The âSports Mediaâ
Globally , millionsâif not, billionsâof people consume sport on a daily basis. Whether watching a live event on television (either in the home or a shared space), following dedicated channels breaking news on the latest player transfer, or the more traditional method of reading a newspaper, sport plays a significant role in peopleâs lives. At the time of writing, the two most recent global sporting mega-events, the Olympic Games and (menâs) FIFA World Cup, are testament to just how engrained in Western culture (at the very least) sports are.
The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, for example, received more television coverage than any other Games: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) estimated, perhaps not unrealistically, that half of the worldâs population watched at least some coverage of the Games (see also Tomlinson 2017). Similar viewing figures were evident at the 2018 Football World Cup in Russia, with estimates of 3.4bn watching at least one World Cup match. Interestingly, this included significant interest from Chinaâdespite the nation not participating in the tournament. This also includes record-breaking statistics in the UK, where England reached the semi-finals for the first time in nearly 30 years, and more than 2bn watching the final match between France and Croatia.
Naturally, such figures would not be possible without the increased ubiquity of the media. Such is the prominence of sport in todayâs world, it is hard not to imagine it appearing daily on television or social media. Prior to the 1930s, however, sports coverage was largely restricted to the radio or newspapers, and it was not until the end of the 1930s that it began appearing on television. Indeed, this so-called decade of experimentation saw football, baseball, tennis, American football, and rugby all broadcast on television, either live or in highlight forms (Deninger 2012).
What followed in this decade of experimentation was a period of uncertainty. Many sports organizationsâmost famously, the Football Association (FA)1âwere concerned that broadcasts of matches would severely affect attendances at sporting events (Boyle and Haynes 2000). Although there was no evidence to support this disposition, it was a fear which never fully disappeared. Ultimately, despite these frequent concerns, sport and television were, eventually, âtwo cultural forms which simply proved irresistible to each otherâ (Boyle and Haynes 2000, p. 45). Indeed, Goldlust (1987, p. 78) described sport and television as a âmatch made in heavenâ and Real (2011, p. 19) described it as a âdream marriage.â
The new, cozy relationship between sport and the media is particularly evident with the English Premier League (EPL). Since its formation in 1992, the rights to broadcast EPL football have increased exponentially. The initial TV deal was worth around ÂŁ305m among 22 teams; it has since increased to in excess of ÂŁ8bn among 20 teams. In turn, such figures have allowed EPL clubs to spend vast amounts of money on transfers and wages, improving the quality of football. Indeed, the EPL has since transformed into the most-watched football league in the world (Millward 2011). Primarily underpinned by Rupert Murdochâs Sky, almost every major media organization wants a piece of the action: BT Sport, Setanta (now defunct), NTL, ESPN, BBC, Amazon, Netflix, and Google are all companies that, at some stage, have bid, both successfully and unsuccessfully, for the right to broadcast.
And it is the influence and centrality of the âsports mediaâ which forms the basis for this book. The dynamic relationship between sport and the media has commanded significant academic scrutiny (e.g. Billings and Moscowitz 2018; Boyle and Haynes 2009; Kennedy and Hills 2015; Raney and Bryant 2009; Wenner and Billings 2017). This body of work has been framed using Wennerâs (1998) âmediasport,â and by numerous others as the âsport-media complexâ (e.g. Jhally 1989; Maguire 1991, 1999).
Curiously, however, despite the ubiquity of the sports media, there exists no unified or accepted definition of âsports mediaâ (Rowe 2011)âor indeed any variant of this phrase (Pedersen et al. 2007). Thus, in this collection, âsports mediaâ broadly incorporates any mediatized (print or online, but also including social) form of sports, sporting events, or sporting individuals or teams. Regardless of the definitional struggles with âsports media,â it is accepted on a basic level that they have a collective responsibility to âmake things larger than lifeâ (Wenner and Billings 2017, p. 2).
But with the infiltration of media influences on sport also comes risk. The media have been responsible for covering and exposing some of the biggest sporting scandals in recent years, such as the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics corruption; British footballâs sex abuse and subsequent concealment; numerous doping scandals (including Lance Armstrong, and several Russian athletes, leading to a lifelong ban for the former Head of the Russian Athletics Federation, Valentin Balakhnichev); the alleged 2022 Qatar World Cup construction scandal; and the Australian cricket teamâs ball-tampering scandal. Accordingly, sportâs reliance on the media also comes with a warning; one which denotes the desire to expose any form of deviant behavior which flouts sportâs fair-play ethos.
Numerous developments in technological advancements over the last decades, such as the growth of the Internet and thus social media, have further contributed to this process. As a consequence, news is shared instantaneously across the world simply with the click of a button (Rowe 2011). The emergence of these mediums has, as Pegoraro (2010, p. 503) puts it, âtransformed the interaction between sport fans and their sport heroes.â Indeed, athletes command significant interest on social media, with the worldâs most successful professional athletes having tens of millions of followers on their accounts.
Further evidencing the ubiquity of sport and the sports media, even sports writers and journalists command significant interest on social media. In the UK, for example, Henry Winter, a prominent football journalist for The Times, has 1.25m followers on Twitterâmore than twice that of Prime Minister Theresa May. The same is also true in the US: ESPN sports commentator Michael Wilbon has over 5m followers, while Stephen A. Smith has almost 4m. The significance of these figures relates to the sheer volume of sports fansâhowever we might define fandomâwho desire to keep abreast with the latest sports news, gossip, or simply engage with the lives of their favorite athletes or clubs (Pegoraro 2010).
The mediaâs relationship with sport has intensified so much in recent years that professional athletesâfacilitated no doubt by the influence of social mediaâhave become some of the most prominent celebrities in contemporary Western culture. Of course, the proliferation of athletes into celebrities is nothing new: Some of sportâs most dynamic personalities, Muhammad Ali and George Best, for example (Whannel 2005), were idolized and celebrated by millions long before the mediaâs current stranglehold on the sports industry. In spite of these examples, however, there is little doubt that twenty-first-century sport and its athletes are unrecognizable from their roots. And, most importantly, none of this would be possible were it not for the influence of the sports media.
This book, however, does not set out with the intention of examining the historical changes in this relationship; nor is it my intention to outline the theoretical apparatus which scholars have used to underpin these changesâthis has been expertly achieved in existing academic work (Boyle and Haynes 2009; Kennedy and Hills 2015; Raney and Bryant 2009; Wenner 1998; Wenner and Billings 2017). Instead, the intention of this collection of work is to unite these themes with the changing cultural context for minority athletes.
Importantly, as the next sections outline, while there has been a plethora of evidence focusing on gay male and lesbian athletes (e.g. Anderson et al. 2016), only limited research has focused on bisexual and transgender athletes. This, while I use âLGBTâ in this chapter, I also note that âLGBTâ is not a homogenous groupâand there are differences in their experiences.
I begin the âjourneyâ of LGBT Athletes in the Sports Media by outlining how Western society has evolved from an historically hostile environment for sexual minorities into one of inclusivity.
Sport, LGBT Athletes, and Changing Cultural Contexts
In 1967, the publication of the Wolfenden Report, which recommended decriminalization of same-sex sexual acts between two men over the age of 21,2 was a significant moment for gay men in England and Wales. While public support for the Report was initially less than half the population, it eventually acted as a precursor to the liberalizing of cultural attitudes toward homosexuality in the UK (Clements and Field 2014). A similarly important moment arrived six years later in the US, when homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disorders (DSM) by the American Psyc...