ABSTRACT
Sport has become one of the leading economic industries around the globe, with products and services ranging from golf instruction and cricket ball production to World Cup soccer entertainment and amateur volleyball participation. Through active participation, mediated and spectatorial consumption, commercial production and promotion, and overall involvement, sport is a major institution in societies throughout the world; from baseball in Japan to rugby in Australia, and from ice hockey in Canada to soccer in Brazil. In my classroom lectures and previous published work, I have postulated that the key facilitator of sport, not only as an economic force and pervasive sociological and cultural presence, but also as an influential commercial institution, is sport communication (Pedersen,2013).This claim is still made because the communication aspect of the sport industry affects everyone and everything in the field. While the most obvious way in which communication influences the sport industry is through the media (such as newspaper sports sections, sports television and radio broadcasts, sports websites and social media platforms, and sports magazines), it also impacts interpersonal interactions, sport event settings, organizational functions, and any other areas of the sport industry in which communicative activity takes place. In an attempt to reflect communication’s wide-ranging influence and ubiquitous presence in the sport industry, the Routledge Handbook of Sport Communication is an academic compilation of topics and authors representing a broad view of sport communication.
