Page 222 - Sport Culture and the Media

AF TERWORD: SPORT INTO THE

E THER(NE T ) –– NE W TECHNOL OGIES,

NE W C ONSUMERS

Another subscriber model, equally well thought out in my view, is the
ESPN site. Rather than simply repurposing its television content, ESPN
enhanced and broadened the content offering. For the score-obsessed
sports junkie, stats and scores are available on demand. No more having
to tune in to all-news radio at fifteen minutes after the hour; no more
phone calls to a 900 number droning on through an endless list of scores
that the consumer might have no interest in at all. ESPN.com, by virtue of
its interactivity, allows the consumer to get the information desired in the
shortest possible time. On-line discussion areas on this same site further
foster the building of a community around the ESPN brand.
(Michael J. Wolf 1999: 211)

Introduction: the coming of cybersport

One fear of every academic author is the instant obsolescence of their work
occasioned by a sudden cultural or technological shift. In a dynamic area like
media sport this is a reasonable concern, although we can have absolute con-
fidence that, even with its recent decline in profitability, there will be more
rather than less of it in the future. What we need to consider is not whether
media sports texts will disappear or decline, but how their form, content and
uses will change. The media will have to deal with transformations in sport (the
rise of new sports and the decline of old ones) and sport must handle new
media technologies that will provide, through digital compression and the like,
not only many more sports TV channels, but also the opportunities for viewers
to use interactive technologies and to design their own sports programming.
The institutions of sport and media will also have to come to terms with