ABSTRACT
As Baudrillard emphasises, we are surrounded by a ‘fantastic’ conspicuousness of consumption and abundance.3 As a cultural product, mediated sport is in no way distinct or separate from the idea of a consumer society. Indeed, mediated sport forms have not only been wholly appropriated into the very order of corporate capitalism; they are in fact an important constituent, and constitutor, of the engines and processes of global corporate capitalism. Somewhat modifying Baudrillard then, mediated sport production, with its constituent parts-signs, goods, services, products, people and other paraphernalia-can be thought of as the very essence of, or the ‘triumphal paean’ to, the idea of a consumer society. That is, it is common sense to think about mediated sport today as being
produced in accordance with the logics inherent in accumulating capital. As such, mediated sport, as a mythologised hypercommercialised product, is a reflexive and discursive configuration that speaks and thinks itself as a consumer societyit is a statement of contemporary society about itself. Rather than provide an apologetic account of the debasement of sport and the media into consumer culture, this chapter aims to address the relationships between hypercommercialised mediated sport forms and the cultural sphere. That is, the chapter aims to rethink the relationship between economies and cultures in addressing the transformations, or as Baudrillard puts it, the ‘fundamental mutation in the ecology of the human species’ that takes place in, and through, a global consumer age. This may proffer a problem for many cultural thinkers and scholars, for this involves breaking with some of the cornerstones of modernity and recognising the importance of the relationships between cultures and economies. That is, understanding mediated sport within global consumer culture is understanding the substantial realignments in political, economic, cultural and symbolic life brought about in, and through, an intensified or accelerated phase of globalisation. Mediated sport is a rich arena for investigating these very processes, for there has been a proliferation of broadcast channels that are reaching an ever wider audience within an accelerated phase of globalisation, processes that have potential to disrupt, transform or fragment contemporary cultural identities.4
