Cruel Optimism in Sport Management: Fans, Affective Labor, and the Political Economy of Internships in the Sport Industry

Abstract

For university students in sport management programs, working in sports is often the end goal, and internships have become the most common curricular component for achieving this end. Sport management students bring to these internships various backgrounds and active fan attachments with sports that structure their work experiences and create certain conditions of exploitation. We thus conducted interviews with current and soon-to-be interns to understand their subjective perceptions and experiences of working in sports as fans. Drawing upon Lauren Berlant's concept of cruel optimism as well as neo-Marxist theories of affective labor, we reveal the structuring contradictions of interns' work in the contemporary sports industry.

The intern economy in the cultural industry: an empirical study of the demand side

“…When a sequence of unpaid internships starts to become an entry barrier into a field, it also starts to add to the precarity of work. As recent research has found, some candidates aspiring to work in sports have suggested that an internship is something they themselves should be paying for, instead of the other way around (Hawzen et al 2018). While this practice was not uncommon several centuries ago in relation to apprenticeships that trained people for crafts and trades (Frenette 2015), today, it sounds rather provocative.…”

“…Work in the creative economy has been described as 'affective labour', which refers to the 'immaterial labour' typical for so many service industries that is based on relationships and incites feelings of wellbeing, connectedness, passion and excitement (Neff, Wissinger, and Zukin 2005;Hardt and Negri 2000): many workers in the cultural industry experience a strong affective attachment to arts and culture, and at times also a 'fan experience', similar as within sports (Hawzen et al 2018). Such 'fanworker' duality is a clear manifestation of the 'tendency in late capitalism to refashion labour as love, "the grind" as the goal, and cruelty as optimism' (Hawzen et al 2018, 201;McRobbie 2016).…”

“…These days, young people are frequently expected to accept sub-standard work conditions of entry-level positions because these are considered to be an investment in their future careers. Out of fear of others taking those positions and losing the prospects of working in any particular industry, young people sometimes believe that refusing those conditions may be a waste of the resources spent on education (Hawzen et al 2018). As such, research has added several nuances to the optimistic win-win discourses about the intern economy (Frenette 2013;Siebert and Wilson 2013;Hadjivassiliou et al 2012), pointing at a variety of concerns, including the lack of quality of the internship experience (McHugh 2017), the ambiguity of existing legal frameworks (Hawzen et al 2018) and the adverse socio-economic consequences of the phenomenon (Perlin 2011).…”

“…Tasks allocated to interns, relate to media and promotion, including dissemination and taking care of social networks and websites. The explicit references to 'contacts' and 'artists' in many of the adverts may be a way by which employers seducefully describe their available positions as such vocabulary resonates with the fan-worker duality and affective labour characteristics of cultural work (Hawzen et al 2018). Workers seem to have more responsibilities visà-vis interns, reflected in frequently occurring words as 'coordination', 'development', 'responsible', 'collaboration', and 'ensure'.…”

“…Especially combined with the evidence that work hours of employees and interns are largely similar, that several employers expect interns to have experience, and that organisations are not very likely to simultaneously hire employees and interns, the organisation of work indicates substitution. (Hawzen et al 2018), journalism (Discenna 2016) and culture (Frenette 2013;, research points at significant heterogeneity in terms of labour market conditions (Hadjivassiliou et al 2012). Realities such as the substitution of regular work by internships and the obstacles to socio-economic mobility that originate in the unequal access to internship opportunities, manifest differently across sectors/ industries.…”