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mind as tranquil research areas by comparison. The changes that I wish to chart
principally involve:

• New developments in the political economy of media sport, especially the
end to the media-fuelled financial boom in sport, which, like the dot.com
bonanza, has produced many casualties and re-drawn its lineaments.
• Shifts in media sport technology, consumption and use discussed briefly in
the Afterword to the first edition that require elaboration in tracing the
future nature and shape of the ‘media sports cultural complex’.
• New theoretical and empirical work in the field that is making a significant
contribution to the understanding of the relationships between sport,
culture and the media, and an expansion of the discussions of reception,
audiences, cultural citizenship and spectatorship in the first edition.
• Reflections on recent mega-media sports events (such as the Sydney 2000
Olympics and the 2002 World Cup) and new media texts (such as the films
Any Given Sunday and Bend It Like Beckham) that are now available for
textual analysis.
These additions, it is hoped, will make the second edition useful and relevant
for the many researchers, scholars and students in interdisciplinary fields
like Cultural, Media, Communication, Sport and Leisure Studies and for
those in disciplines such as Sociology, Economics and History attracted to the
subject of media sport and its wider socio-cultural significance. I have also
edited a new work, Critical Readings: Sport, Culture and the Media (2004), that
has the same structure as this book and is designed to provide readers with a
solid, stimulating foundation on which to launch their own critical analytical
adventures in an area of study that continues to fascinate, thrill and appal in
almost equal measure.
Books are never the sole creation of their author and I cannot imagine how
impoverished this one would have been without the direct and indirect contri-
bution of many people. The individuals that I would like to single out for their
international intellectual comradeship in recent years are Liesbet van Zoonen,
Richard Giulianotti and Alina Bernstein. Collegiality and conviviality have
been crucial bywords in the Cultural Industries and Practices Research Centre
(CIPS) and in the former Department of Leisure and Tourism Studies at the
University of Newcastle, Australia. My close collaborators, especially Deborah
Stevenson, Geoffrey Lawrence, Jim McKay and Toby Miller, have been sustain-
ing resources in the fullest sense. I would also like to acknowledge the grant
support of the Australian Research Council and the University of Newcastle
that has made possible the empirical research on which substantial elements
of this book are based. The Man with Many Qualities, Peter Wejbora, provided
excellent research assistance.