Contemporary Media Sport: De- or Re-Westernization?

Abstract

Contemporary media sports culture is dominated by the West, and media sport studies has tended to focus on Western contexts. The Asia Pacific region is now a more significant feature of the global media sports cultural complex, however, through the increasingly lucrative export of Western sport television rights and merchandising, the staging of megamedia sports events in the region, the conspicuous role of sport stars from the Asia Pacific in Western sport competitions, and, in some cases, even a shift in the balance of institutional and economic power from West to East. Drawing mainly on the cases of association football (soccer), cricket, and basketball, this article identifies the complex and multidirectional flows of labor, capital, images, identities, and audiences into, from, and within the Asian media sports environment. It considers whether such developments might constitute de-, re-, or even post-Westernization and proposes the necessity of closer attention to these issues in critical media sport studies.

Sport, Media, and Consumption in Asia: A Merchandised Milieu

“…The consumption of professional sport within Asia has conventionally been regarded as a potential site of de-Westernization (Rowe & Gilmour, 2008), with a thriving indigenous sports market predicted to emerge with the ability to challenge traditional flows of capital in the global media sports order, producing new centers or nodes of production and consumption and lifting Asia to a position of ascendancy in the global professional sports hierarchy (Karg & Georgios, 2007;Murphy, 1994). Yet as was discussed earlier, there is little current evidence of such a development (except in the large but British Commonwealth-centered sport of cricket).…”

“…As Crawford (2004) notes in his work on the relationship between sports fandom and consumption, "Sport related consumer goods can be used and experienced in numerous, often contradictory, ways" (p. 128), and it is not our intention to provide a mechanical analysis of developments that can be read, contradictorily and simultaneously, as constituting both "de-and re-Westernization" (Rowe & Gilmour, 2008). Indeed, "the relationship of sport to commercialism has taken on different forms in different sports in different societies at different times" (Horne, 2006, p. 28).…”

The EPL drama – paving the way for more illegal streaming? Digital piracy of live sports broadcasts in Singapore

“…A similar debate has been taking place in Singapore. With no conclusive evidence that digital piracy has hampered demand for legitimate content (Hutchins, 2009;Hutchins & Rowe, 2009;MDA, 2012;Rowe & Gilmour, 2008), the MCR contended that sports rights holders could only have "stronger grounds to request the Government to step up its regulatory/enforcement measures to address perceived digital piracy challenges if they are able to prove that they have already made their content easily accessible in the local market and at reasonable prices" (MDA, 2012: 25). Scholars (Birmingham and David, 2011;Hutchins and Rowe, 2013) have supported the argument that the longer sports rights holders persevere with a protectionist mindset by failing to invest in and offer legal, affordable access to their services, the more likely it is that channels for unauthorized streams online will continue to flourish and offer 'better' services.…”

Media and Sport: The Cultural Dynamics of Global Games

“…However active and inventive sport spectators may be in any context, the institution of sport is largely structured in a manner that is rather disempowering, offering a limited range of roles as consumer and fan. Indeed, as the Western media sport market has become saturated and has sought new territories to exploit through the ‘export’ of major European and American leagues in sports such as association football and basketball to the growing Asia‐Pacific region, its marketing emphasis has been largely dehistoricised, style‐focused and explicitly consumption‐oriented (Horne 2006; Rowe and Gilmour 2008). Even major media sport initiatives dominated by the Asia‐Pacific, such as the Indian Premier League, remain deeply influenced by cultural practices (such as the use of cheerleaders – though ‘customised’ in presentational terms for local audiences) originating in the West, and are marked by a commodity ‘branded’ international cosmopolitanism (Rowe and Gilmour 2009) that privileges corporate interests over what might be described as ‘deep sport fandom’.…”

“…The cost of sports rights to media companies has induced a significant level of vertical integration, whereby the same company controls the whole of the 'sports production process' from the running of sports competitions and ownership of teams to the provision of televised sport and the sale of subscriptions for dedicated sport channels. Thus, major media corporations such as Disney, News Corporation, Time Warner, and Mediaset have owned leading gridiron, baseball, ice hockey and association football teams, while major sports clubs, such as Manchester United and Real Madrid, have set up their own television channels (Andrews 2004;Rowe and Gilmour 2008). The political economy of media sport is structured, then, by both competitive and cooperative relationships between large corporations, sport associations and organizations, with the state sometimes intervening as a regulatory authority (e.g., in 1998 the United Kingdom's Monopolies and Mergers Commission blocked the takeover of Manchester United by News Corporation, the principal soccer broadcaster in that country, in the public interest - Rowe 2000).…”