FOOTBALL AND MODERN MEDIA

Football and Modern Media: Evaluation of the Impact of Increase in Value of TV Broadcast Rights on Professional Football in England



Football and Modern Media: Evaluation of the Impact of Increase in Value of TV Broadcast Rights on Professional Football in England

Introduction

The Science of sport has long been away from economic thought. The research of sport and physical activity have been oriented towards the study of sports related activities and training systems, in order to obtain improvements in performance of athletes, forgetting the importance of economic resources. The lack of interest of researchers in the economic area has been limited due to the relative importance of sports in the economy and foci of interest in other disciplines such as health economics, economics of education and environmental economics, and others. The importance of sport lies in its versatile nature; allowing people to play six different functions: education, public health, social, cultural, recreational, economic and redistributive. In recent years the launch of the sport as fun, healthy human activity (which would fit within the leisure economy), but as a spectator sport, business and sport as a social fact of great importance (Bridgewater 2010, pp. 126-165). This change also involves the discovery of the potential of sport for the media to companies seeking to sponsor the marketing strategy of sporting events, which explains the relative development of the sport economy in recent years.

Football or soccer is one of the most popular sports thanks to the millions of fans and viewers across the entire planet, which comprises about 4% of world population. This means that 270 million people are actively involved in the sport. These impressive figures allow us to imagine the development that has taken over the world football time, and the many social and economic benefits that have emerged from spreading the sporting activities especially soccer via media. In this connection, this study will produce a report which evaluates the impact of increasing value of television broadcast rights on professional football in England.

Key Concepts and Theories

The sports related media industry has changed considerably since the seventies. The strong influence of media has been recognized because of its capability to broadcast a sporting event to billion of users, making players heroes of their nation, through live broadcasting. The media thus became actors and producers of new cultural forms of sport (Falk 2005, pp. 27-86).

Too often it appears that the sport is the most important cultural phenomenon of contemporary society. It is not, certainly a complex and fascinating phenomenon. The sport is great, but not innocent. The sport is full of tensions, tensions between the people and the ruling elites, between innovation and restaurants, among release and settlement. Sporting events seeks to harmonize these contradictions which are ignored because of the love for the sports. Two models have usually been mentioned when it comes to sports media, sports results and sports production of health (Boyle & Haynes 2004, pp. 32-97).

Sports and modernity

The modern sport was born in the 19th century ...