ABSTRACT
In recent years, academic discussion surrounding the lives and lifestyles of celebrity sports stars has provided fruitful ground for critiquing the role of sport in modern-day society. Rarely, however, has celebrity been discussed in relation to the sport-media-religion nexus. Drawing upon literature concerning the historical development of celebrity and sociological analyses of celebrity as a concept, this chapter argues that celebrity status is situated at the heart of an individualised and ideologically grounded late capitalist culture in which visual media is central to the production of social identities. In turn, the chapter seeks to uncover ways in which celebrity status and ‘stardom’ might be viewed as powerful signifiers in terms of popular cultural perceptions of sports performers. In so doing, the chapter considers one of the sports stars of more recent years, American Football star Tim Tebow, and analyses how his image has been used in order to depict specific messages relating to notions of faith, religion and spirituality.
