ABSTRACT
T he first and most obvious point to make about television coverageof sport is that watching television is relatively passive and private,while playing sport is both active and public. But this chapter stresses the ways that audiences for TV sport are encouraged to feel that they are part of the crowd of spectators present at most sports events, that they can take part in the expert evaluation of what the players do, and that they can share the feelings of achievement or disappointment that players experience. Television sports coverage focuses much more on the kinds of sport that viewers might already have experience of, whether as active players (in their youth at school or college, or as leisure activities) or as spectators. There is far more coverage of football and cricket, for example, than of sports that most people have never played or seen live, such as fencing or fives. An interesting exception to this general rule is the TV coverage of the Olympic Games. Here, the competition is between national teams, so television tends to cover events in which the domestic audience can be expected to be supporting British sportspeople. This occurs even when the British sportspeople who have some chance of doing well are taking part in sports that do not normally get much television coverage. So a strong British team in a horseriding event or a women’s hockey competition at the Olympics might get much more attention at the Olympics than they would at other times.
