The Digital World of Sport: The Impact of Emerging Media on Sports News, Information and Journalism

By Sam Duncan

This book is about how new media, and in particular, digital and social media, has changed the world of sports forever. The way fans receive information, communicate and form communities now predominantly lives online. 

But perhaps even more significant is the evolution of the sports media industry, where digital media has impacted the broader media industry, stimulated new media organisations, changed old media organisations and altered old conventions of journalism in equal measure.

Drawing on the expertise of academics, scholars, experts and professionals at the forefront of the sports, media, and journalism fields, the book suggests that new media has turned the sports industry on its head with profound implications – both exciting and disturbing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Sep 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781785275074

Sam Duncan

Sam Duncan grew up following his dad to the footy around Yarrawonga, where he met all sorts of characters and learnt many life lessons. Most of all, he learnt what community was all about. While his footy career was neither long nor distinguished, he has always loved being part of the game and its communities - from the grassroots level of country and suburban footy, to the buzzing grandstands of the MCG. He is a lecturer at Holmesglen in the Bachelor of Sports Media, a boundary rider for AFL Live, a country and suburban footy commentator, and a former PR professional. He's been watching the game transform at the elite level since he first started watching it and has spent countless enjoyable hours talking to fans - the inspiration of this book - about their thoughts, views and reactions to the AFL as it has become big business.

Book preview

The Digital World of Sport

The Digital World of Sport

The Impact of Emerging Media on Sports News, Information and Journalism

Sam Duncan

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2020

by ANTHEM PRESS

75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK

or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

Copyright © Sam Duncan 2020

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,

no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means

(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),

without the prior written permission of both the copyright

owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020941010

ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-505-0 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78527-505-4 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1.An Online World

2.New Media, New Players

3.New Ways of Watching Sport

4.A Voice of Their Own

5.Athletes as Activists

6.Strained Relationships, Outrage, Anger and Emotion

7.New Forms of Sports Journalism

8.The Future of Sports Media: A New Reality

9.Issues and Implications for Journalism in the Digital World

Conclusion

References

Index

INTRODUCTION

It was the late Australian journalist Les Carlyon who, when referring to the troubles of modern journalism, said:

Sloppy writing and editing, advocacy masquerading as reporting, gossip masquerading as reporting, stories that abound in loose ends and clichés, stories that are half-right, stories that insult the reader’s intelligence. (Carlyon 2005)

Known for his love of storytelling, Carlyon’s unique way with words and his unwavering belief that ‘if you get the words right, the rest – the profits, the circulation, the ads – will come to you’, lamented the turn the profession he had dedicated his life to was taking in the new, disruptive online world (Carlyon 2005).

Aged in his 60s with 40 years of experience when he made his observations about modern journalism, Carlyon was an old-school journalist, valuing the written word, its power, detail and correctness far more than the way it was packaged. For Carlyon, if a story were skilfully crafted and written, it would not need sensationalism to sell. Rather, it would be a sensational story.

His other great love was sport, in particular horse racing. He wrote extensively about the ‘sport of kings’, its characters – heroes and villains – and how they reflect the society in which they exist.

But as we entered the digital world, Carlyon rightly sensed that disruption was upon us. Online news was different than newspapers. Social media was different again. New, digital-only organisations were popping up, attracting advertising revenues and pushing out content to its online consumers at a far more rapid pace than anything Carlyon had previously seen (Carlyon 2005).

For Carlyon, this disruption was also disturbing. It had compromised the art of storytelling, the time taken to investigate important news and the depth of thought-provoking analysis. Journalists were rushed, stretched, lacking curiosity and too often appealing to the lowest common denominator to generate clicks.

Yet, for all his pessimism and concern for the direction journalism and news reporting were headed, Carlyon knew there was no going back. Quoting Jack Nicholson’s character from Chinatown, Carlyon once remarked: ‘I don’t want to live in the past – it’s just that I don’t want to lose it’ (Carlyon 2005).

Of course, even if you disagree with Carlyon’s concerns about modern journalism, it is indisputable that the world of digital media has transformed the media industry and everything within – the organisations, the professions, the people. But more than that, it has also transformed other powerful industries, including sports industries around the world. Carlyon used to marvel at how sport resonated with people because the games of a nation, and the issues within it, would tell the people something relevant and relatable about themselves.

This fact may still be accurate, but the sports, the storytellers and the platforms we use to connect with sport and each other are all different. Today, a teenager in Sydney can watch a National Basketball Association (NBA) game in New York on his mobile phone while chatting to fellow fans who might be in London, Paris, Tokyo or Los Angeles. Furthermore, a fan can follow live blogs from a superfan based in Chicago who is offering expert analysis or opinion or even breaking news.

Fans might then watch post-match analysis programs or player interviews via the NBA website or YouTube channels of the competing teams. If fans only want shorter, punchier highlight packages, they might simply refer to Facebook or Twitter. For the reactions from the athlete who scored the winning goal, fans can go straight to the source, with the athlete tweeting to millions of fans only seconds after the game finishes.

The options are ubiquitous and, mostly, digital. The reality is, the sports fan can now consume hours upon hours of sports-related content, including watching live games, without interacting with a traditional or mainstream news outlet even once.

The consequences of this change have been profound – for global sports, the fans and communities that support them and, in particular, the media that report and comment on them. The sports markets are now more cluttered as fans in one country turn their attention to sports overseas, which previously went unseen. The media industry, too, is increasingly dynamic, with old media conventions and business models turned on their heads. Newspapers, radio stations and television networks have converged, and digital-only websites, specialising in niche content, are attracting both consumers and advertisers, leaving some traditional news outlets on their knees.

Sports-related content is churned out at an increasingly rapid pace in an attempt to meet the unquenchable thirst of consumers who crave and expect regular, interesting, valuable content whenever they pick up their phones to check what’s trending on social media. To be heard or seen or to simply stand out from the crowd, content creators and news organisations alike have adopted a range of tactics, many of which had Carlyon shaking his head in dismay. The content is often packaged, popularised and, worse, sensationalised. How else are they expected to attract consumers to their content in such a cluttered, competitive, crowded market?

And, in an age of fragmented audiences and advertising revenue, journalists and content creators are now often working in under-resourced newsrooms to shorter and shorter deadlines, which has fundamentally changed the type, tone and even quality of the news cycle. These issues are discussed and explored extensively in this book, using a range of academic studies, sports-related examples and, importantly, the insights of sports media professionals and sports fans.

The Study of Sports Media

This study is both important and unique. While a significant body of work focusing on the sports media industry and, more particularly, sports journalism exists, few scholars have provided an in-depth analysis of how digital and social media have transformed the sports media industry, its traditional norms, culture, business models and professional practices. The existing body of work, while significant, falls short of examining the disruption caused by digital media and the subsequent challenges and opportunities that confront the sports media industry. Interestingly, much of the analysis about sports journalism comes from scholars and academics more aligned to the field of media and communications than journalism. Yet, most of these critical texts are far more skewed towards discussing the sports journalist rather than the broader industry and the various and varied players within it (Rowe 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2005; Whannel 1992, 2002; Blain and O’Donnell 1998; Wenner 1998; Boyle and Haynes 2000, 2004; Brookes 2002; Beirnstein and Blain 2003). Generally, the prevailing sentiment among the many researchers who have studied the field of sports journalism is that the profession is at a crossroads or, more damning, that it has become a mere shadow of its best self (Franklin 1997; Sparks and Tulloch 2000; Hargreaves 2003; Campbell 2004; Kettle 2004; Lloyd 2004; Marr 2004; Allan 2005).

Regularly, the research has focused on the role sports and sports journalism play in society – from influencing national identity, reinforcing cultural norms, helping illuminate or espouse ideology or even ideological myths, connecting with political and economic structures and reflecting critical discourses concerning race, gender and ethnicity (Blain et al. 1993; O’Donnell 1994; Garland and Rowe 1999; Alabarces et al. 2001; Crolley and Hand 2002; Boyle and Monteiro 2005; Hand and Crolley 2005). More often than not, this research has focused on the print journalist and, on fewer occasions, the television reporter (Salwen and Garrison 1998). These texts also discuss the tensions between the print writer and radio and television commentator as well as the growing conflict between the tabloid reporter and the broadsheet writer (Rowe 1995).

David Rowe (1992, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2005) has written extensively about the relationship between sport, media and culture and the conflicting roles of the sports journalist and their role as critical analyst, investigative journalist, fan, apologist, promoter and, in the eyes of some, member of the toy department (Rowe 1999). Perhaps more relevant to the prevailing themes of this book is the work of Raymond Boyle (2006), whose book Sports Journalism: Context and Issues ‘looks at the ways in which news values associated with sports journalism are in fact altering and evolving, driven by changes not only in media organisations but also in the wider political economy of the sports industries’. Within his analysis of the evolving sports media landscape, Boyle acknowledges that new forms of digital media have significantly impacted the production of news, the publishers of news and the narratives the dominating sports media landscape.

Rob Steen (2014) extends this notion in his excellent book, Sports Journalism: A Multimedia Primer, providing an extensive analysis of the evolving role of the sports journalist in the digital age. The second chapter, which provides a punchy yet extremely thorough history of the sportswriter from the Victorian era until the 2010s, is particularly enlightening and helpful in giving an insight into how the profession has changed over time. More so, it contains important context to understand how different it has become since the advent of digital and social media.

Yet for all that has been written about the sportswriter, reporter, journalist and, more broadly, the sports media industry, none of the existing texts adequately provide an in-depth examination of how digital media has completely transformed the many layers of the sports media industry, which, like dominoes falling, has had an ongoing impact on media organisations, sports media professionals and consumers alike. While digital media provides a more dynamic, vibrant and varied sports media landscape than ever before, it has also caused significant disruption – some of it positive, but plenty not. This book attempts to do what others have not yet done – to transcend and bring together the specifics of economic, structural and communications change, which has forever altered the broader sports media industry and the specific roles and practices of the various players within it.

Sports Media Insights and Expertise

As part of the research conducted for this study, sports media professionals and sports fans were interviewed – from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa – who cover a range of sports competitions, including the NBA, the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), the Australian Football League (AFL) as well as global sports, such as cricket and tennis.

The experts represent a cross-section of ages, experience and eras – from those in their early 20s to late 70s; from those who cut their teeth in the pre-television era of media, to those who have only worked for digital organisations; from those who have witnessed traditional sports evolve and transform in the entertainment age to those who play fantasy sports and eagerly watch e-sports; from those who only watch live games via traditional television to those who don’t own a TV. Importantly, all participants are active on social media. After all, as media professionals today, how could they not?

The interviews were not conducted to only source quotes and insights to support a predetermined argument or narrative. On the contrary, the interviews provided an understanding of significant changes in sports journalism, their causes and the impact they had on the role of the sports journalist. More broadly, the interviews assisted in illuminating the professional, cultural and economic challenges and opportunities facing the sports media industry in the digital age. In short, the interviews shaped the contents of this book, some of which was somewhat predictable, but some surprising.

Those who have contributed to this analysis include the following:

Richard Evans – Born in Paris in 1940, Evans is a British tennis commentator now living in Delray Beach, Florida. Evans is an experienced journalist of sport and world affairs, including seven years as a foreign correspondent. He covered major events in the United States, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. His extensive experience as a sports reporter and commentator includes roles as a BBC Radio commentator at Wimbledon for more than twenty years; Tennis Channel and Australian Open (AO) radio commentator; author of 18 books on tennis, cricket and football (soccer); Tennis Magazine (Paris) columnist; and European Director and Board member of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) in the 1970s. He is the author of Roving Eye, which recounts many of his stories as a journalist and sports reporter.

Rohan Connolly – Connolly is an Australian sports journalist of over thirty-six years, who has worked across a range of sports, predominantly Australian Rules football. Connolly has been a leading sports reporter for some of Australia’s largest newspapers, including The Age and The Sun News-Pictorial. Connolly has also worked extensively in radio and is now the founder and leading contributor for the digital site and podcast Footyology, which produces news and views focused solely on the AFL.

Dave Smith – Los Angeles-based American sports radio commentator and host Smith is an American sports guru. Smith is the host of his radio program on SB Nation, focusing on news and opinion in the world of sports, including the NFL, the NBA, MLB and the NHL. Before joining SB Nation in 2019, Smith spent five years hosting on NBC Sports Radio.

Ben Rothenberg – Based in Washington, DC, Rothenberg is a freelance tennis journalist for the New York Times and other reputable publications, including the Guardian, Washington Post and Sports Illustrated. Rothenberg is also the host of tennis podcast No Challenges Remaining and appeared on the Nine Network’s coverage of the Australian Open in 2020.

Chris Bowers – Bowers is one of the world’s leading tennis journalists, having reported on the global tennis circuit since the late 1980s. Bowers has written several books about tennis, including The Book of Tennis and biographies of Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. Initially a newspaper journalist, he now writes and broadcasts in radio, television and online platforms, notably for Eurosport and ESPN, and is the executive director of the Tennis Radio Network. Bowers is also a politician, representing the Liberal Democrats at the 2019 UK General Election in the seat of Wealden.

Heath O’Loughlin – O’Loughlin began his career as a general news reporter for the Seven Network in Australia, where he reported on some of Melbourne’s most infamous crimes, including the underworld killings and other high-profile cases. He crossed to the Nine Network in 2006 to report on sport and co-anchor the weekend bulletin. He left the world of television to join the North Melbourne Football Club in the AFL as the general manager of Media, Communications and Marketing. O’Loughlin has been viewed by many within the industry as a trailblazer with the North Melbourne media department, winning several national awards for excellence and innovation.

Tristan Holme – Zimbabwean-born South African sportswriter Holme is the features editor for Indian-based online cricket news site Cricbuzz and is also the South African and Zimbabwean correspondent for Wisden Cricket Monthly. In a world of increasingly short, sharp, bite-sized content, Holme remains focused on long-form, investigative storytelling and match reporting, albeit with a niche focus for online publications.

Brett Phillips – Phillips is Australia’s pre-eminent tennis commentator and reporter. Phillips travels the world, attending all Grand Slam events and key ATP and Women's Tennis Association (WTA) tournaments. He has a weekly tennis program on all-sports station SEN titled The First Serve, which is also packaged as a podcast for online listeners. Phillips hosts sports talk-back programs on SEN and commentates Australian Rules football for SEN’s AFL Nation.

Eric Beecher – Beecher is an experienced journalist, editor and media proprietor. He was the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald for four years and the editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times group. Beecher founded Text Publishing, an Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, which he sold to Fairfax Media in 2003 for $66 million. Beecher purchased online political magazine Crikey in 2005 and is a shareholder in Australian Independent Business Media.

Ren Thompson – Thompson is a 30-year-old digital marketing specialist and superfan of the English Premier League (EPL) and the NBA. Like many other millennials and Gen Z sports consumers, Thompson has ‘cut the cord’, preferring to consume sport via digital streaming services. Thompson is far more likely to visit niche websites, club social media channels, sports journalist Twitter accounts and sports-specific podcasts than he is to pick up a paper or consume mainstream radio or television.

Alexie Beovich – Aged in his 20s, Beovich is a digital marketing specialist and superfan of the NBA and the AFL. He dedicates hours of his week consuming podcasts, online videos, digital news sites and social media activity relating to his favourite sports. Beovich is also a keen participant of fantasy sports and is known as an expert of one of the AFL’s fantasy competitions, SuperCoach, happily describing himself as a ‘SuperCoach nerd’. He is an integral part of the Jock Reynolds Community, which provides its online audience with SuperCoach opinion and analysis articles and podcasts.

As will be made clear throughout the book, while those interviewed didn’t share the same views on every issue, there was an overwhelming consensus on various topics, including the impact of technology – namely digital media – on the sports media industry and the role of the sports journalist. While each expert sees the challenges and opportunities of the digital world through their lens and position within the sports media industry, the changes that have occurred since the turn of the century are apparent and will be discussed extensively in the book.

Overview of the Book

The book begins with a historical overview of sport’s role and place in society, as well as the evolution of sports writing and sports journalism. The goal of this section is to highlight the position of sport in society and, more specifically, news and the way the profession has evolved throughout different eras and ages of history. Chapter 1 will explore the transformation of the sports media industry, with a particular focus on its extensive growth. While sport has always been part of the global media landscape, its growth in the digital age is undeniable. Across the world, thousands of blogs and news sites exist fully dedicated to particular sports or various aspects of sport. Blogs, videos and podcasts that analyse sport have become a staple for many sports fans across the globe.

As sports organisations and competitions around the world have become more professional and commercial, they have also become more distant from their fans, who are no longer able to access the club physically as they once could. So, to ensure their fans feel engaged, welcomed and a part of their club’s community, clubs now connect with them online. To do this, sports organisations develop strategies designed to entertain, captivate, inform and invoke emotion. Thus, every moment that plays out within the club, its community and on the field of play is a digital moment, a social media moment, a moment to connect with fans who might live as close as around the corner or as far away as the other side of the world.

Chapter 2 will highlight how the desire for sports organisations to connect with fans (their customers) has stimulated the development of sports organisations as media outlets. No

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