Sport industry

Sport industry is the manufacturing of sport related goods, services, and ideas through the combination of sport activities with business, mass media, and politics. Unlike
sport, which emphasizes participation of both players and spectators, sport industry aims at maximizing its economic profits and social effects. To achieve these goals, business, media, and politics cooperate on the basis of interdependence.

Media representation acts as a bridge linking business and politics in sport industry. On the one hand, as Neil Blain (2002) claims, media representation of sport produces the marketing initiatives that facilitate consumption of sport related commodities. On the other hand, sport is a friendly agent of liberal capitalism. Star athletes and sport events actually divert people’s attention from social problems and shape personal identities according to political interests (Marquee 1999; Rivenburgh 2002). In this context, business, mass media, and politics have developed an intimate relationship in the arena of sport industry. Due to its wide involvement in society, sport industry, therefore, is of great significance on both macro and micro levels. Specifically, sport industry is the catalyst in economy and an active ingredient in personal identity formation.

References

* Blain, Neil. ‘Media Culture’: Sport as Dispersed Symbolic Activity. Culture, Sport, Society Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 227-254, Autumn 2002.
* Marqusee, Mike. Redemption Song, New York: Verso, 1999.
* Rivenburgh, Nancy K. The Olympic Games: Twenty-First Century Challenges as a Global Media Event. Culture, Sport, Society, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 31-50, Autumn 2002.