ABSTRACT

In covering a range of national contexts in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America, this book has demonstrated that, while there are divergent histories and trajectories regarding the mediation of sport, there are also important common concerns that transcend such differences. In short, these commonalities revolve around sport’s place within national cultures and the processes of determining the respective roles of the state and the market in mediating sport for the citizenry. In several countries we have seen that the history of sport television has been characterized by a pioneering monopoly role of non-commercial free-toair public service broadcasters being replaced, in the srst instance, by a mixed economy involving commercial free-to-air broadcasters. A significant exception to this pattern is the US, where commercial free-to-air network television was formative in sport provision in the absence of major publicly funded broadcasters. In all countries, though, sport has subsequently become a crucial offering of subscription television platforms now primarily owned by deep-pocketed, vertically-integrated media/telecommunications conglomerates that have used their vast economic resources to squeeze free-to-air television out of much premium sport. In order to prevent a subscription sport television monopoly that would require all citizens to pay to watch sports events of national significance, and with the inevitable consequence that many would be excluded on material grounds, the state has intervened in many nations by instituting ‘anti-siphoning’ regimes of varying strength, or by regulating the growth of subscription platforms in order to guarantee some free-to-air sport in the interests of cultural citizenship and media market balance. However, the hegemony of broadcasting models in sport has since been challenged by technological developments, especially by online-and-telecommunication based services that have ushered in many non-broadcast delivery modes for media sport (Hutchins and Rowe 2012).