Page 22 - Sport Culture and the Media

INTRODUCTION || 3

other available surfaces carry advertisements featuring celebrity sports-
people endorsing fast food chains, new car models, leisurewear brands, health
insurance and sundry other goods and services. Many fellow travellers and
pedestrians have also turned themselves into walking brand promotions,
displaying corporate sports logos and colours. Some are seemingly cut off from
the surrounding world as they listen to sports reports and live commentaries on
personal ‘walkmans’, or chat and send ‘text’ messages via mobile phones to
distant others about their latest sporting idols and villains. Flashing electronic
signs and newspaper stands on street corners carry news about footballers
transferring between teams for multi-million sums of money, coaches and
managers sacked, and forthcoming sports fixtures on television. Shop windows
and street stalls display all manner of sports paraphernalia for sale, from
collectors’ cards to supporters’ scarves and, if a local team is about to take part
in a significant sports contest, messages of support decorate the streetscape, ‘go
the Blues, Reds, Cowboys, Bruisers, etc.’ urgings in respectable shop windows
are visible alongside the illicit fan signatures, endorsements, insults and threats
characteristic of sports graffiti.
Leaving public territory for the institutional world does not mean entering a
sports-free zone. In workplaces and educational establishments, conversational
space in available breaks is likely to be filled with talk of sport and about sports
talk as athlete-endorsed hamburgers and isotonic drinks are consumed, and
personal boundaries and identities are marked with photographs and banners
on desks and walls declaring sporting affiliations. The sports cyberworld will be
illicitly contacted when employers and teachers think that computers and their
Internet access are being put to more ‘serious’ work and educational use. The
predictive and analytical skills of workmates are likely to be applied to ‘sweeps’
at the time of famous horse races, sports result ‘tipping’ competitions, online
sports betting and, in pursuit of the perennial dream of a rich retirement, by
accurately predicting the results of a number of sports contests and so winning
the ‘pools’. On the journey home, media headlines may be sighted about the
latest sports scandal (Rowe 1997a) – a famous sportsman and film star on trial
for the murder of his wife, a swimmer caught with performance-enhancing
drugs in her bloodstream, a basketball player announcing that he’s HIV-
positive, allegations of corruption of referees and match-fixing connected to
international sports betting rings. Back again at the domestic hearth, there will
be myriad opportunities to receive information about sport in the electronic
and print media, or via home computers (which might be loaded with inter-
active sports games), and there is likely to be ‘live’ sports coverage or edited
highlights on the multi-channels of free-to-air or pay television. As the alarm
clock radio is being checked for the morning and the sleep timer switched on to
guide the listener into slumber, quite possibly the last sounds of the day to be