Page 197 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

186 • Sport, Media and Society

opening sequence might appear as an overly touristic representation of a generalised
London location. For a US audience, the BBC sequence is likely to be too obscure,
with reference to Wombles (1970s children’s television characters) and Henman Hill.
The brand is able to organise the interaction between the producers and consumers of
Wimbledon in different geographical locations and different national cultures.

Exclusively Mass-Mediated Wimbledon

Behaviour codes that have become part of the recognisable Wimbledon brand—the
politeness and self-control of the English upper middle classes—help to create the
aura of exclusivity that surrounds the tournament. Expectations that male and female

players behave in gentlemanly and ladylike ways can conflict with the demands of
high-performance sport. Bodies that appear out of control become marked as devi-
ant in this context. During the 2005 tournament, the press wrote extensively about
the ‘grunting’ of primarily female tennis players, and NBC drew on this reporting to
present an item prior to the Williams–Sharapova match which ended with a shot of
a woman in a fl oppy white Wimbledon hat with a refi ned English accent, who said,
‘Sharapova’s grunting is . . . appalling.’ The woman’s appearance and accent marked
her as a Wimbledon insider, someone who knows about appropriate etiquette. The
discussion of grunting included a suggestion that it should be banned from tennis,
indicating the criteria by which certain bodies are judged to be unacceptable at Wim-

bledon. The refined, white (and definitively heterosexual) characters played by Paul

Bettany and Kirsten Dunst in the romantic comedy fi lm Wimbledon (2004) captured
the poise and charm of the bodies coded as most acceptable.
The exclusivity of the Wimbledon brand is reflected in the design of the Web site

(http://www.wimbledon.org). The sober layout in the Wimbledon colours of green,
white and purple connote refinement and prestige. The Web site offers Wimbledon

merchandise—‘tennis and casual wear, footwear, tennis rackets, bags and balls . . . a
select range of luxury products such as towels, fine leather goods, sunglasses, crystal,

jewellery and luxury food products’—for sale and shipping anywhere in the world.
Global access via the Web site means that the brand is able to combine Wimbledon’s
exclusivity with mass consumption. For a fee, during the Championships, the Web
site also enables viewers located anywhere in the world to choose which live match
to watch via the Internet. The same space that appears to exclude so many unaccept-
able bodies is delivered right to your door for your own personal use.

Sport, Media, Society

The mediation of Wimbledon exemplifies the dynamic interaction between sport,
media and society. In the introduction to this book, we argued that the sport media
illuminated important themes in sociological research in sport: the values of sport,