyn, The RitesofMen. 62. P. Schlesinger,'Wishful Thinking: Cultural Politics, Media, and Collective Identities in Europe', in P. Rutten and M. Hamers-Regimbal(eds.), Internationalization in Mass Communication and Cultural Identity (Nijmegen: ITS, 1995), pp.29-41; J. Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (London: Pinter, 1991); H. Van den Buick and L. Van Poecke,'National Language,Identity Formationand Broadcasting:Flanders,The Netherlandsand German-speaking Switzerland',EuropeanJournal ofCommunication,11,2 (1996), 217-33; M. de Moragas Spa, N.K. Rivenburghand J.E Larson, Television in the Olympics(London: john Libbey, 1995). 63. D. Dayan and E. Katz, Media Events: The Live BroadcastingofHistory (London: Harvard University Press,1992).

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

27

64. Ibid., p.17. 65. N. Blain, R. Boyle and H. O'Donnell, Sport and NatIonal Identity in the European Media (Leicester:LeicesterUniversity Press,1993); H. O'Donnell and N. Blain, 'Performingthe Carmagnole:NegotiatingFrenchNational Identity During France'98', Journal ofEuropean Area Studies,7, 2 (1999), 211-25. 66. P. Scannelland D. Cardiff, A Social History ofBritish Broadcasting(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p.319. 67. Ibid., p.319. 68. See, for example,M. Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995); Boyle and Haynes, Power Play; M. Roche(ed.), Sport, Popular Culture and Identity (Aachen:Meyer and Meyer, 1998). For specific cases of Catalan Nationalism, Spanish Identity and the Barcelona Olympic Games,seeJ. Hargreaves,Freedomfor Catalonia? Catalan Nationalism, Spanish Identity and the Barcelona Olympic Games(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,2000); H. O'Donnell and N. Blain, 'La Dimension Nacional en Barcelona92: Las Identidades Catalana y Escocesaen Los Medios de Communicacion,Journal of the AssociationjiIY ContemporaryIberian Studies,6, I (1993), 42-53. 69. Blain et aI., Sport and National Identity in the European Media; Hargreaves,FreedomjiIY Catalonia?

70. P.]. Creedon,'Women, Media and Sport', in idem (ed.), Women,Media and Sport, pp.3-27. 71. Billig, Banal Nationalism. 72. N. Elias and E. Dunning, QuestjilY Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilizing Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p.354. 73. A. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin,1991), p.143. 74. For a discussionof this in relation to the Olympic Games,seeG. Whannel,'The Television Spectacular',in A. Tomlinson and G. Whannel(eds.), Five Ring Circus: Money, Power and Politics at the Olympic Games(London: Pluto Press,1984), pp.30-43. 75. Rowe, Popular Cultures, p.136. 76. Ibid., p.136. 77. N. Blain and H. O'Donnell, 'Living Without the Sun: EuropeanSportsJournalismand its ReadersDuring Euro '96', in Roche(ed.), Sport, Popular Culture and Identity, pp.37-56. 78. O'Donnell and Blain, 'Performingthe Carmagnole',211-25. 79. Whannel,Fields of Vision, p.182. 80. Blain et al., Sport and National [dentity in the EuropeanMedia, p.80. 81. J. Lever, 'Sports and Society', in E. Barnouw (cd.), Jnternational Encyclopedia oj Communication(New York: Oxford University Press,1989), Vol.l-4, pp.158-61. 82. C.R. Hill, Olympic Politics: Athens to Atlanta, 1896-1996 (Manchester: Manchester University Press,2nd Edn. 1996). 83. Whannel,Fields of Vision. 84. Rowe, Popular Cultures. 85. D. Whitson and D. Macintosh,'The Global Circus: InternationalSport, Tourism, and the Marketing of Cities',Journal ofSport and Social Jssues,20, 3 (1996), 278-95. 86. Billig, Banal NatIonalism. 87. A. Tomlinson, 'Going Global: The FIFA Story', in A. Tomlinson and G. Whannel (eds.), Offthe Ball: Thejootball World Cup (London: Pluto Press,1986), pp.83-98. 88. Whitson and Macintosh,'The Global Circus', 278. 89. Tomlinson, 'Going Global', p.83. 90. Billig, Banal Nationalism. 91. MoragasSpaet al., Televisionin the Olympics. 92. T.H. Erikson, Ethnicitv and Nationalism: AntropologicalPerspectives(London: Pluto Press, 1993). 93. MoragasSpa et al., Televisionin the Olympics,p.144. 94. Whannel, Fields of Vision, p.30.

28

Sport, Media, Culture

95. Ibid. 96. Blain et al., Sport and NationalIdenti~y in the EuropeanMedia. 97. For further studies, see S. Wagg, Giving the Game Away (Leicester: Continuum International,1995); R. Boyle and R. Haynes,'The Grand Old Game: Football, Media and Identity in Scotland',Media, Culture and Socie~y, 18 (1996), 549-64; Blain and O'Donnell, 'Living Without the Sun'; O'Donnell and Blain, 'Performingthe Carmagnole'. 98. Blain et al., Sport and National Identity in the EuropeanMedia, p.57; Wagg, Giving the Game Away. 99. Blain et al., Sport and National Identity in the EuropeanMedia; S. Wagg, 'Playing the Past: The Media and the England Football Team', in J. Williams and S. Wagg (eds.), British Football and Social Change (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991); Blain and O'Donnell, 'Living Without the Sun'. 100. Blain et al., Sport and National Identity in the EuropeanMedia, p.69. 101. Whannel,Fields of Vision. 102. See N. Blain and H. O'Donnell, 'The Stars and the Flags: Individuality, Collective Identities and the National Dimension in Italia '90 and Wimbledon '91 and '92', in R. Giulianotti andJ. Williams (eds.),Game Without Frontiers: Football, Identity and Moderni~y (London: Arena, 1994), pp.245-65. 103. D. McQueen,Television: A Media Student'sGuide (London: Arnold, 1998), p.155. 104. T. O'Sullivan, J. Hartley, D. Saunders,M. Montgomery and J. Fiske, Key Conceptsin Communicationand Cultural Studies(London: Routledge,2nd Edn. 1994), p.257. 105. See,for example,Lapchick (ed.), Sport in Society. 106. D. Siegel, 'Higher Educationand the Plight of the Black Male Athlete', in Lapchick (ed.), Sport in Socie~y, pp.19-34. 107. D.F. Anderson,'Cultural Diversity on Campus:A Look at IntercollegiateFootballCoaches', in Lapchick (ed.), Sport in Socie~y, pp.35-41. 108. Journal ofSport and Social Issues,18,3 (1994). 109. T. Daniels, 'Television Studies and Race', in e. Geraghty and D. Lusted (eds.), The TelevisionStudiesBook (London: Arnold, 1998), pp.131-40. 110. See,for example,J. Tulloch, 'Televisionand Black Britons', in A. Goodwin and G. Whannel (eds.), UnderstandingTelevision(London: Routledge,1990), pp.l41-52. 111. Saboand Curry Jansen,'Imagesof Men in Sport Media', p.l82. 112. Whannel,Fields of Vision, p.206. 113. Boyle and Haynes, Power Play, p.112, and 'The Race Game: Media Sport, Race and Ethnicity', pp.ll 1-26; seealso Brookes,RepresentingSport. 114. L.R. Davis and 0. Harris, 'Race and Ethnicity in US Sports Media', in Wenner (ed.), MediaSport,pp.154-69. 115. SeeSloop, 'Mike Tyson and the Perils of DiscursiveConstraints'. 116. Davis and Harris, 'Raceand Ethnicity in US SportsMedia', pp.154-69. 117. SeeSloop, 'Mike Tyson and the Perils of DiscursiveConstraints'. 118. Blain et al., Sport and NationalIdenti~y in the EuropeanMedia, p.71. 119. Ibid. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid., p.72. 122. Ibid. 123. Ibid., p.76. 124. D. Sabo, S. Curry Jansen,D. Tate, M.e. Duncan and S. Leggett, The Portrayal of Race, Ethnicity and Nationality in Televised International Athletic Events (Amateur Athletic Foundationof Los Angeles,Nov. 1995). 125. A. Saeed,N. Blain and D. Forbes,'New Ethnic and National Questionsin Scotland:PostBritish Identities Among Glasgow Pakistani Teenagers',Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22, 5 (1999), 821-44.

The Emergenceofa Major ResearchField

29

126. Saboet aI., The Portrayal ofRace, Ethnicity and Nationahty. 127. J. Harvey, G. Rail and L. Thibault, 'Globalization and Sport: Sketching a Theoretical Model for Empirical Analyses',Journal ofSport and Social Issues,20, 3 (1996), 258-77. See also M. Featherstone(ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernizy (London: Sageand Theory, Culture and Society, 1994);J. Friedman,Cultural Identity and Global Processes(London: Sage and Theory, Culture and Society, 1994); R. Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sageand Theory, Culture and Society, 1992). 128. A. McGrew, 'A Global Society', in S. Hall, D. Held and A. McGrew (eds.),Modernity and its Futures (Cambridge:Polity Press,1992), pp.61-116. 129. Ibid.; Robertson,Globalization. 130. S. Braman and A. Sreberny-Mohammadi(eds.), Globallzation, Communication and TransnationalCivil Society(Mount Waverly, VA: HamptonPress,1996). 131. J. Horne, "'Sakka" in Japan',Media, Culture and Society, 18 (1996), 527-47; J. Maguire, 'Globalization, Sport Development,and the Media/Sport Production Complex', Sport Science Review, 2, I (1993), 29-47; T Miller, D. Rowe, J. McKay and G.A. Lawrence, Globallzation and Sport: Playing the World (London: Sage,2001); D. Rowe, 'The Global Love-Match: Sport and Television', Media, Culture and Society, 18, 4 (1996), 565-82; Whannel,Fields of Vision. 132. Harvey et al., 'Globalizationand Sport'. 133. L.A. Wenner,'One More "-ism" for the Road: Dirt, Globalism,and Institutional Analysis', Journal ofSport and Social Issues,20, 3 (1996), 235-8. 134. Harvey el al., 'Globalizationand Sport', 258. 13S. Ibid., 259. For further discussion,seeP. Donnelly, 'The Local and the Global: Globalization in the Sociology of Sport', Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 20, 3 (1996), 239-57; J. Maguire, Global Sport: Idenlities, Socielies, Civilizations (Cambridge:Polity Press, 1999); Rowe, 'The Global Love-Match'. 136. Harvey el al., 'Globalizationand Sport'. 137. Seealso Whitson and Macintosh,'The Global Circus'. 138. Donnelly, 'The Local and the Global'. Seealso Boyle and Haynes,'The Grand Old Game'; Hargreaves,Freedomfor Catalonia? 139. N. Blain and H. O'Donnell, 'Current Trends in Media Sport, and the Politics of Local Identities: A "Postmodern'Debate"?',Culture, Sport, Society,3, 2 (2000), 1-22. 140. Maguire, Global Sport. 141. Donnelly, 'The Local and the Global', 245. 142. Rowe, 'The Global Love-Match'. 143. J. Sugdenand A. Tomlinson,FIFA and the Contesljor World Football: Who RulesIhe People's Game?(Cambridge:Polity, 1998). 144. J. McKay, G. Lawrence,T Miller and D. Rowe, 'Globalizationand Australian Sport',Sport ScienceReview,2, I (1993), 10-28. Seealso, Rowe, 'The Global Love-Match'. 145. Donnelly, 'The Local and the Global', 246. 146. Ibid., 248. 147. Rowe, 'The Global Love-Match'. 148. Whannel,Fields of Vision. 149. Whitson and Macintosh,'The Global Circus'. 150. Whannel,Fields of Vision, p.l73. lSI. Hill, Olympic Politics; A. Tomlinson, 'Olympic Spectacle:Opening Ceremoniesand Some Paradoxesof Globalization', Media, Culture and Sociely, 18 (1996), 583-602; Whannel, Fields of Vision.

152. Donnelly, 'The Local and the Global'. 153. Ibid. 154. MoragasSpael aI., Televisionin the Olympics,p.ll. Seealso, A. Bernstein"'Things You Can

30

Sport, Media, Culture

See From There You Can't See From Here": Globalization, Media and the Olympics', Journal o/Sportand Social Issues,24, 4 (2000). 155. See,for example,A. Cohen,M.R. Levy, I. Roehand M. Gurevitch, Global NewsroomsLocal Audiences: A Study 0/ the Eurovision News Exchange (London: John Libbey, Acamedia ResearchMonograph12, 1996). 156. McGrew, 'A Global Society', p.74. 157. Robertson,Globalization, pp.l77-8. 158. O'Donnell and Blain, 'Performingthe Carmagnole'.

--------------------------2--------------------------

The Olympic Games: Twenty-First Century Challenges as a Global Media Event NANCY K. RIVENBURGH

The ageof televisionintroducedus to the mediaevent.Media eventsare a unique media genrethat resultswhen television'svisual and narrative power taps into public fascination with a story that transcendsdaily experIence. In their book, Media Events: The Live BroadcastingofHistory, Daniel Dayanand Elihu Katz summarizeover a decadeof their writings on the importance of media events as a social, political and technological phenomenon.'They refer to mediaeventsas the 'high holidays of mass communication'.They give examplesof both nationaland global media events: the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, man's first landing on the moon, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit, the funeral of John F. Kennedy,Jr., the Live Aid concert, the fall of the Berlin Wall and, of course,the Olympic Games. What do theseeventsfrom the spheresof sport, scienceand politics havein commonthat they composea uniquegenreof mediaexperience? In Dayan and Katz's view, the hallmark of media eventsis their rarity and thereforetheir ability to interrupt our daily lives. Media eventsare live and unfolding. Both broadcastersand audiences adjust their schedulesin order to attendto a mediaevent.2 Despitebeinglive, mediaeventsare also announcedand advertisedin advance,further distinguishingthem from regularnewscoverage.Media eventsare organizedin a location outsideof the media(for example,in a city rather than a studio) and by public or other organizationsthat stand for consensualvalues. This may be governments,but may also result from the mobilization of private citizens as in the caseof the Live Aid concert.This is important, in Dayan and Katz's view, becauseit means that televisionactsas the narratorrather than the creatorof the event.

32

Sport, Media, Culture

As narrator,television presentsmedia eventswith reverence,hailing them as historic and 'invok[ing] deeply rooted narrative forms that are associatedwith heroics'.3 It is a narrative based on continuity - of institutions,of values,of one hero to the next - that takesplacewithin a sharedset of rules. In this sense,mediaeventstend to promotedominant or idealizedvalues.4 While they may emergefrom conflict or evendeath, they do so to celebratereconciliationas in Sadat'sfamoustrip to Egypt, a restorationof order as with the Kennedyfuneral, or a new era as with the moon landing or the fall of the Berlin Wall. The narrationof these events purposefully transcendsthe problems and imperfections that surround them. As a result, media events have the ability to integrate and unify people, even to dissolve social divisions - however momentarily.They createa 'spirit' or a 'mood' that can allow new things to happenand new definitions to emerge.s Finally, and of most interest to media and researchersalike, media events have unprecedentedaudiences- in both size and composition. They compelpeopleto watch. When successful,peopletell eachother that viewing is mandatory, that they must put all else aside. When successful,they electrify very large audiences- an entire nation, sometimesthe whole world. They are rare realizationsof the technologicaldreamof the electronic media to reach everybody, directly, and Iy. 6 simultaneous For the greaterpart of the twentiethcenturythe Olympic Gameshave indeedmet the essentialrequirements,as put forth by Dayan and Katz, to be considereda quintessentialglobal mediaevent.With more than 120 communicationsatellites beaming television signals to every inhabited continent and the number of television sets now in use exceeding1.2 billion there is little doubt that the audiencesize and compositionof the presentOlympic Gamesis at a peak. While global audiencesize for the Olympics is routinely overstatedin the popular press,7the 2000 Sydney Olympics was still broadcastto 220 countriesand territories, making it the most watchedtelevisionsportseventin history.8 But what doesthe future hold for the Olympics as a mediaevent?Or, more broadly, what are the future prospectsfor mediaeventsas a unique broadcast genre? Some scholars suggest that global media events representa twentieth-centuryconvergenceof satellite communication technology and an unprecedentedintensification of world-wide social

The Olympic Gamesas a Global Media Event

33

relations.9 The thrill of seeing,in one'shome,elite athletesfrom around the world gathertogetherat the Olympic Gameswas indeed a novelty for most of that century. This essayarguesthat the changingdynamicsof media, audiences and world affairs presenta challengeto the Olympics Gamesas a media event. While presently at a peak in audiencesize, in competition for broadcastrights and in hosting desirability, when one comparesDayan and Katz's essentialcharacteristicsof a mediaeventto currenttrendsin sportand Olympic broadcasting and to morebroad-basedchangesin our political and social world, it becomes apparent that the Olympic Movementfacesseriouschallengesif the Gamesare to remaina premier global mediaevent. THE OLYMPIC GAMES BROADCAST: LESS UNIQUE AND MONOPOLISTIC

Enter the SOD-ChannelUniverse With digitalization and increasedchannel capacities the world over, Olympic Gamesbroadcastshaveseriouscompetition.Paradoxically,the absolutenumberof hours of an Olympic Gamesbroadcastis large (and in some cases growing) in many countries, but at the same time it represents an increasingly smaller percentage of the available programming viewers can choose from. There is evidence, in more channel-saturated countries,that audiencesno longerseemascompelled to watch the Olympics when faced with an array of programming choices.In Germany,whereaudiencescould potentiallywatch 520 hours of 1996 Olympic coverage,the Games telecastgarneredan audience rating high of only 9.8 per cent.lO Despitetrendssuch as multi-channel programmingfor Olympic events,the Gamessimply does not loom as large as it used to in countries'expandingchannelenvironments.Even Dayan and Katz, in more recent writing about media events, have dropped from their list of defining elements that media events are 'monopolistic' (that is, that either all channelsfocus on it or it can be watchedat all times).ll

More InternationalSportsEvents Daniel Bell has meticulously documentedthe growth in international multi-sport eventsover this past century.12Long before the 'X' Games

34

Sport, Media, Culture

hit television screens,there had been a steadyincreasein multi-sport championshipevents.Figure 1 showsthe numberof internationalmultisport eventsthat have taken placeeachdecadesince 1900. Of particular interest is the growth over the past two decades.Beginning with the 1980s(234 events),onecanseeat leasta 215 per centincreasein number of events (to 502) in the 1990s. While many events are regional or specializedin nature - such as the Euro Gamesor the International Senior Games- and only a few attract global media attention at this time, they do serve to make the Olympic 'concept'less unique in the world of sports. Perhapsmore threateningto the Olympics is the growing global reach and mega-event publicity given to single sports championship competitions. World Cup soccer already has a rival grip on global audiences.The rugby union's 'Super 12' competition commencedin 1996.13There are indications that in the next 25-50 yearssportssuch as baseballand basketballwill join tennis, gymnasticsand figure skating in spawningdivisions that lead to a greater number of compelling World Series,World Cup, or World Championshipeventspackagedand heavily 14 The half-time show of SuperBowl promotedfor world-wide audiences. 2000,with its themeof global unity - childrencarryingdovesof peacein a pasticheof the Barcelona,Albertville and LillehammerOlympic Opening Ceremonies- was clearly designedwith a global audiencein mind. FIGURE I INTERNATIONAL MULTI-SPORT COMPETITIONS 600

502

-gm.oo~---------------------------------------------

~~

~

~~---------------------------------------------

:u

~ ~ ~---------------------------------------::>

Z

,oo~-------------------------.,---

'920,

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...

, , Decade

1950&

'9""

1970&

''''''

Source: D. Bell, EncyclopediaofInternational GamesOefferson,SC: McFarland,2002).

'990.

The Olympic Gamesas a Global Media Event

35

As Wenner,Boyle and Haynesand othersconvincingly argue,sport is essentialto the globalizing structureof mediaorganizations.IS Sportis a relatively cheapmethodfor filling hours of television time and moves easily across cultural and linguistic borders. Rupert Murdoch called sports the 'cornerstone of our [News Corporation] worldwide broadcasting' .16 This strategic vision of using sport programmingto reach new international audiencesis being aggressivelyshared by a growing numberof media organizations- Eurosport,Sky, ESPN, Fox and Japan Sports Channel to name a few.17 Whitson summarizesthe situationby sayingthat: it is clear in the late 1990s that most of the major professional sportsand television conglomeratesthat now have investmentsin them are exploring how to reach global audiences.All the major professionalsportsseekto demonstrateto transnationaladvertisers that they can attractglobal audiences. 18 As such, we have seen the competition to securethe rights for sport seasonsand finales intensify to unprecedentedlevels of financial investmenton the part of mediaoutlets.19 The result will be a greater number of heavily promoted, world championshiplevel sports and multi-sport competitionson the media calendar, rendering the Olympics Games - while still unique in its inclusionof all the nationsof the world -lessprominentin termsof elite sportscompetition.

More Mega-Events It is not only in sport that an increasingnumberof internationalmegaeventsare being staged.Woodstock99 and other concertextravaganzas merely add to the numberof eventsthat are promotedby variousmedia organizationsas premier, special and 'must see' global events. Not all mega-eventssucceedin capturingnational or global attention, but the point is that thereare more attemptsto be the next global 'mediaevent'. In addition, the increasedlinkage and co-operationamonginternational news organizations,coupled with a greater world-wide awarenessof internationalcelebritiesand political actors, allows for media eventsto emergemoreeasilyout of newscoverage.This was the casewith the 0.J. Simpsontrial, the deathand funeral of Diana,Princessof Wales,and the John F. Kennedy,Jr. aeroplanecrash.

36

Sport, Media, Culture INCREASED MEDIA INTERVENTION

Real correctly points out that the 1971 International Olympic Committee(lOC) takeoverof television rights fee moniesand the 1984 shift to corporatesponsorshiphave combinedto allow the Olympics to be hosted without financial loss, but also to increasethe influence of television and sponsorsin the organization of Olympic events.20As broadcastrights fees have grown, so have the demandsof television broadcastersfor an optimally-stagedevent that will enablethem to recoup their large investmentsin the Games.As Real states: Olympic schedulesand siteshavebeenunmistakablyinfluencedby television. Considerhow television and sponsorshiphave come to shapethe selectionof the host city, the array of stadiumsand sites, the style of the openingand closing ceremonies,the datesof the games,the timing of the final events,[the rules of Olympic sports] - and time zones.21 Boehmlogically observesthat as mediaorganizationspay more for rights in all sports they want more control,22 So, rather than acting as Dayan and Katz's humble narrator and observerof an historic and seminal event, television increasinglyinserts itself as a central actor, organizer and manipulatorof the event in an increasinglyovert manner,altering the sports events and adding studio produced features and network personalitiesas central foci. Real goes on to say that, 'contemporary television'sability to selectivelycover eventsand tailor coverageto each rich country'stasteshas tendedto fragment the unifying international potentialof Olympic pageantryand unity'.23

A 'Plausibly Live' TelevisionReality For example, led in recent years by new strategies of American broadcasters,there is less concern with broadcastingthe Olympic Gameslive. SinceBarcelona,NBC officials haveinsistedthat peopledo not really care if the eventsare live as long as they tell a dramaticstory. The US network introducedwhat it calls a 'plausibly live' approachto Olympic broadcasting.This refersto the mixing of live and tape-delayed segmentsto presentthe sportscompetitions'asif' they were live, yet not taking pains to inform the audienceof the manipulations.24 This trend hit its extreme during NBC's broadcastof the 2000 Sydney Games where, in part becauseof the IS-hour time differencebetweenSydney

The Olympic Gamesas a Global Media Event

37

and the US eastcoast,virtually the entire broadcastwas a tape-delayed construction.(NBC madea 'commitment'to telling viewersof the time delay for the first threedaysof competition.25) Yet this strategymay have beentakentoo far, as NBC receivedunexpectedlylow ratings(in fact, its worst in 32 years) for the SydneyGames.So how did NBC manageto miscalculatethe successof a tape-delayedOlympics? Dayan and Katz would say that tape-delayremovesfrom the televisionviewer the special role of 'expectant witness' watching live history unfold -a key ingredientin their definition of a mediaevent. Now NBC hasaskedthe 2004 Athens Olympic Organizersto considerchangingthe start times for somecompetitionsso that more eventscan be live in US prime time. The 'plausiblylive' techniquealso gives studio producersa chanceto re-packagea tapedcompetitionin order to heightenits excitement.To do this, for example,NBC usesthe venueannouncers'original live playby-play commentaryfor authenticityin the broadcast,edits this in order to increasethe pace (and createtime for commercialbreaks)and then adaptsthe lead-insand promotionalteasersto the known outcomeof the event. US media critics reprimanded NBC for its 'plausibly live' constructionof the final vault of US gymnastKerri Strugat the Atlanta 1996 Games.Grimacingwith an injured leg, sheexecuteda heroic final jump that, accordingto NBC's framing, won the United Statesthe team gold medal. 'Not true!' cried the critics. The eventhad beenwon on the prior jump.26Puijk detailsa similar exampleoccurringin CBS' coverage of Dan Jansen'sfinal careerattempt at a gold medal in 1,000m speed skating at the 1994 Lillehammer Games. With the positive outcome known before the evening's delayed broadcast, CBS produced promotionalteasersandaddedsomevoice-overcommentaryto highlight the 'Will He or Won't He?' dramaof Jansen'sgold medalattempt.27 It is no coincidencethat the aboveexamplesare US networksfor at this point in time they seemthe most comfortablemanipulatingthe time and spaceof Olympic broadcasts.Other internationalbroadcastersare using similar techniqueswith more frequency(as was alreadyevidenced in the Barcelonabroadcasts),but as yet with less bravadothan NBC in Atlanta and Sydneyor CBS at the NaganoGames. This trend toward re-packagingthe Games telecast has not only given the Olympics the same overly produced 'look' of other sports eventsbut, in the eyesof some,hasalso diminishedtheir contributionto sport. Frank Deford writes:

38

Sport, Media, Culture

Original modernevents,suchas the World Seriesand SuperBowl, and various European and Asian team championshipshave superseded the Olympics in passion,as truly pure competitions.As sport, it is the Olympics that have endedup more sideshow;the most important Olympic competition now is between cities fighting to host future games[emphasisin original].28

RemoteProduction There were 180 video circuits in Barcelona and more than 500 in Atlanta. As technological advancesallow for increased bandwidth, internationalbroadcastersare basingmore of their Olympic production activities at home in order to reduce the high expensesof on-site constructionand staff.29 With each successiveOlympics, more of the final telecastfor eachcountryis beingput togetheroutsidethe hostcity's International Broadcast Centre. For example, the rights-holding Canadian broadcastersent fewer people to Atlanta in 1996 (closer geographically)than to Barcelonain 1992 becauseit could do more of the broadcast production in its home studio. This clever use of technology- which savesbroadcasters tensof thousandsof dollars- also begins to move the perceivedorganizationalcentreof the Olympics to the homenation studio ratherthan the host city, giving lessof a senseof the Games as being 'outside of the media'. These trends of media intervention run contrary to Dayan and Katz's requirement that televisionmust act ashumbleobserverand narratorof a mediaeventand not as its architect.

History that's No Longer Free In a different type of intervention,somebroadcasters alsowant to compel audiencesto pay. While the US pay-per-view(PPV) television trial for the 1992 BarcelonaGameswas unsuccessfulfor a variety of reasons, observers believe that PPV will become the norm for sports 3D FIFA, soccer's global governingbody, sold the world-wide broadcasting. television rights for the 2002 and 2006 World Cup broadcaststo a partnershipbetweenpay-TV's Leo Kirch and the SwisscompanySporis. They paid $2.2 billion in a deal struck in 1996- $1 billion for 2002 and $1.2 billion for 2006.31 FIFA claims currently that certain key gamessuch as the opener, semi-finals and finals - will be reservedfor free television (and somecountries,suchas France,havelaws to that effect).

The OZVmpicGamesas a Global Media Event

39

PPV sportshave beena growing reality throughoutEuropesince the mid-1990s with Telepiu in Italy offering future digital subscribers 'seasontickets' to gamesof their choice. Despiteuproar from audiences and politicians alike, the trend seemsset and it is only a matter of time before it is tried on the Olympics once again. The result will not only serveto further commodify an eventthat is supposedto reachthe largest possible audience,but will likely discriminate against smaller sports without celebrity athletesor teams.Both theseresults seemto conflict with the spirit of the Olympic Games.32 THE TARNISHED VENEER OF THE OLYMPIC MOVEMENT

Draped in CommercialMessages The Olympic Gamesis the only major sportingeventin the world where there is no advertisingin the stadiaor on the athletes.Telecastsof the sportsand ceremonialeventsthemselvesare supposedto be 'clean'; that is, imagesof Olympic eventsare not to be broadcastwith any kind of commercial association.However, it is likely that most audiencesare unawareof this. In the aftermath of her finest Olympic performance,figure skater Nancy Kerrigan announced,'I'm going to Disney World!'.11 On another national broadcast,a superimposedbank logo floated on the screennext to the torch entering the Olympic stadium. In another, 'side-by-sides' showed imagesof the Opening Ceremonyboxed in the corner of the screen during a commercial break.34 While these examples are all violations of the Olympic Charterand rights-holdercontracts,they are increasinglycommonplacein Olympic telecastsworld-wide. One of the most seriousthreatsto the unique posturetraditionally held by the Olympic Games is the encroachmentof advertising messages.In countries with commercial broadcast systems, it is becoming harder to distinguish the format and commercial decor embeddedin an Olympic telecastfrom other sportsextravaganzas. Even Dick Ebersol, Chairman of NBC Sports and NBC Olympics, admits that broadcastersare doing 'too little to set it [the Olympics broadcast] apart'.35As Drozdiak pointedout, 'The transformationof the Olympics into a global commercialspectaclehas becomeso completethat its fate as well as its fortunes are now determinedby corporations'.16Many others join in Drozdiak's sentiment and see the Olympic Games

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enteringinto the mega-sportsentertainmentbusinessfrom which there can be no return.37 The following statementsreflect the tenor of these criticisms: In recentdecadesthe postmodernOlympics have becomea virtual circus of commodity values and fetishes. Corporate logos and sponsorshipabound,Olympic memorabiliamultiply, merchandising and marketingpre-occupyofficials, shoesponsorsbecomepowerful decision makers,promotionsbegin months before the Gamesand suffuse their media presentation,and Olympic leaders and the public learn to acceptthis commodificationas if it were part of the (post)modernOlympic creed.38 A sporting event? Or merely a branch of the advertising and entertainmentindustry? In the centenaryof their reinvention by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Olympic Gameslook more like a celebration of the marketing muscle of Coca-Cola, Kodak and BMW than a display of human prowess and courage ... the Olympics has changed almost beyond recognition in its first moderncentury.39 While no fan itself of excessivecommercialism,the IOC necessarily views this situationfrom a different perspective.As Richard W Poundof the IOC Executive Board stated, 'Take away sponsorship and commercialismfrom sport today andwhat is left? A large, sophisticated finely-tuned enginedevelopedover a period of 100 years- with no fuel. '4(1 The IOC correctly argues that the turn to corporate sponsorship programmessavedthe Olympic Gamesfrom demisein the 1970s(when only Los Angelesand Teheranwere willing to bid for the 1984Games).In fairness, some of the problem lies outside of IOC control. Violations of Olympic ruleson advertising,suchas thosenotedabove,arecommonplace and extremelyhard for the IOC to police. In addition, there are no rules limiting how often a network may interrupt an Olympic broadcastfor commercial breaks. One study of BarcelonaOlympic broadcastsfound that 18 of 28 international broadcastersdeparted from the Opening Ceremonyfor commercialbreaks to miss an average11 per cent of the official ceremony. The extreme cases were the North American broadcastersCTV of Canada and NBC of the United States who dedicatedmorethan 21 per cent(40 minutes)and 40 per cent(62 minutes) respectivelyto advertisingbreaksduring the OpeningCeremony.4!

The Olympic Gamesas a Global Media Event

41

Ambush marketingis also a persistentand growing problemfor IOC officials.42 This is when companies place advertising with Olympic themesnear the Olympic venuesand within the Olympic broadcastin orderto give the appearance of beingan Olympic sponsor,but stopshort of using the trademarkedOlympic symbolsthat are reservedfor official sponsor use. This further cluttering of television screens with Olympic-commercialassociationsis well beyond what the IOC deems 'acceptable'.It also upsetsthe legitimatesponsorswho contribute40 per cent of Olympics Gamesrevenue. Technological advances may further compound the commercial clutter surroundingthe Games. One futurist at the National Digital Television Centerin West Los Angeles seestelevision of the future as having no commercialbreaks,giving up the battle of the remote with audiences. Instead, programming will be filled with brand images insertedthrough digital manipulationsknown as virtual advertisingand virtual productplacement.43 Many networksare alreadyinsertingvirtual logos, bannersand productsinto sportsvenues.44 Finally, while the new two-year cycle of the winter and summer Gamesis viewed by the IOC as a boon to raising sponsorshipdollars, for many observersit also detractsfrom the special(or as Dayan and Katz would say, 'rare') natureof the Olympics.

Vote-BuyingScandal 'From their inception, the Olympics have rarely, if ever, lived up to the lofty ambition of servingas an oasisof peace,fair play, and friendship in a troubled world.'45 Recentyearshave seenthe tarnish on the Olympic Movement darken further. The Salt Lake City vote-buying scandal implicated, at one point, one-quarterof the entire membership(24 members)of the IOC for acceptingat least$1 million in cash,gifts and other benefits from the Salt Lake bid committee. This createda new crisis for the Olympic Movement and incited a series of US Congressionalhearingsand proposedUS legislationto strip the IOC of its tax-exemptstatus,which would redirect television rights fees from the IOC to the US Olympic Committee.46The scandal,which resulted in the suspensionof six IOC membersand the resignation of three others,put Salt Lake City fundraisingefforts behindscheduleas at least one major $30 million sponsor,Johnson& Johnson,backedout.47 In a harshcritique of the situation,Drozdiak stated:

42

Sport, Media, Culture The IOC will continueto endurecrisesof confidenceas long as it persists in living on a diet of myth and hypocrisy. The latest challengein the checkeredhistory of the Olympics only provesit is time to removethe Gamesfrom their pedestalof false nobility and recognizethem as a mirror of our faded times.48

Drugs that Won't Go Away Others envisage even more severe challengesfor the image of the Olympics. Building on the Salt Lake City scandalone article stated: a little graft in Utah pales beside what a growing number of coaches,trainers, officials and athletes call the real scandal in sports. The greatestthreat to the image, integrity and even the continuedexistenceof elite-level internationalcompetitions... is the useof illicit, performance-enhancing drugs.49 The ugly practice of doping in sports came to light during the 1960 Rome Games when a Danish cyclist died from an amphetamine overdose.50 Nowadayssome believe that doping is in fact the biggest single threatto the future of the Games.With the humanbody nearly at the limits of its physicalperformancecapacity,evidencedby the smaller incrementsby which new world recordsare set, the pressurefor drug useis ever strong- despitethe risk of scandaland disqualification.51

Broadcastersand OlympicsIdeals It is, of course,mediacoverageof the Gamesthat brings to light issues of scandaland drug use that may affect perceptionsof the Olympic Movement. However, thesesamemedia profit from the successof the Olympics as a mediaevent. In light of that, broadcastersdo remarkably little to promotethe Olympic Movementin their telecasts.As datafrom the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics have shown, both print and television commentatorsaround the globe rarely mention Olympic values beyond their direct associationwith the specific rituals of the Opening Ceremony.In a study of 28 international broadcastsof the BarcelonaOlympic OpeningCeremony,in general,only one to threeper cent of broadcastcommentaryreferencedOlympic values or ideals in any way. The most prominent Olympic value mentioned across broadcastswas 'participation'. Few other mentions were made of the philosophiesor valuesof the Olympic Movement,despitethe Opening

The Olympic Gamesas a Global Media Event

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Ceremony'srole as the primary ceremonialevent of the Games.52 Yet, Dayanand Katz arguethat, 'The issue[of television'scentralrole in the successof a media event] ... is not one of truth, but of loyalty' to the significanceof that event.5.1 In Seattle,a 1998 poll showedthat the majority of citizens opposed pursuinga bid to host the 2012 Olympics. The top three reasonsgiven were cost, traffic and too many people.54 These are all reflective of existing local-level problemsfacing the city, so perhapsthe poll results were understandable.What was more disheartening,however,were the top three reasonspeople gave for supportinga SeattleOlympic bid: a desirefor prestige,a chanceto seehigh-level sportslocally and money. Is the purpose of the Olympic Games already fading? Where were concerns with promoting intercultural friendships or engaging in peacefulexchangeas a deterrentto internationalconflict? In a report entitled 'Worldwide Consumer Perceptionsof the Olympic Games',McCann-EricksonWorld Group confirmed that the perceptions of the Olympics are indeed shifting. In a survey of consumersin 46 countries: McCanndiscoveredthat the Olympics hastwo conflicting images: one symbolizesthe high-minded,universalideals associatedwith the brand over a long time; the other representscontemporary troubles like drug and political scandals and related media coverage,which is often negative.55 Dayanand Katz emphasizethat, 'If a ceremonialeventis to succeed,the audiencemust agreeto its elevateddefinition. Audiencesmustbe willing to take a ceremonialrole'. The media event must 'evoke the enthralled responseof a willing audience'.56 THE SIZE OF THE OLYMPICS AS A VARIABLE IN ITS SUCCESS

The growing size of the Olympics has madea city's ability to host the Gamesa significantvariablein their success.The Olympicshavebecome a near impossible logistical challenge, considering the technological, security, transportationand generalhosting requirementsof more than 11,000athletesand officials, 20,000media personneland thousandsof additional volunteers, protesters and spectators- including world dignitaries. As Verveer states, 'To understand the organizational complexity of [the Olympic Games], one must realize that it

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corresponds to the simultaneous holding of around 30 world championshipsin a single city'.57 While successfulin terms of broadcastratings and host city profit, the 1996 Atlanta Games were not characterizedas a success by international media, in part becauseof logistical and safety problems that were too great to be ignored.58 The 1996 Gameswere negatively foreshadowedby the crash of TWA 800 and then plaguedby serious computer problems, traffic mishaps, complaints from athletes and journalists, a bomb scarein the InternationalBroadcastCentre (IBC) and a pipe bomb explosion near hundreds of people gathered in CentennialPark. Even avid Olympic supportersbeganmurmuringthat the logistical limits of hosting a safe and smooth running Gameshad beenreached.Four yearslater, fans of the Olympic Movementsighedin relief as Sydneyhostedan organizationaland sportingsuccess.However, with the terrorist tragedyof 11 September2001 concernsregardingthe safety, logistics and costsof hostingsuch a large eventhave returnedto the forefront. Securitycostsat the Salt Lake City 2002 winter Olympics, a considerablysmaller event than a' summerOlympics, were just over $300million - aboutthreetimes the securitycostsfor Atlanta 2000.This new cost reality is causing a re-evaluationby some cities about the viability of making a bid to host future Olympics.59 AUDIENCE FRAGMENTATION

Audience-produced Sports Dayanand Katz's pictureof the mediaeventexperienceis oneof a large and rapt audiencesimultaneouslywatchinghistory unfold. NBC Sports and NBC Olympics ChairmanDick Ebersol explainedthat the prime value of the Olympics is that it is the only thing guaranteedto put the whole family togetherin front of the television.60 However,the changing world of televisionsportsand communicationstechnologyis one where audiencemembers(even within a household) will be allowed - and encouraged- to create 'personal viewing experiences'.Interactive televisionalreadyenablessportsfans to choosetheir own picture angles. Peoplewill eventuallybe able to view sports,24-hoursa day, on palmsize televisionswith mini-satellitedishes.Digital systemsallowing for a SOO-channelenvironmentoffer video on demandvia cable- perfectfor selecting out one's own private collection of Olympic sports

The Olympic Gamesas a Global Media Event

45

61 According to Lowry, 'packaged'media will experience experiences. more andmore problemsbecausepeoplewill becomemoresophisticated abouttaking the packageapart.62 The internet,of course,further complicatesand fragmentsthe sports spectatorexperience.A few years from now, compressiontechnology will make it far easierto send high-quality video and audio acrossthe internet, which could mean a greater draw for sports fans and advertisingrevenue.While one scenarioseesthe internet adding to the competitionfor viewers,a more realisticone is that traditionalmediawill more actively seek partnerships with internet companies. In a hypothetical scenario, NBC could broadcast Olympic women's gymnasticsand cablenetwork MSNBC could handlea men'sbasketball gamebetweenCroatiaand Germany,while an internetaffiliate offers indepth coverageof the men'smarathonand severalother events- all at the sametime.63 There are already an increasing number of viewers surfing the internet while watching television. A study conductedby Showtime Networks estimatedthat roughly 18 per cent of American households havetheir televisionsand computerson at the sametime.64 Therewere a total of 186 million hits on the official Atlanta '96 website and 634 million hits the Nagano'98 site.65 In 1996 IBM collaboratedwith NBC to createthe 'web's first cybercast'of the 1996 SuperBowl including direct coverage,pressconferencesand news. During the 2001 baseball World Series,audiencescould expresstheir approval- or disapprovalof team managers'decisionsto pull playersas the gamewas happening. Today's interactive computer technology is merging the role of the sports spectatorand the participant, effectively allowing sports to be tailored to the schedulesand desiresof individual viewers. As a result of suchchanges,the form and experienceof what constitutesa mediaevent may alter significantly in the twenty-first century.

A CHANGING WORLD

Another type of challengeto the long-term future of the Olympics as a mediaeventis highlightedin the researchof political scientistswho show that ascitizensloseconfidencein their government'sability to solvesocial and economicproblems,the natureof politics is redefinedand relocated to the local and civic sphere.This trend, accompaniedby processesof globalizationthat give more economicrelevanceto transnationalentities,

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hasbeenlinked to a generaldecline- documentedin Westerndemocracies - in the strengthof identity peoplehold with the nation-state.Othermore local, and more translocal,identitiesare emergingas centralmotivatorsin people's lives, yet the Olympics as media event is organized around nation-stategroupingsand thriveson nationalism.66 Thesegroupingsmay well lose their hold as the new centuryprogresses. In addition, interculturalawarenessand exchangeare simply more a part of everydaylife. The Olympics Gamesno longeroffer peoplea rare opportunity to experienceother cultural groups in an arenaof peace. Changingschool curricula, consumerproducts,businesses,non-profit organizationsexchanges,tourism and global migration have made the world, while not necessarilya betterplace,at leastmore interculturalin flavour.

A GenerationalDivide Perhaps one of the more important findings contained in the aforementionedMcCann-Ericksonreport was that adults over 40 had a significantly different view of the Olympics than those of younger generations.For older adults, the Olympic Games still maintain a 'transcendent'aura when compared to other sports events. This audiencesegmentgrew up watchingthe Olympics within the contextof post-war and Cold War international relations, a time when every Olympic Games(from Berlin 1936 to Seoul 1988) was cast in a heavy shadow of international politics. It might be speculatedthat those viewers sought out the Olympics in order to experience, however momentarily, the vision of peaceful interchange (or of national superiority) symbolizedby the Olympics. According to Riggs et al., the first of several relatively 'non-political' Gamesoccurred in Barcelona 1992.67 Therefore for a younger, post-Cold War generation,the cooperative,yet competitivespirit of the Gamesmay not be assymbolically linked to broaderidealsof world peaceor world order. In fact, accordingto the McCann-Ericksonreport and other internal researchsponsoredby the IOC, young audiencestend to view the Olympicsas 'gettingworseratherthan better'and just anotherbig event equivalentto the MTV awards.As such, the Olympics are simply not considered the required viewing experience they were for past 68 Beyond the inclusion of newer 'X' generationsportssuch generations. as snowboardinginto the Olympic competition,what will it take to draw youngeradultsand children into the Olympic spirit?

The O~ympic

Gamesas a Global Media Event

47

CONCLUSION

According to Dayan and Katz, a fundamentalallure of media eventsis that they resonatewith human mythology and a fascination with the transcendentor the 'biggerthan life'. This is true for any time period. In 1995 the best-sellingTime magazinecovers were not the cover stories that featured the conflict in Bosnia, the US Social Security crisis, or even a celebrity, but those with headlines such as, 'How Did the UniverseBegin?', 'Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?', and 'Mysteriesof the Deep'.69In the samespirit, Dayan and Katz argue: From casual, tired, consumer-orientedpleasure seekerswe are transformedinto expectantwitnessesof a historic moment. But televisioncannotdo this alone. Its call to prayer- if it is to succeed - must be echoedin the worlds of national leaders,by our friends, by the newspapers,by the schools that declare a recess, by employerswho allow us to view on companytime, by the flickering lights in all the neighbors'windows.70 The purpose of this overview of trends and issues in Olympic broadcastingis not to forecast the demiseof the Olympic Games,but rather to emphasize thechallengesthe Olympic Movement faces to preserveits unique nature as a global media event invoking the unity, inspirationand commitmentdescribedabove.If the Olympic Gamesare to remain a media event -a unique and transcendentexperiencethat compels,not convinces,viewers to watch - someseriousattentionneeds to be given to adapting the Gamesand its broadcastingin ways that maintain thoseessentialcharacteristicsoutlined by Dayan and Katz. Is this an impossible challenge? Real suggests that the 'wellarticulated Olympic ideal' born of a nineteenth-centurymodernist viewpoint simply cannot sustain itself in this post-modern era characterizedby a lack of 'grand narratives'.He goeson to say that the '(post)modern Olympic Games in all their commercialism are not aberrationsbut logical expressionsof the age in which they [now] exist'.71 If Real is correct, and many of the current trends in Olympic broadcastingseemto supportthis, then the Olympic Gamesas a global mediaeventis destinedto remain a phenomenonlargely associatedwith this pastcentury. Whetherwe are readyto acceptthat conclusionor not, Puijk suggests that Dayan and Katz's definition of a media event may also face a challenge.72 We have already seen subtle changes in their original definition in responseto changesin the television channelenvironment

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(for example,dropping the need for media eventsto be monopolistic). Now we are evolving into an even more fragmented, networked, personalizedand interactive communication world. How should we define a media event in a post-television world? For the concept to survive this century, we must re-think not just what will compel people to focus on the sameevent, with the sameintensity and reverencethat Dayan and Katz suggestare integral to the mediaeventexperience,but also how will peopleexperienceit and refine the definition accordingly. When the Pathfinder landed on Mars in July 1997 a then record 45 million people (80 million hits per day) visited the Jet Propulsion websiteto get their first glimpseof Mars. By most news mediapolls this was the biggesteventof 1997,largely fuelled by the internet'broadcast'. Perhapsthis provides a clue to the nature of the global media event of the twenty-first century. In the Mars landing example,profit-motivated media manipulations,excessiveadvertising breaks and scandalswere once again stripped away and individuals - now irrespective of nationality, ideologyor age- were transformedinto expectantwitnesses of a live, unfolding, rare and networkedmediaexperience. NOTES The authorwishesto thank Neil Blain, Alina Bernsteinand the anonymousreviewersfor their help and support. I.

Z. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 1Z. 13.

D. Dayan and E. Katz, Media Events: The Live Broadcastingoj History (Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press,1992). Seealso, E. Katz, 'Media Events: The Senseof Occasion', Studiesin Visual Anthropology,6 (1980), 84-9; E. Katz and D. Dayan, 'Media Events:On the Experienceof Not Being There',Religion, 15 (1985), 305-14. D. Dayanand E. Katz, 'Political Ceremonyand InstantHistory', in A. Smith (ed.), Television: An International History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1995), pp.169-88. Ibid., p.l79. This promotionof dominantvaluesis also a primary sourceof criticism of mediaevents. Dayanand Katz, Media Events,pp.147-87. Dayan and Katz, 'Political Ceremonyand Instant History', p.l70. M. de MoragasSpa, N. Rivenburghand J. Larson, Televisionin the Olympics(London: John Libbey, 1995), pp.Z09-ZI. P. Verveer, 'Telecommunicationsand the Olympic Games',IEEE CommunicationsMagazine Ouly ZOOI), 69-70. R. Negrine,Political Communicationin the Age oJGlobalElatronic Media: The Communication 'if'Politics (London: Sage,1996), pp.l67-88. InternationalOlympic Committee(IOC), Olympic Marketing Fact File 1998(Lausanne:IOC, 1998). Cf. Dayanand Katz, Media Events,p.5, and Dayanand Katz, 'Political Ceremonyand Instant History', 179. D. Bell, Encyclopediaoj International GamesOefferson,SC: McFarland,ZOOZ). D. Rowe, 'The Global Love-match: Sport and Television', Media, Culture and Society, 18 (1996),565-8Z.

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14. Brown et al., 'The Gamesof the Future,Sport by Sport', USA Today (19 May 1999), 9C. 15. L.A. Wenner (ed.), MediaSport (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp.73-87; R. Boyle and R. Haynes,'Sport in the New Media Age: The Battle for Control', Paperpresentedat the 1999 InternationalAssociationof Mass CommunicationResearch(IAMCR) Conference,Leipzig, Germany,28 July 1999. 16. R.V. Bellamy,Jr., 'The Evolving TelevisionSportsMarketplace',in Wenner(ed.),MediaSport, p.77. 17. D. Guterson,'Moneyball! On the RelentlessPromotion of Pro Sports',Harper's Magazine (Sept. 1994),37-46. 18. D. Whitson, 'Circuits of Promotion: Media, Marketing and the Globalization of Sport', in Wenner(ed.), MediaSport,p.68. 19. As examples,ABC, Fox, CBS and ESPN came up with $17.6 billion for rights to National Football Leaguegamesover the next eight years.NBC is spending$3.55billion for the 2000--8 summerand winter Olympics. SeeE. Boehm, 'JocksItchy Over Costly Cup', Variety, 371,5 (1998),1-2;].Steinbreder,'Big Spender',SkyOuly 1996),37-42. 20. M. Real, 'Is Television Corruptingthe Olympics?',TelevisionQJ