Raymond Boyle

Power play : sport, the media and popular culture

1. Sport, Media and Popular culture: Questions of Theory 2. All our Yesterdays: A History of Media sport 3. A Sporting triangle: Television, sport and sponsorship 4. Power Game: Why sport Matters to Television 5. Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? Media Sport and Stardom 6. The Race Game: Media, sport, Race and Ethnicity 7. For Men who Play to win 8. Games Across frontiers 10. Consuming Sport 11. New Media sport.

Football in the New Media Age

Introduction: The Game 1. Football and Television: Game On? 2. The Digital Revolution: A Whole New Ball Game? 3. The European Dimension: Power and Influence in New Media Football Markets 4. Commercialising Celebrity: Player Power and Image Rights 5. Battle for Control: Football Clubs and New Media Strategy 6. A League of their Own? The Old Firm and SPL TV 7. The New World Wide Web of Football: Interactivity and the Fan Conclusion: The Only Game? The Media and Football Industry in the 21st Century

Doing the Business? Newspaper reporting of the business of football

This research draws upon a growing interest within media sociology in the ways in which news is shaped by information flows between sources; it focuses on how the media, and newspapers in particular, report on the business aspects of the UK football industry. Media interest in the workings of the City and issues of corporate governance extend beyond the conventional business pages to encompass the sports pages, commentary and even editorializing. The case study in this article centres on the Scottish club, Celtic, and serves to illustrate how public interest in sport can help illuminate aspects of how financial news is produced and reported in the print media. The article argues that much of the growing and complex business side of the game goes largely unreported and that there is evidence of an over-reliance on celebrity sources by journalists and a lack of knowledge or experience among sports reporters in reporting business stories.

Reflections on Communication and Sport: On Journalism and Digital Culture

In this essay, Raymond Boyle reflects on how the study of sport within media and communication studies has evolved in the United Kingdom over the last 20 years. The first part of essay comments on the cultural importance of communication and sport. The second section traces the influences on the author’s research agenda, particularly in the area of sport journalism and the structural changes brought to it by digital media. Here, Boyle comments on the most influential scholars and works on communication and sport. The focus section of the essay considers the evolution of sport journalism and the changing role of sports journalists. In this section, the author considers the nexus of marketization, commercialization, and the internationalization of sport journalism and comments on the rise of public relations and the synergies between the sports industry and the entertainment industries. The focus section further considers the real and projected effects of digital journalism and the potential of citizen journalists to transform sport journalism. The essay closes with consideration of future research that will be needed to help us understand the cultural impacts of technological change on the role of sport journalism.

‘A Small Country with a Big Ambition’ Representations of Portugal and England in Euro 2004 British and Portuguese Newspaper Coverage

This article examines the way aspects of Portugal and Portuguese culture and society are talked about in and around the media coverage of a major international sporting event. It focuses on how things other than sport get talked about against the backdrop of a major international sporting and media event, and how these discourses connect with wider political, economic and cultural frames of reference. The research draws from newspaper coverage of Euro 2004 in the Portuguese and British newspaper markets. It examines the distinctive news sports agendas in both countries and shows how there is a growing distinction between the more European style of sports journalism in the British broadsheet/compact market and that of the tabloid newspapers in this country. It also outlines the differing versions of Portugal presented to the world from within two differing European newspaper markets.

From Troubleshooter to The Apprentice: the changing face of business on British television

This commentary seeks to open up a discussion around how British factual television has represented the world of business and finance over the last decade or so. It investigates the ways that factual television representations of the financial and business environment have changed and in so doing begins to identify the key drivers of this process. As the traditional boundaries between news and current affairs, drama and documentary have blurred and new formats emerged, this research begins to capture how British television has responded to these shifts through its engagement with the world of work, business and finance. Previous research in this area has tended to focus on the specific realm of television news journalism and the reporting of industrial and economic issues (Gavin, 2000; Jensen, 1987; Philo, 1995; Richardson, 1998), while more recently attention has been centred on the BBC and the issue of journalistic impartiality in its coverage of business (Svennevig, 2007). While such concerns naturally inform this research, attention here is on the ideas and discourses created beyond the television news arena and specifically on the role that factual entertainment television formats play in representing business on television. Given the centrality of the BBC in this process, it is worth briefly reflecting on recent attempts to change the institutional climate within that organization regarding its coverage of the world of business.

The celebrity entrepreneur on television: profile, politics and power

This article examines the rise of the ‘celebrity entrepreneur’ on television through the emergence of the ‘business entertainment format’ and considers the ways in which regular television exposure can be converted into political influence. Within television studies, there has been a preoccupation in recent years with how lifestyle and reality formats work to transform ‘ordinary’ people into celebrities. As a result, the contribution of vocationally skilled business professionals to factual entertainment programming has gone almost unnoticed. This article draws upon interviews with key media industry professionals and begins by looking at the construction of entrepreneurs as different types of television personalities and how discourses of work, skill and knowledge function in business shows. It then outlines how entrepreneurs can utilise their newly acquired televisual skills to cultivate a wider media profile and secure various forms of political access and influence. Integral to this is the centrality of public relations and media management agencies in shaping media discourses and developing the individual as a ‘brand identity’ that can be used to endorse a range of products or ideas. This has led to policy makers and politicians attempting to mobilise the media profile of celebrity entrepreneurs to reach out and connect with the public on business and enterprise-related issues.

Sport, the Media and Popular Culture

Sport is at once both trivial and serious, inconsequential yet of symbolic significance … Sport in many cases informs and refuels the popular memory of communities, and offers a source of collective identification and community expression for those who follow teams and individuals. (Sugden and Tomlinson, 1994: 3) … where Il Sole was available most of the prisoners, including politicals, read La Gazzetta dello Sport . (Observations made while in prison in Milan by Antonio Gramsci, in Forgacs, 1988: 376) Introduction Without question one of the great passions of the twentieth century has been sport. The opening decade of the twenty-first century suggests that this passion remains unabated. Sport continues to matter to thousands of players and fans across the globe, with differing sports playing a particularly important role in the cultural life of countries and people. While football is the global game, other sports such as baseball occupy a central position in American popular culture, cricket and Aussie Rules in Australian life, Gaelic games in Ireland, cricket and basketball in Caribbean culture, while rugby union is important in constructions of Welsh and New Zealand national identities.

Television sport in the age of screens and content

The death of television has been long predicated in the digital age, yet it remains a powerful mediator of live sports. This article focuses on football and examines the implications for the sport of the move to an age of screens and content. These may be large screens in public places or in our homes or those at work or smaller screens carried in the palm of our hands, but what we use them for, how content gets onto those screens, and the implications for sports and sports fans remain compelling questions in the digital age. The article argues that through reflecting on major media sport events such as the FIFA World Cup, we see patterns of continuity in the role played by television as well as evidence of change.

Sport and the Media in the UK: the Long Revolution?

‘It seems to me that we are living through a long revolution, which our best descriptions only in part interpret. It is a genuine revolution, transforming men and institutions; continually extended and deepened by the actions of millions, continually and variously opposed by explicit reaction and by the pressure of habitual forms and ideas. Yet it is a difficult revolution to define, and its uneven action is taking place over so long a period that it is almost impossible not to get lost in its exceptionally complicated process.’ 1 The dialectics of the relations between globalization, national identity and xenophobia are dramatically illustrated in the public activity that combines all three: football. For, thanks to global television, this universally popular sport has been transformed into a worldwide capitalist industrial complex (though, by comparison with other global business activities, of relatively modest size).2