Reflections on Communication and Sport

Abstract

This essay highlights the unique and intimately interrelated nature of the relationship between communication and advertising by providing a selective overview of communication about and through sport within the context of promotional culture. While advertising and marketing of sport leagues, teams, celebrity athletes, and commodities are important, this treatment focuses on how the advertising industry has come to dominate contemporary social life, and why “sport” is such an important channel of communication within promotional culture. The article (a) outlines the emergence, nature, and social significance of advertising; (b) offers a framework for analysis based on the circuit of commodification and communication model that emphasizes the context and complex interrelationships between particular moments in commodification processes; (c) discusses a current research example examining sport, globalization, and corporate nationalism; and (d) considers directions for future research.

Looks, Liveliness, and Laughter: Visual Representations in Commercial Sports for Children

“…As previously emphasized by Jackson (2012) and Hall (1997), how people are represented will influence and affect not only the ways in which people think and feel but also how they act. Visual representations will, thus, appeal to the people they represent, but they will also represent aspirational ideals, such as joy of activity, physical ability, and skin color.…”

“…Moreover, he uses the concept symbolic persons to describe how marketers construct or forge their ideal customers through representations. In this study, we adopt Cooks' idea of symbolic persons constructed to sell products or services both as a reflection of the existing culture and as something that constructs cultures and produces meaning (Brookes, 2002;Hall, 1997;Jackson, 2012). This conceptualization is highlighted by our use of the concept "(re)produce," which entails both the reproduction and the production of norms and values (cf.…”

“…Such representations, or images, tell stories of who belongs in sport and what sport is supposed to be about, and therefore it matters which images are printed, published, and spread. Visual representations may, in other words, influence politics and policy, as well as how people think, feel, and act (Brookes, 2002;Hall, 1997;Jackson, 2012;Rowe, 2004;Wenner, 2008). Sport images are, in that sense, narratives with political and social implications as they produce and reproduce norms, values, and ideas (Rowe, 2004).…”

Fans not Customers! Kategoria in the Rise and Demise of the European Super League

“…Kruse (1981a) noted that sports is not "a sphere of social reality separate from the sociopolitical world," but instead is social, political, and everincreasingly financial (p. 271). Sport's hyper commodification has led to an explosion of branding, spectacle, and marketing designed to enhance worth (Boyd, 2000;Duvall & Guschwan, 2013;Jackson, 2013;Kellner, 1996;Meân et al, 2010;Moor, 2007;Real, 2013;Wenner, 1994Wenner, , 2010. The "'market value' of an athlete's [or organization's] image hinges on…public reputation," Brazeal (2008) contends, serving as the financial crux on which sports enterprises rest (p. 146).…”

Deporte, medios de comunicación y sociedad.

“…El segundo mostró el rol de los medios de comunicación en la legitimación de la masculinidad hegemónica, el ethos capitalista y el nacionalismo marcial (McKay y Rowe, 1987;Wenner, 2015). Sut Jhally -un autor a menudo ignorado (Wenner, 1989: 77)-ya había avanzado un análisis de las relaciones entre ideología, economía y cultura (Jhally, 1984) que posteriormente sería esencial en la conceptualización del sport media complex y sus subsiguientes adaptaciones en el modelo transaccional (Wenner, 1989), el media/sport production complex (Maguire, 1993), el media sports cultural complex (Rowe, 1999) y el sport media promotional culture nexus (Jackson, 2013(Jackson, , 2015.…”