ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the small but growing body of research on new media and sport. It outlines Manuel Castells’s ‘network society’ theory, noting tensions between early non-network digital distribution and later network forms. The chapter discusses the ‘first digital revolution’, which saw sports broadcasting via dedicated cable and satellite media give rise to a new global hyper-commercial industry. It also outlines the ‘second digital revolution’, where fully distributed media networks create radical new affordances that challenge existing broadcast models of distribution that arose during the first digital revolution. The chapter examines how these two digital revolutions coexist: established digital broadcasters remain profitable, even whilst new commercial players struggle and non-commercial actors, such as those able to freely share live streams of events, proliferate. Castells saw the emerging society as consisting of networks of people and organizations connected by digital links.
