Sport, media and audiences

There is important but well-trodden ground that this Companion has necessarily addressed" how does an industry qualify as cultural? The debate will not be rehearsed here (cf. Redhead, this volume), except in so far as it is necessary to introduce the specific cultural form of sport and to situate it within debates about culture and the cultural industries. It has been historically common for some, especially artists and their advocates, to criticize the influence of sport on culture and creativity, complaining that it is anti-intellectual, unaesthetic, aggressive and instrumental, and that it tends to crowd out more deserving cultural pursuits both in public culture and in competition over state and corporate sponsorship (see, for example, Atherden, 2009; Thurman, 2010). This debate is part of a larger one on culture and entertainment that must be set aside here in favour of more directly relevant concerns with sport as a 'borderline and problem case', according to Hesmondhalgh (2013: 19-20), who singles out sport for particular attention in a manner that is worth pursuing in this context: Sport industries such as football (soccer) and baseball arrange for the performance of live spectacles that are, in many respects, very like the live entertainment sector of the cultural industries. People pay to be entertained in real time in the co-presence of talented or not-that-talented performers. But there are notable differences, even from live entertainment in the cultural industries. Sport is fundamentally competitive, whereas symbol making isn't. Texts (in the sense in which I use the term in this book) tend to be more scripted or scored than in sports, which are essentially improvised around a set of competitive rules.