ABSTRACT
The Olympic Games could not have grown to have global impact without television. The Games, as they now exist, are a product of television’s power to produce and distribute live global spectacle. Indeed the Games are perhaps better understood as a television event than as a sporting one. Of the Olympic sports, only athletics, tennis, football, basketball and boxing have any significantly large spectator following outside the Olympic Games – and in the case of tennis, football, basketball and boxing, the Olympics is only a minor part of their sporting calendar and competitive formats. In our estimate, the other 22 sports combined typically account for less than 3% of television sport on terrestrial television in the UK.1 The Olympics aside, athletics cannot compete for popularity or financial strength with the major commercialised sports such as football, basketball, golf, tennis, motor racing and American football. The majority of people who watch the Olympic Games do not otherwise follow regularly even the sports that are most prominently featured on Olympic television – athletics, swimming and gymnastics.
