Sports are much more than just entertainment. Going in depth, they can be described, categorized, classified and explained in many ways through many numerous factors like through classifications of race, class, gender and categorizations of several types of sports and through descriptions of the rules of how to play them. However, on the finance, capitalism, and business side of sport, sports can only be described through the “Sports-Media Entertainment Complex”. Lawrence Wenner (1989) stated that this can be described as three-way relationship between sports, media and the audience. This can be further explained and justified in 2 central ways: 1) Almost everyone does the immense mainstream of their sports watching through the media (mostly via the TV), so that culturally and ethnically, sporting experience is hugely mediated. 2) financial perspective, qualified and progressively college, sports are highly reliant on on media money so that they can subsist and maintain their organizational structure and balance (Wenner 1989). In relation with this concept, this essay will focus on how this complex has changed the way American football and Wrestling has been played, administered and consumed.

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Joe Maguire (1991, p. 316) stated that the sports-media entertainment complex consists of 3 key groups, sports organizations, media & marketing organizations and media personnel, specifically broadcasters & journalists. Relating the SMEC with the traditions of cultural studies it can be theorized that there are a few models of media analysis that can be used for the examination of arbitrated sport. Different theorists have been researching this relationship. Stuart Hall demonstrated an extremely effective approach to media studies with his “encoding/decoding” model, through Karl Marx’s model of the “capital circuit” (production, circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction) and disparaging old-style mass media sender/message/receiver representations. Hall inspires people to think of diverse moments of the communication process as “a complex structure in dominance”, continual via the enunciation of related practices, where each of them, however, recollects its uniqueness and holds its own particular modality, its own types and scenarios of existence (Wenner 1989).  

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Modern-day literature based on media and globalization of sport claims that professional as well as amateur sport are progressively united into an evolving sports-media entertainment complex. Though, empirical proof supporting this entitlement was chiefly restricted to 3 huge corporations, where they have habitually employed major locations in the media oligopoly: “News Corp”, “Disney” and “AOL”/ “Time Warner” (Law et al. 2009, p. 280). The development of media control over sports, hastening during the 1990s, has gained major attention from numerous authors involved in sport sociology literature. At a political economy level most theorists agree that the sports-media entertainment complex is controlled by a very few number of companies, who own or rent the pictorial merchandise from the source to the consumption point by an internationally growing number of audiences, then lease out “their viewers and listeners attention” (Law et al. 2009, p. 281). If the audience reach is extensive and profound enough, produced advertising revenues supposedly spread way yonder the billions of dollars paid out. Market attendance for media welfares is gained in numerous ways, each totaling to the multiplicity of inter-relationships assembling up the sports-media entertainment complex. Relationship forms, in Maguire’s words, differ “over time and within and between continents . . . [and] from one sport to the next” (Law et al. 2009, p. 281). Having said that, sport-media relations are mostly paved by limited media reporting privileges and fairness proprietorship, where both apply extreme controlling levels. The critical point that must be addressed, however, is that fairness proprietorship takes in income flows in savings’ form on reporting privileges, incomes from “multi-platforms distributions” and “cross-promotion of within-conglomerate product” (Law et al. 2009, p. 281). A theorist named Whitson stated that globalization of business methods that comprise of “growth functions” reliant on “synergies” derivative over the cross-promotion of possessions and attainable through “business amalgamation”. Business amalgamation allows “product lines” to indorse one another done over joint relations. This ideology displays that sports teams (in a few scenarios complete leagues) stock content which is utilized to indorse more contents like TV shows or other possessions, which also help in the indorsement of sports. Whitson calls them “circuits of promotion” a role of corporation edifice, as one of the additional convincing reasons forcing the escalation of media business proprietorship of sports teams (Law et al. 2009, p. 281). There are other debates that the occurrence of cohesive business edifices is a characteristic of a ‘new oligopoly’ in America, developing from the multinational corporate practices acknowledged by Whitson as a progressively normal practice in international rivalry. A few authors debate that those involved in sport, whether as athletes, squads, leagues and even countries, haven’t got control anymore of the products that they own, now recognized in media spheres as simple “software”, in its commodification process, growing in power alongside with the vertical integration of sporting creation media circulation conglomerates. Joe Maguire (1991) argues that the interdependencies amidst the significant groups constructing the sports-media entertainment complex (sports teams, marketing companies and multinational corporations) have situated sports teams in dependent positions, where they no longer have control over the nature and create where their sport is broadcasted, conveyed and reported. Furthermore, annotations of control over what, where how and when sports are played (example: Fox’s acquisition of the British Rugby League and the consequential fluctuating of periodic play and team names) (Law et al. 2009, p. 281 & 282).

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Now let’s look at the other effects of the sports-media entertainment complex generally on sport itself. Specific fundamental issues must be addressed here. Within sport sociology, a wide array of critical theories come to an agreement that sport is being definitively transformed by its mass commodification in addition through its absorption into consumer culture. The traditional reification of sport is allowed to be observed as the result of those rationalizing procedures connected with the commercial civilization. For a few critical theorists, the traditional calamity of contemporary sport is connected with the calamity of ceremonial, of the community and of the moral sportsperson. The ceremonial measurement of sport is gone when the sport vision, highlighting the marketable and power-driven creation of winning and embellished entertainment victories.

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The tactic of the sports-media entertainment complex seems to be conversant by at least three factors: the present position style and ethos, preparation restrictions and the market for possible advertisers. Vital importance must be placed on the societal structure of equally the media audience and the members and viewers of the sport reported. Which of these fundamentals holds superior status differs mutually from the sport form reported and the possible promoter and or advertiser. In a few occasions, the possible sponsor or advertiser may have the desire to use the media exposure to aim a couple of these groups (Maguire 1991, p. 317). This clearly shows that sports are extremely reliant on this sports-media entertainment complex.

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To show how this sports-media entertainment complex has changed sport, let’s look at American Football as an example. The growth of American football can be seen as having a major impact on the Americanization of European countries and through the interconnected part played by the sports-media entertainment complex. American football is a sport that is itself the creation of cross-cultural integration and alteration. Back in the 1860s, the English game of rugby spread to America. In the framework of American colleges like Harvard and Yale, this sport had undergone numerous vicissitudes. In the past 100 years, American football has gradually developed in particular ways, getting to the period where the SuperBowl, the yearly season-ending brings together over 30 million television viewers, the systems can charge marketing fees in surplus of $675,000 for 30 seconds prime time throughout the game and the NFL, the sports leading body, presently has $1.4 billion agreement for broadcasting privileges over a period of 3 years. It was only from the late 1970s however, that American football began to develop within the western European sports society. Though no properly thought out marketing tactic connecting the sports-media entertainment complex seems to have been present back then, no one can come to the assumption that the expansion that has occurred over the last 10 years has been coincidental and are merely the result of Europeans quickly being fascinated by American football’s fun qualities (Maguire 1991, p. 319). Dynamics could be present in the expansion of media reporting of American football and when such reporting began in European countries, Italy, for example was the first-ever country to form teams. The Italian league was recognized to be extremely commodified, getting substantial heights of sponsorship and improving interest towards American trainers and players. The participation of Germany also seems to have remained significant in the growth of American football in the late 1970s. In Finland, the shape is dissimilar because American football there is still amateur-based and prodigiously comprises of home-grown players. In Spain, the rise of American football happened afterwards than in other western European countries and seems to be limited virtually completely in Catalonia positioned mainly around the major city of Barcelona (Maguire 1991, p. 321).

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The next example is “Professional Wrestling”. This is a sport that is probably the most controversial in the sporting world, mainly because some rules in wrestling contradicts with rules of other sports. However, it is still a major form of sporting entertainment and is one of the most watched sports in the world! Over the last 22 years, televised broadcasts of professional wrestling programs have come up on day of the week and the time of that day as well. The WWF’s flagship program of “Monday Night Raw” to this day is actually the most watched wrestling broadcast out of all the others. Streamed live in around 150 countries, this show brings viewers together in a profusion of atleast 50 million every week! Different professional wrestling programs are streamed live on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday & Sunday nights, along with Saturday afternoons as well. The time period of a normal professional wrestling event goes on for around 2-3 hours and holds an average of 6-8 matches (Atkinson 2002, p. 53). However, on the violence side of things, without a doubt, it looks as if the violence in professional wrestling is greatly acceptable due to the fact that the professional wrestlers are usually cognisant that it happens within the “false” context. The hits and blows are definitely real and those professional wrestlers are well-equipped to handle them along with having the necessary skills and techniques of throwing punches, holds, kicks and other special moves. People may not like this violent form of sport, but because they are being performed in a “make-believe world”, they can be very fun to watch. If the majority of interactive violence is deciphered by people in Western nations as offensive, professional wrestling pleads viewers to grip and rejoice violent behaviour in the dominion of sports-entertainment as both social purgation and festival. In monotonous societies where sports themselves are progressively at danger of losing their attraction as expressively refreshing and evocative events, professional wrestling performs sports violence as a technique of keeping audiences entertained (Atkinson 2002, p. 62).

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In conclusion, this is what the sports-media entertainment complex is and what it comprises of. As said, it consists of 3 key groups, sports organizations, media & marketing organizations and media personnel, specifically broadcasters & journalists. Together, they form a major power in sports media. And looking at the examples of American football and Professional wrestling, the sports-media entertainment complex has clearly had a major influence on how those 2 sports are played, administered and consumed.                                                                                                                                                 

                                References

 

 

• Alan Law, Jean Harvey & Stuart Kemp, “The Global Sport Mass Media Oligopoly: The Three Usual Suspects and More”, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, pp. 280-282, (2009, Newbury Park, California).

 

• Joe Maguire, “The Media-Sport Production Complex: The Case of American Football in Western Societies”, 1st ed., London: Sage Publications, pp. 316, 317, 319, 320 & 321, (1991, London, England).

 

• Lawrence Wenner, “Media, Sports & Society”, 1st ed., Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, pp. 77-78, (1989, Newbury Park, California). 

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• Michael Atkinson, “Fifty Million Viewers Can’t Be Wrong: Professional Wrestling, Sports Entertainment and Mimesis”, 1st ed., St. John’s Newfoundland & Labrador: Human Kinetics Publishers Inc., pp. 53 & 62, (2002, Memorial University of Newfoundland).