ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a firm departure in the thesis of the juridification of sport. The analysis and the reflections are completed by mixing the thesis of J. Huizinga’s cultural analysis of play and sport, with R. K. Sherwin’s analysis of the trivialization of law. The case is principally important, particularly in a sport context, which is traditionally based on idealism and voluntarism and on sport as ‘play’. Sport is becoming steadily dependent on the laws of the market, as well as on legal norms developed in the political system. Explicitly or implicitly, they both expose values and the question of professionalism in sport, the demands for quality and reasonable expectations, as well as traditional and modern fans’ and consumers’ behaviour. Sport – in the wake of massive media coverage, as well and being a part of popular culture, and the sportification of entertainment in general – seems to have more or less colonized our everyday life.
