Sport and the media in the UK: the long revolution?

Abstract

‘It seems to me that we are living through a long revolution, which our best descriptions only in part interpret. It is a genuine revolution, transforming men and institutions; continually extended and deepened by the actions of millions, continually and variously opposed by explicit reaction and by the pressure of habitual forms and ideas. Yet it is a difficult revolution to define, and its uneven action is taking place over so long a period that it is almost impossible not to get lost in its exceptionally complicated process.’ ¹

The dialectics of the relations between globalization, national identity and xenophobia are dramatically illustrated in the public activity that combines all three: football. For, thanks to global television, this universally popular sport has been transformed into a worldwide capitalist industrial complex (though, by comparison with other global business activities, of relatively modest size).2

Notes

¹ Williams, The Long Revolution, 10.

² Hobsbawn, Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism, 90.

³ Jenkins, Convergence Culture.

⁴ Boyle and Haynes, Power Play; Brookes, Representing Sport; Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media; Blain and Boyle, ‘Sport as Real Life’.

⁵ Boyle, Sports Journalism; Steen, Sports Journalism.

⁶ Broadcasting Audiences Research Board (BARB) figures.

⁷ Ofcom, The Communications Market 2007.

⁸ BARB, 20 October 2007.

⁹ Bell, ‘A Toehold in Football’.

¹⁰ Blain and Boyle, ‘Sport as Real Life’.

¹¹ Richards, Foster and Kiedrowski, Communications.

¹² The Daily Telegraph, 9 February 2008, Sport section.

¹³ King, The European Ritual; Williams, ‘“Protect Me From What I Want”’, Williams, ‘Rethinking Sports Fandom’.

¹⁴ BBC Sport, ‘England Player Numbers at New Low’, 27 May 2008, http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport.

¹⁵ Westerbeek and Smith, Sport Business in the Global Marketplace, 36.

¹⁶ Beckett, Supermedia; Davies, Flat Earth News; Monck, Can You Trust the Media?

¹⁷ Ofcom, Annual Report 2007/2008, 20.

¹⁸ Goldblatt, The Ball is Round.

¹⁹ Brecht, ‘Against Georg Lukacs’, 51.

²⁰ Boyle and Haynes, Power Play; Brookes, Representing Sport; Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media; Blain and Boyle, ‘Sport as Real Life’.

²¹ Whannel, Fields in Vision.

²² Schlesinger and Tumber, Reporting Crime.

²³ Davies, Flat Earth News, 85.

²⁴ Boyle, Sports Journalism.

²⁵ Bower, Broken Dreams; Conn, The Beautiful Game?

²⁶ Jennings, The Great Olympic Swindle; Jennings, Foul!; Sugden and Tomlinson, Great Balls of Fire.

²⁷ Jon Holmes, ‘A Whole New Ball Game’, GQ Magazine, January 2008.

²⁸ Barnett, ‘On the Road to Self-destruction’.

²⁹ The Independent on Sunday, 22 June 2008.

³⁰ Boyle, Sports Journalism.

³¹ Jason Cowley, ‘A New Era’, Observer Sports Monthly, no. 100, June 2008.

³² Bazell, Theatre of Silence; Samuels, The Beautiful Game is Over.

³³ Vialli and Marcotti, The Italian Job.

³⁴ Humphries, Dublin v Kerry.

³⁵ Williams, The Long Revolution.