ABSTRACT
This chapter explores processes of market expansion, cultural diffusion and dissemination as they coalesce around the operations of ‘sporting transnationals’. Debates surrounding the interplay of local and global processes have attracted increasing attention from sociologists of sport (Andrews, 1997; Guttmann, 1994; Maguire, 1999; Maguire et al., 2002; Miller et al., 2001, 2003; Van Bottenburg, 2001, 2003). The prominent role of sport in constructions of cultural identities has meant that it is highly visible in the transformations and entrenchments of local cultures in the context of globalisation. Consequently, the analysis of sport provides fertile ground to consider local-global interdependence. The intensity of this interplay has been heightened within the emergent political economy of sport, contingent to which, in what Maguire (1999) has referred to as the most recent sportisation phase, is an accelerated phase of corporate-media-sport alignment and global expansion of various sporting ‘brands’.
