The Political Economy of Sports Media

Commodification of Sport

Our premise: Sport is a Commodity

• Commodity - a product that is bought and sold

• Commodification - the process of turning something into a product that can be bought and sold

Throughout this class, we will analyze how commodification influences different aspect of sport and the consequences of the commodification of sport

Media is the main form through which sport has been commodified

• In the “Golden Age of Sport” (post WW1/1920s), the modern American sports industry emerged with sport celebrities such as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange and Knute Rockne

• Their popularity was intensified by the new forms of sports media, exuberant prose of sports journalists, and the efforts sports promoters

How did we get here?

• Historically, sport was a source of popular content as media evolved

• As advertisers would spend money to reach sports consumers, media companies paid right fees to broadcast events

• Simultaneously, media interest and hype generated broader consumer interest in sport

• Athletes are brands

Media Sport

We will analyze the individual elements and the relations between them

We will focus on media sport INSTITUTIONS (production), TEXTS (products), AND AUDIENCES (consumption)

Mediasport → a compound word that captures the unavoidable connections between concepts

What is Media?

• Media → the platform/technology for disseminating/communicating information (ideas, thoughts, values, and/or feelings)

Traditional Mass Media:

• Print

• Cinema

• Broadcast

“New” Mass Media:

• Digital Platforms

The Reithian Principles of [public service] Broadcasting

Media should do three things

1. Inform

2. Educate

3. Entertain

Entertain → maximize audience ; broadcast and advertising revenues

Mediasport Responsibilities

Inform and Educate = ethical “public” duty

Entertain = commercial “corporate” duty

Media differs from other commodities

• No content is not an option

The cynical yet widely-held perspective

Commercial media has very little commitment to quality, credibility, or even accuracy

Rather, its primary aim and function is to create, then monetize audiences

This is accomplished through the production of popular/entertaining/profitable content

The Mass Media’s Interest in Sport

Sage:

• Merely a means for profit making

• Media are advertisements which carry news, features and entertainments in order to capture audiences for advertisers

• Media’s job is to sell audiences to advertisers

Sport + Audiences = Corporate Advertising

“TV is now merely a delivery system for football”

• Football audiences to corporate advertisers

The broadcast networks subsequently pays the NFL for the rights to deliver NFL entertainment

CAPITALISM has influenced and changed sport in a number of different ways, and this week examines the process through which capital is generated through sport

Late Capitalism

Theoretical Framework: Political Economy

Political economy in interested in examining the relationships between political institutions, economic systems, and broader social structure

Political economy = The intersection of politics and economics

Politics → various practices surrounding the structures, processes, and systems by which people are governed (on a macro or micro scale)

Economics → resources are produced, used and/ore managed in reproducing and shaping lives

Allows for a greater understanding of power relationships under capitalism

Karl Marx

Karl Marx’s theories form the basis of the sociological imagination, and for analyzing any form of power in society: “What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production”

Marx’s Key Argument: A society’s economy directly shapes its other elements (culture, politics, art, religion, sports, etc)

• Put more simply → economic power shapes everything else

Capitalism: A system of social organization structured around the production, circulation, and accumulation of private capital

• Contemporary American society is dominated and defined by the accumulation of capital

How is capital produced in capitalism?

• Private ownership of the means of production

• Profit motive

• Labor exchanged for a wage

• Free market competition

• Supply and demand

What type of capitalist society is the US?

Competitive capitalism (c. 1700 to mid/late 19th century) → Monopoly Capitalism (c. 1870 to early 20th century) → Fordist Capitalism (early 20th century to c. 1950s) → Late Capitalism (c. 1960s to present)

Industrial Capitalism → Capital generated from mass production and consumption of relatively narrow range of material products

Late (cultural) Capitalism → Capital increasingly generated from production and consumption of cultural products and related cultural (symbolic) processes

• Health, education, financial services, non-essential consumption, information/knowledge, entertainment/leisure, media

  • the commercialization of virtually all sectors of culture/society/life

Culturally, Jameson argues that late capitalist society is one in which money is made through buying and selling “culture”

• every aspect of culture is increasingly structured for the purpose of generating profit in the consumer marketplace

Late Capitalist Mediasport

Forces, institutions, and processes shaping contemporary late capitalist society

• SPORT → commercialization, digitalization, globalization, neoliberalism, financialization, consumerism, attention, spectacularization, corporatization

In late capitalism, elite sport is primarily a catalyst for revenue generation, including not not restricted to:

• At Venue:

  • Ticket sales

  • Concessions

  • Sponsorship

  • Licensed Merchandise

• Away From Venue:

  • Media rights

  • Media advertising/sponsorship

  • Media Subscription

  • Licensed Merchandise

  • Product Endorsement

  • Gambling

Sport + Late Capitalism → Highly rationalized to most efficiently generate profit

Theory 2: Weber’s Theory of Rationalization

According to German Sociologist, Max Weber, the process of rationalization is a central feature of modern society

Rationalization of society refers to the process whereby there is a shift

Rationalized Modern Capitalism: Rational structures (organizational bureaucracy) and logics (profit focus), of for-profit mass industrial corporations

Rationalization: The use of scientific precision and coordination to most efficiently pursue a goal

Rationalized Modern Sport: Rational Structures (organizational bureaucracy) and logics (profit focus), of For Profit sport industry

• Sport Industry structured to generate capital (profit)

Mediasport Delivery Model

Remember, sport (in all its forms) is a: societal construct whose form and function is a product of (and simultaneously) produces the society in which it is situated

Mediasport Cycle → Corporatization, Commercialization, Spectacularization, Celebritization, Digitalization, Financialization

Corporatization

The reorganization of society around profit-driven structures and objectives; the world comes to resemble a corporation

Social Institutions (of all kinds) organized as CORPORATIONS through adopting:

• institutional structure

• managerial hierarchies

• profit-driven focus

• rational efficiencies

• investment objectives

• strategic location

Rationalizing the Media-Sport Corporation: Cartelized Structure

Cartel: a group of firms that organize together to restrict membership, control production, sales, and wages within and industry

• Although seemingly competitors, Sport leagues and franchise collaborate to produce and protect their profits

Rationalizing the Media-Sport Corporation: Closed League

No promotion or relegation:

Involvement Guaranteed: Revenue guaranteed

• “a machine for controlled capital accumulation”

Financialization

Sport increasing becoming a target/site for investment capital, and becomes ever more subject to financial motives, actors, markets, and institutions

Major sport entities have become lucrative cultural properties, which business investors look to nurture for:

1. Short term financial gain

2. Long term returns on financial investment

   ______________________________________

3. Cultural prominence and influence (soft power)

Commercialization

Structuring of an institution primarily for the purpose of generating profit in the consumer marketplace

Selling Loyalties → Player and brand sponsorship

Spectacularization

Production of sport events as either “live” or mass-mediated entertainment-focused spectacles

Late capitalist media-sport centers on the production “impossible-to-repeat live events” as branded entertainment spectacles designed to generate high volume

1. Spectators

2. Viewers

Rationalizing the Media-Sport Entertainment Product: Spectacular [commercial] spaces

Rationalizing the Media-Sport Entertainment Product: Salary Cap

• The search for parity

Rationalizing the Media-Sport Entertainment Product: Resource/Talent Distribution

Standardizing the Media-Sport Entertainment Product: Rule Changes

• Protect quarterback

• Encourage more passing plays

Celebration

Mass-mediated individuals as the defining elements of sport spectacles/entities

Sport celebrities are the product of numerous authorized and unauthorized sources of media representation that shape the public image/understanding of private individuals

Sport celebrities are made to embody and reflect back to the public the values of a culture/society

Digitalization

The increased use of digital technologies as both a form of media-sport related communication, a platform for algorithm-based marketing and advertising, and even as an alternative sport practice

The eSport digital revolution → digital technology transforming sport practice

“Second screening" turns “passive” consumers into active producers (or prosumers) of the sport events/spectacles they consume, via user-generated content

Sports prosumers generate digital content which contributes to the advertising costs social media platforms are able to charge

As Sports Media Workers, Consider…

• The pressures to generate revenue at all costs

• The way this pursuit may modify the nature and meaning of sport

• How to balance the responsibilities of educating and informing with entertaining

• Is the current commodified spectacle the only way to experience and deliver sport?

Quotes

• “as soon as we concentrate specifically on the subject of sports in capitalism, it becomes apparent that we can talk only about a sports/media complex” - Jhallu

• “What starts as a sporting contest played between lines becomes transformed into spectacle that seems to have no bounds” - Wenner

• “The economics of the commercial media are premised on the continued availability of ‘new’ material (however familiar in form and predictable in content) that will constantly stimulate popular attention… in this way