Commercialism of Sport

The Golden Triangle

The relationship between the event, sponsorship and Television is referred to as the ‘Golden Triangle’. TV companies now pay enormous amounts of money to have exclusive rights to games and because of the ever increasing global audience, it creates and ideal opportunity for a business to get it commercial message across. 90% of the Olympic budget is now generated through corporate sponsorship and TV rights, which help offset the increasing costs of staging the games.

TV companies and sponsors now have power to control timing and scheduling of events. For example, the timings of the 1996 Atlanta 200m finals were moved, where Michael Johnson competed in, and ultimately won both the 200m and 400m in the famous gold Nike racing spikes, seen across the globe by millions of viewers. Events such as tennis have been re-introduction with breaks, allowing regular advertising opportunities.

The decision on who hosts the Games now includes a commercial element; with the emphasis on technology it means a TV audience of billions watch the games. It was estimated that a 6^th of the World population watched the 2008 Beijing Games.

To have a successful outcome the media must stress the following components:

1. Product - identifying a desired healthy behaviour and explaining why it is important.
2. Price - the cost of adopting the desired healthy behaviour outweighs any other costs. That the required behaviour is more profitable to the target audience than the alternatives
3. Place and Time – that the time and place to adopt the new behaviour is here and now, not later.
4. Promotion - the promotion of healthy behaviours through education about health knowledge, with positive attitudes and practices.

World Games Gains From the Media

The world games gain a number of benefits from media interest:

• They enjoy an increased profile; as sports are able to appeal to a wide audience, by raising the profile of their sport World Games events attract more spectators and also more potential participants.
• Higher standards of performance are seen at these World Games as performers are keen to take advantage of the media interest.
• Increased advertising revenue for investment in the sport. This can be used to develop grassroots sport in all participating nations, particularly in poorer countries.
• An increase in knowledge of the sport; a major issue facing many sports is enabling new viewers and potential recruits to understand the rules of the game. A good presentation in the media can enable people to understand the sport more deeply.
• Higher quality stadiums are developed in partnership with media companies to improve spectator experiences and allow advertisers to reach these audiences.
• Increased access to watch sport and an enhanced viewing experience; examples of these are the BBC red button, Playercam and Sky’s 3-D viewing.
• Rules are changed to make the sport more exciting for the viewer; more viewers will enhance the likelihood of increasing sponsorship funds.

The organisers of world games want to achieve as much publicity as possible for their product. Increased publicity attracts sponsorship and advertising revenues, the money can be re-invested in the sport, to improve the sport, and to pay the costs of staging the games. This then can be described as a symbiotic relationship between the media and world games; there is a mutual benefit to each other.

Negative Aspects of Media Coverage

• Rule changes to enhance the viewing experience can sometimes have a negative impact on the sport with more breaks in play that disrupts the flow of the game.
• Changing of event timings are often controlled by the media; the starting times of various events are changed to suit television schedules. A major bidder for TV rights at Olympic Games is US television, for example the Men’s 100m Track Final is always timed to occur when it is available across the North American continent. It will be morning TV in California and afternoon TV in New York, this maximises advertising revenue for the TV stations.
• Breaks in programmes to accommodate advertising is a regular occurrence; in events like the Super Bowl in American football the adverts are slotted in breaks in play whilst in events like Formula One Motor Racing the race continues and coverage is interrupted by the advert.
• Pay to View and Subscription Channels mean sports can choose to gain additional revenue; but it can mean reduced viewing figures for the sport as many spectators choose not to pay. Hence there might be an increase in funding but a lack of publicity.
• Poor or negative reporting; if a sport receives bad publicity or the reporting is of low quality then spectators or prospective participants may be dissuaded away from the sport. Sports and ‘sports stars’ prone to poor reporting are very often targets of ‘tabloid’ newspapers.