Commercialization of Athletics - Essay Example

While not detracting from the importance of any of these factors, however, the media has played the most important role in the commercialization of sports and, indeed, were it not for the media, sports would not have attained their current level of commercialization or, at least, not at such a fast pace. Sports and athletics have become nothing more than commodities and tradable goods. The degree to which they have been commercialized is more than evident in the amounts which are spent on sports goods in any given year.

As Linberry writes, the available financial figures highlight the fact that sports do not only constitute a billion dollar industry but stands out as one of the most profitable of the global industries (p. 19). In 1996, the sports industry generated a profit in excess of 25 billion dollars and this figure increases every year (Linberry, p. 19). Sports, central to which is the possession of unique talent at a particular games, is a highly profitable commodity. Accordingly, as Roberts and Town argue "in our shrunken, money-driven world, talent is the most prized commodity of them all" (Roberts and Town, para 1).

Talent is prized and valued at millions of dollars because, in an environment where sports is a commodity and a consumer good, talent has the power to generate millions of dollars in the sale of sports related goods per annum. It is, thus, that sports have become "$ports" (Hoch, p. 11).The commercialization of sports and its transformation into a consumer commodity is largely a consequence of mass media's treatment and coverage of sports events. Douglas Kellner, a sports sociologists, argues that the mass media and most especially TV, has transformed sporting events into spectacles.

As he writes, as a direct outcome of the approach which the mass media adopts towards the coverage of sporting events, the way in which they advertise the events and build up mass excitement towards them, has led to a situation in which "professional sports is one of the major spectacles of media culture" (p. 458). Matches are no longer sports events but sporting spectacles which command the attention of millions of viewers across the world and which countless of companies seek to capitalize upon through advertisements and sponsorships.

Sports sociologists contend that while sports have always had a unique popular appeal and would have, with the passage of time, become commodified and commercialization, none other than the sports media is responsible for the depth of its current commodification. Lee, a mass communications scholar, notes that sports have always been popular and have, long before the advent of television and media, commanded popular attention. It was only, however, with the advent of both television and the media that sports and sporting events attained their current level of popularity (pp. 194-195). Television did not just popularize major sporting events but transformed friendly, previously unwatched, matches into spectacles, just as its coverage of athletes led to their transition from sports talents and sporting professionals to heroes with global fan bases which ran into the millions of people (pp. 194-195). Television commercialized sports through the commodification of athletes, sporting events