Page 115 - Sport Culture and the Media

96 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

Because sports events have become the most important, regular manifestations
of this national culture (Rowe et al. 1998), and despite the move towards their
supply to the citizenry by commercial rather than by public broadcasters
(Wilson 1998), media sport has become a major aspect of contemporary
cultural heritage. Sport and television are, therefore, deeply implicated in
debates about cultural citizenship in a way that would horrify cultural elitists
(Tomlinson 1999).
Once, then, free-to-air television provided major national and international
sports events at nominal direct expense to viewers, and these cultural items had
been counted among the major rituals of national significance, they became
incorporated into the citizen’s cultural ‘treasure house’. As a result, there would
need to be compelling grounds indeed for the ‘free list’ of major television
sport to be fully commodified, yet this is precisely what is threatened. The
political value of (virtual) universal entitlement in the west has been challenged
by market-based values, with the idea of abundant choice of television sports
texts as the overriding imperative – a choice that involves a ‘user pays’ principle
and one which positions sport as simply another commercialized entertainment
option in an unforgiving and, ideally, unfettered cultural marketplace. The only
rights that need to be safeguarded from this point of view, then, are those of
sports media consumers from fraud, deception and other crimes of commercial
practice, rather than in terms of any higher concept of the protection of sig-
nificant cultural rights. The completed commodification of television sport
would be consistent with its current direction, but would ultimately destroy the
values associated with serving all citizens in favour of identifying, targeting and
privileging affluent viewers. As Stan Correy puts it:

Sporting tradition dictates that whatever the game, it was originally played
for pure and honest motives. Money was the servant of the players not the
master.
In the 1990s, it’s clear that sports tradition has lost out badly to com-
merce. The sports field is the battleground on which global TV cor-
porations are fighting to test new television technology. The reward is
not a gold-plated trophy but the traditional sports consumer. Profile:
Male, 18–35, with enough disposable income to attract the sponsors with
the big dollars.
(Correy 1995: 80)
Debates about the rights and responsibilities in sports television are played
out differently according to national context. In most European countries
and various former British colonies, for example, broadcast sport was first
dominated by public broadcasters, their control gradually loosened first by
commercial free-to-air broadcasters and then by pay TV companies. In the