Dialectics in Transformations of Professional Sport

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore the relationship between competitive sports and the phenomenon of sports fandom as a unique symbiosis that qualitatively changes the nature of sport and reveals new aspects of human play in general. I note that spectators as consumers transform sport, in addition to indirectly and directly influencing and intervening in sports practice. As a result of this versatile involvement—from the initial form of competitive, formalized and unproductive game—sport can evolve through four successive stages: professional sport → sports show → ‘meta-play’ → “meta-sport “. The first of them has been sufficiently studied from two points of view, mainly: (a) control of training progress, effective coaching, and maximalised performance, and (b) management and marketing. The second form, sports show, is very rarely studied separately from the first stage (e.g.). Here I separate them. The third and fourth stages are proposed and studied here anew by a philosophical analysis of current and possible future developments and changes in the sports show. I analyse all these changes from a dialectical perspective and support it using the paradigm of tension between positive and negative freedom. From this point of view, all the mentioned transformations—from professional sport to meta-sport—are caused by changes (from synergy to tension and conflict) in the positive and negative freedom of spectators and sports organizations in a ‘dialectical symbiosis’. These are followed by the tensive contradiction between the principal freedom of human play and the self- and institutional restriction of freedom in the stage by stage evolving frames of game, sport, and professional sport. ‘Dialectical symbiosis’ is considered here as the fusion of entities, as a result of which one of them, at least, is transformed into a new quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional sport
• sport show
• sport fans
• dialectics
• positive and negative liberty

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to the philosopher Prof. Yotam Lurie from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva for a deep and informative conversation that allowed me to penetrate deeper into the essence of modern ideas about dialectics.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. … or regress, that is dependent on the axiological angle of view: one could see in competitive sports only the loss of the elements of free play which is fatal for culture.

2. Suffice it to recall the world-famous verbal skirmishes, insults and almost direct clashes of great boxers at joint press conferences before world championship matches.

3. In cricket, there is a very strong element of the sport show, through the introduction of ever shorter and more ‘entertaining’ forms of the game—most significantly T20. But it is, to a large extent, already another game, like, for example, beach volleyball, rapid chess, or futsal.

4. It should be noted that baseball has made some minor changes, such as lowering the height of the pitcher’s mound, in 1969, and making the ball livelier so that more home runs could be hit.

5. Many know the story about widening of a restricted (kye) zone in NBA league court from 3.7 to 4.9 m (1951–52 NBA season), because of the height and athletic abilities of basketball star George Lawrence Mikan, Jr. (1924–2005).

6. I use this typology as one that has very clear functional considerations, in contrast to, for example, DIXON’s (2001) axiological dichotomy of spectators as ‘partisans’ and ‘purists’.