ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the increasing economic importance of sport and the emergence of what is now recognised as a sport industry. It begins by defining the sport market and analysing consumer spending on sport for one country, the United Kingdom. It then goes on to look at changes in the sport market over the 1985–2016 period. Although data will only be presented for one country, these changes reflect what has been happening to sport in most Western developed countries over this period. The argument put forward is that there are transnational forces operating in the sport market that have led to increasing globalisation of this market. The rest of the chapter concentrates on analysing these forces and illustrating them with two case studies, Nike and Everton Football Club.
