MEDIATED SPORTS AND THE BUSINESS BEHIND THEM

Media representations of sport have grown emmensely in the last fifteen years.  Today’s’ average American household receives approximately thirty-three broadcast and cable channels, and there are occasions when as many as ten sporting events are televised simultaneously.  Over 8,000 sporting events are televised each year, an average of twenty-two per day. (Chandler, 15)  Much of what we know about sport is shaped by the media.  Relationships between mass media and sports are more and more prominent and are important to study closely in order to understand the American communities that surround the nation’s sports and sport’s television coverage. To better understand the relationship between sports and the media, this section will look at how sports are produced, what message they convey, and how business shopes the audience.
 
 

Many people still believe that the media's coverage of sporting events, public ceremonies, and news is unmediated, passing directly to the audience through the eye of the camera.  However, if you look behind the television footage of a sporting event, it is easy to see that the television producers and editors of the sporting programming have much control of what you see and interpret from the event. What sports television producers actually do is "translate electronically the three-dimensional flesh and blood game onto a two-dimensional screen(Chandler, 17)."  They also lift the race out of its original cultural settings, stadiums, and set them in a new cultural context: the living room.  In making their translation, producers certainly exercise power over their original text, for they decide such things as which portion of the race the viewer will see, how long a segment of the race will be shown, whether it will be magnified by a close-up or left in its long-distance context.  The translators can focus on the fans rather than on an minor accidnet on a turn.  They also can draw attention, through replay and commentary, to particular aspects of the game.  In essence, when a viewer watches a sporting event, he/she has to conform to the translator’s image of it.

This may disappoint and frustrate viewers, who may not be seeing on TV what they want.  However, it is also necessary to understand that producers of TV sporting events are, themselves, constrained by the experiences  and expectation of many of their viewers who have seen or played the televised sporting even before.(Chandler, 25) Whatever mechanisms or codes TV producers employ, these mechanisms and codes must correspond with the expectations of the viewers, particularly those that truly understand the sporting event being filmed, dealing with what is going on in the stadium.  Yet, when "TV producers provide both the essence and process of the game authentically, the viewer can experience the real thing.  However, sometimes, TV producers can by design or ignorance mistranslate the text, and the viewer could possibly experience something very different (Chandler, 21)."
 
 

With better produced and more widely broadcast the improvements mediated sporting events, it is important to address messages of content of mediated sports texts- the second major element of mediated sports.  What is already clear is that what we experience in the stadium or on the television directly affects what we think, feel, and see. As a viewer, you are constantly interpreting what you see, and it is true that not everyone in the stadium or TV room experiences the event in the same way- even after the viewer has to look at where the camera crews take his/her vision. "What, therefore, is of paramount importance is the degree to which the differences between what one sees and hears on my screen and what one sees and hears at the stadium affect the true experience of the game.  At the stadium, without electric aids the viewer sits in one place and has the choice of using his/her binoculars or not using them, the viewers sees each play only once-or may miss it all together if he/she sneezes.   Yet in front of my TV screen, the viewer is whisked about the stadium on a magic carpet besides seeing plays and players in great detail or at a distance.  The viewer watches some plays over and over again from different angles(Chandler, 22)." Also, if the viewer listens to the commentators, he/she can learn a good deal about what went on, as well as learn a certain amount of trivia and maybe some misinformation.  Thus, visual and auditory representation of a sporting event show that the experience at the stadium and the experience at home are indisputably different. Other than all of these aspects that are used as part of the representations of the sporting event, the last and most important difference between the stadium and the home is the social context.  The people that you watch a sporting event with, whether it be at home with close friends and family, at a bar with friends and strangers, or at the stadium with thousands of strangers and one friend, create a social context that will deeply effect they way that a viewer experiences the event.

Beyond these differences, it is important for a sports program on TV to be contained in a certain context.  It is this context, whether it is Monday Night Football or March Madness, that sports television creates a market and a business for itself. Even the most popular sport will not be watched unless it is set in a context that has meaning. Within the appropriate context, any sporting event that is to be shown regularly on the screen must therefore possess the qualities of "good theatre" to maintain viewers and sponsors. (Chandler, 27) "Never the less, however good the commentators, however skilled the conversations, some sports texts are either not worth translating for commercial networks because too few people are interested in them, or they are extremely difficult to translate because they lack the inherent qualities of good theater(Chandler, 27)."
 
 

By looking at the contexts that sports events are arranged in and focusing on qualities of good theatre that are necessary for sporting events to include in order to connect with the viewing populations, the third major topic of mediated sport, audience interaction with mediated sports texts, and the world of business and marketing that are involved in sports and sports television coverage, are emphasized.  Chandler writes in Television and National Sport that, "In the pre-television era viewers were encouraged to believe that sport exemplified certain intrinsic values.  Some critics believe that the TV of today has dealt the deathblow to that illusion, demonstrating to the most clueless of viewers that professional sport is a business, and is conducted in accordance with prevailing business practices (30)." In other words, the focus of television programming, even live events like games, matches, or races, is sometimes seen as more focused on sales and the connection to the audience as viewing consumers than on simply trying to relay an image of truth that is not too dramatized and limiting.  There is a fear that has generated among critical viewers that the spread of broadcasting has led to a progressive deterioration of popular taste.  TV is to some an alienating invention (millions of people are connected by a machine), and its function sets high culture against pop-culture.  Viewers, once again, have little influence over what is shown because the programming activities of all networks and stations are dominated by the search for corporate profits by selling audiences to advertisers.

To further understand the messages that are sent to audiences through certain contexts of mediated sports, it is helpful to understand the business and marketing world behind the sports coverage.  To begin, "the right to broadcast sporting events must be purchased from those who control them-sport leagues, team owners, National Collegiate Athletic Association, etc. Networks in turn sell advertising to sponsors on national, regional, and local levels aimed at specific demographic and audience groups( Wenner, 24)." Because of this system, advertising has become an increasingly complex part of the sport and media relationship.  Even indirect advertising, including signage at an arena, on athletic equipment, on a car, and on athletes themselves contributes significant revenue to teams, sport organizations, and players. Because sports viewers reach a broad spectrum of demographic, racial, and gender groups, that even with a seemingly endless supply of television channels, sport is seen as the programming that can "best break through the clutter of channels and advertising and consistently produce a desirable audience for sale to advertisers."(Wenner, 30)  Thus, sporting events are extremely popular to advertisers and, in turn, television networks, and, also, the contexts that are used to carry the messages of mediated sports to the viewing public are fairly low key, not dramatized, and realistic.