Page 106 - Sport Culture and the Media

MONEY, MYTH AND THE BIG MATCH || 87

has expanded considerably since), it was in the same year estimated that tele-
vision ‘product’ twenty-nine times greater in value (US$70 billion) stayed in
its ‘nation of origin’. Of course, such raw figures do not take into account
other forms of ‘cultural exchange’ – such as the ‘uncompensated’ imitation of
American programme genres like soap operas and quiz shows in many different
countries – but they do indicate that judgements of a smoothly completed
‘project’ of economic and cultural globalization are seriously premature.
Culture has continued to be a major sticking point in attempts to create an open
global market for good services with, as Ann Capling (2001: 165) has pointed
out, the ‘the audiovisual sector, especially films, videos and television programs’
being an ‘extremely contentious’ area in multilateral trade negotiations. There
are few more highly charged areas of audiovisual culture than sport, with many
nations intervening in the TV marketplace to protect the broadcast of listed
events of national significance – almost all of them sporting (Rowe 2002).
Cunningham and Jacka (1996: 40), furthermore, observe that most sports pro-
gramming does not travel well in the global mediascape, so that ‘Of the various
genres of television . . . most are locally specific, and are not heavily traded’,
and genres like sport ‘except for major international events like Grand Slam
tennis, the Olympics, World Cup soccer, or Formula One Grand Prix motor
racing . . . are usually entirely local in character’. The aforementioned example
of American football is just such a game that has had little success in its
attempts to ‘export itself’ as popular sports television (Maguire 1990, 1999;
McKay and Miller 1991). However, as Hollywood film and US network tele-
vision discovered many years ago, a successful if expensive-to-produce item in a
domestic market is doubly successful when it can be distributed and promoted
‘fully formed’ in other markets.
For this reason, there is an unending search for new ways to exploit the same
or partially modified economic goods and, as Cunningham and Jacka (1996:
40–1) recognize, ‘under the pressure of burgeoning channel capacity and com-
mercialization, new tradeable international formats are emerging’, including
those ‘prompted by new forms of delivery like pay television’, leading to the
‘growth of specialist sports channels [which] will lead to the televising of sports
not previously considered television fare, in order to fill the demand’. Sports
like boxing have been quick to appreciate the international economic potential
of ‘pay-per-view’ bouts involving heavyweight (in more than one sense) stars
like Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis, where all the resources of the broadcast
and print media can be used, through staged pre-fight confrontations between
the combatants and other devices, to stimulate an urge to pay to see the event
on screen as it happens. That it tends to happen on US soil or in East Coast time
zone friendly locations, or at times that are inconvenient for the boxers and
ringside viewers but convenient for US TV viewers, reflects the aforementioned