The Commercialisation of Sport

634 Words2 Pages

The Commercialisation of Sport

The commercialisation of sport is not wholly beneficial as it has many

disadvantages to it. Commercialisation is the promotion and

development of a product as a business within a market place. This is

done by the use of sponsorship, funding, selling, publicity and

advertising within the media, which is all rooted from money. People

invest in sport not only for the success that comes from it, but for

the great deal of money that can be made in the sport business,

therefore money is of high importance in the sporting industry.

With the commercialisation of sport comes money, which can be invested

in the development of young talent so that they may improve to become

a world class performer, and can therefore be displayed on the ‘shop

window’ or ‘world stage,’ thus acting as role models and encouraging

mass participation, which in turn brings more money into sport. The

commercialisation of sport created thousands of jobs worldwide,

consequently increasing profits, which can be used to increase the

three factors that affect sport; access, opportunity and esteem.

Though this may be seen as a disadvantage as well, funding is

distributed unequally, so the sports that have been commercialised are

funded more money due to their increase in popularity that comes with

commercialisation.

However, commercialisation allows people of all social statuses to

enjoy sport, as they are able to become spectators in their own living

rooms without setting foot in the stadium. This is because sport is

shown so much on television and there are many channels dedicated

solely to sport, Sky Sports for instance. Similarly...

... middle of paper ...

...d examples are Adrian Mutu, who was given a

six-month ban after he tested positive for cocaine, and Tony Adams

overcame his alcohol addiction and has set up a clinic for alcoholics.

Sportsmen and women are often exposed and splashed across the media,

of which tabloids are the most common.

Advertising is an important part of the commercialisation of sport,

however, this is not always fair. Larger companies are able to spend

more money on promotion and publicity, whereas smaller companies are

less able to do so, creating unfair competition. Another negative

aspect to emerge from the commercialisation of sport is hooliganism.

Using football as an example, there has been a massive increase of

hooliganism where competing teams or countries fight over superiority,

and in many cases people have been injured and even killed.

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