The following are some of the issues deserving of ongoing scholarly focus

Ongoing changes in the television and advertising industries have exponentially increased the already considerable value of sports as programming. Sports are the best exemplar of the television programming that is most valued in the rapidly globalizing television industry.

As has been the case since the development of the industry, sports attract a desirable audience difficult, if not impossible to reach, with other programming. The live event nature of sports creates an exciting atmosphere that is difficult to replicate with other programming.

On the international level, certain sports events have long demonstrated their ability to cut across boundaries of language and culture. This is of vital importance to a television industry that is evolving into a “new” oligopoly that will operate globally.

These attributes are enhanced at a time when the television industry has to cope with an audience that has more power in its relationship with the medium.

The diffusion of satellites, cable, VCRs, and RCDs has given the audience that can afford such technologies the means to choose from a large number of program offerings. Sports programming is regarded as having the ability to stop or at least arrest the channel changing inclination of the restless viewer.

Sports also provide television with opportunities to produce both mass and niche audiences. For every Olympiad or Super Bowl, there are many once-fringe sports that can produce small but demographically- valuable audiences for advertisers.

Sports entities also benefit from the increasing trend of advertisers to spend money on integrated marketing schemes as a reaction to the clutter of spots and services on television and the increased power of the viewer to avoid conventional advertising.

The sports marketing branch of IM is almost a $3.0 billion business in the United States and Canada and growing much more rapidly than traditional advertising (“Reality check, 1996).

Of course, television coverage of sports creates much of the value of such schemes by showcasing the RCD-proof signage, the new television-friendly playing facilities, personalities, merchandise, and, in general, serving as primary promotional tool for spectator sports.

Sports entities clearly have benefitted and gained more power in the partnership from television industry flux. More than ever, the relationship is symbiotic with both partners needing each other to maintain and extend influence.

The immediate prospect is for more joint ventures and further economic and operational integration of the sports and media industries to the point where it will make less and less intuitive sense to distinguish between the industries.

The evolving global sports media industry offers a rich research site, as the public policy and political economic issues discussed in this brief overview need more attention. The following are some of the issues deserving of ongoing scholarly focus:

1. The limits of globalization

Can US sports product be exported via television in anything other than the present relatively limited fashion? Can a lucrative market consisting of divergent nations and people be created and sustained over the long term? What impact will such a market have on indigenous sport and media systems (Bellamy, 1993; Maguire, 1993b; Wildman & Siwek, 1987)?

2. The changing definition of fans

Will the increasing linkage of sport to corporate benefactors manifest in new facilities, franchise relocations, and premium ticket prices and seating endanger the connection of sports to their traditional fan base (Gorman & Calhoun, 1994)?

Will the mass popularity of sport be sustainable solely through television and other media coverage? Or, has the ascendancy of television and corporate sponsorship already made such considerations irrelevant?

3. Internal problems of sports entities

The present sellers market for sports has exacerbated internal tensions within sports leagues. In the NFL, for example, the Dallas Cowboys and the league sued each other over marketing deals made by the team that allegedly conflict with league deals (Jensen, 1996).

The leagues’ seeming inability to prevent franchise movement is another problem with policy implications for sports and the individuals and public entities that support and subsidize them.

4. The new television oligopoly

The recent changes in the television industry that have increased the power of the viewer and the suppliers of desirable programming have been called a transitional stage and prelude to a re-exertion of the industry’s traditional power in these relationships (Bellamy & Walker, 1996).

If this analysis is correct, what are the implications for sport’s long-term value as television product and level of autonomy within the partnership?

This list is by no means exhaustive as the study of the relationship of television and sports ultimately is about the continuing influence of Media Sport on our culture and imagination.

Further research on the many dimensions of this increasingly powerful partnership of global oligopolies is a necessity in tracking, understanding, and perhaps influencing the structure, behavior, and impact of global media on everyday life.