INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

2.1 Sport as a ‘Globalized Cultural Product’
In a broad sense, there are three different elements to analyze
‘global culture’ of sport. The first view is that sport has become
commoditized because of the influence of the media as well as sports
goods and merchandises. The profits of global sporting mega-media
events such as the Olympics or the FIFA World Cup depend on the
income through the television rights and advertisement of sponsors.
The sponsorship to the major sport events that increases the visibility
on a global basis attracts the advertisers to influence the presentation
both of events and of individual stars 5 . At the same time, the
international sport federations are generating vast amount of revenues
through sponsorship and television rights (Sugden and Thomlinson,
1998). The television-driven contexts of globalized sport are thus
conceptualized as a sports/media complex or a media-sports-culture
complex (Rowe, 1999), which is argued as the intensive form of
commodification and global marketing in sport.
In relation to the first point, further analysis shows that sport can
be conceptualized as cultural imperialism from a Marxist standpoint.
The dissemination of capitalist culture is seen as being driven by the
economic factors and the domination of world economy is linked to
the domination of international sport 6 . Furthermore, as Guttmann
argues, ‘a nation that exercises political or economic power often,
although not always, intentionally and unintentionally, also exercises
cultural power’ (1994: 177). By promoting the consumption of sport
products and services, as Hargreaves (1982) identifies, it maintains the
capitalist commodity, exploitative economic relationships. The
commercializations of sport are also identified as Americanization or
Westernization of sport, and one of the noticeable examples is
research on global migration of sports players and athletes (see
Maguire, 1999). As opposed to globalization of migration, McGovern
(2002) emphasizes the process of socially exclusive
internationalization that is unlikely to be a truly global labor market
since it is governed by national regulations and the market behavior is
influenced by political, social and historical relations 7 . While cultural
imperialism in terms of labor migration of sport players and athletes
can be reflected as the centrality of Europe and America, it is adequate
to deny the hyperglobalists’ claim of the existence of the globalized
- 339 -