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Sports and the Media Author: Stephen Meyer Date: 2012 From: Sports in America: Recreation, Business, Education, and Controversy(2012 ed.) Publisher: Gale, a Cengage Company Series: Information Plus Reference Series Document Type: Topic overview Length: 8,550 words Content Level: (Level 4) Lexile Measure: 1280L

Full Text: Sports and the media are so thoroughly intertwined in the United States that it is difficult to think of them as two distinct industries. The financial relationship is complex and reciprocal. Media enterprises, mostly broadcast and cable television stations but also web based, pay the sports leagues millions of dollars for the rights to broadcast their games. Leagues distribute this money to their member teams—the distribution formula varies from sport to sport—which then transfer most of this money to their players in the form of salaries. The media outlets try to recoup their huge expenditures by selling advertising time during sports broadcasts to companies that believe their products will appeal to the kinds of people who like to watch sports on television. These consumer product companies also pay large sums to individual athletes to endorse their products, or in some cases to teams to display their company logo on their uniforms or, in the case of auto racing, on their cars. Consumers then purchase these products, providing the money the companies use to buy advertising and pay for celebrity endorsements. The more people who watch a sport, the more the station can charge for advertising. The more the station can charge for advertising, the more it can offer the league for broadcast rights. The more the league gets for broadcast rights, the more the teams can pay their players.

The History of Sports on Television

In "Sports and Television" (2011, http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/sportsandte/sportsandte.htm), the Museum of Broadcast Communications quotes Harry Coyle, a pioneering television sports director, who explains that "television got off the ground because of sports. Today, maybe, sports need television to survive, but it was just the opposite when it first started. When we (NBC) put on the World Series in 1947, heavyweight fights, the Army-Navy football game, the sales of television sets just spurted."

Even though it may be an exaggeration to credit the explosive growth of television in its early days solely to sports, sports certainly played a significant role. The first-ever televised sporting event was a baseball game between Columbia and Princeton Universities in 1939. It was covered by one camera that was positioned along the third base line. The first network-wide sports broadcast came five years later with the premier of the National Broadcasting Corporation's (NBC) Gillette Cavalcade of Sports, the first installment of which featured a featherweight championship boxing match between Willie Pep (1922-2006) and Chalky Wright (1912-1957). Sports quickly became a staple of prime-time network fare, accounting for up to one-third of prime-time programming, but other genres began to catch up during the 1950s, perhaps spurred on by an increase in female viewers. The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports remained on the air for 20 years, before giving way to a new model in which sports programs were sponsored by multiple buyers of advertising spots rather than by a single corporation, as the cost of sponsorship became prohibitively expensive during the mid-1960s. The number of hours of sports programming on the networks continued to increase dramatically well into the 1980s, when advertising dollars generated by sports began to decline, making them less profitable for the networks to carry.

The amount of money involved in televising sports was growing fast by the 1970s. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Stanley J. Baran notes that in 1970 the networks paid $50 million for the rights to broadcast National Football League (NFL) games, $18 million for Major League Baseball (MLB) games, and $2 million for National Basketball Association (NBA) games. By 1985 these numbers reached $450 million for football, $160 million for baseball, and $45 million for basketball. This explosive growth was fueled by a combination of increasing public interest, better—and therefore more expensive—coverage of events by the networks, and an effort on the part of the networks to lock in their position of dominance in sports programming in the face of challenges from emerging cable television networks. These skyrocketing fees did not cause much of a problem during the 1970s, as the networks were able to pass the high cost of producing sports programs along to their advertisers. However, things began to change during the early 1980s. According to Baran, between 1980 and 1984 professional football lost 7% of its viewing audience and baseball lost 26% of its viewers. Meanwhile, advertisers became hesitant to pay increasing prices for commercials that would be seen by fewer people. The networks responded by airing more hours of sports. By 1985 the three major networks (NBC,

American Broadcasting Company [ABC], and Columbia Broadcasting System [CBS]) broadcast a total of 1,500 hours of sports, about twice as many hours as in 1960. However, by the mid-1980s the market for sports programming appeared saturated, and the presence of more shows made it harder for the networks to sell ads at top prices.

The first half of the 1980s marked the rise of sports coverage on cable. According to Baran, the all-sports station Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), first launched in 1979, was reaching 4 million households by the mid-1980s. National stations such as WTBS and WGN, as well as the premium channel Home Box Office (HBO), were also airing a substantial number of sporting events. By 1986, 37 million households were subscribing to ESPN.

Between the early 1990s and the first few years of the first decade of the 21st century broadcast television ratings for the four major professional sports generally trended downward. There is no real consensus as to why this happened. Jere Longman, in "Pro Leagues' Ratings Drop; Nobody Is Quite Sure Why" (Scott R. Rosner and Kenneth L. Shropshire, eds., The Business of Sports, 2004), points to "a growing dislocation between fans and traditional sports, as players, coaches and teams move frequently, as athletes misbehave publicly, as salaries skyrocket, and as ticket prices become prohibitively expensive" as possible contributing factors in the decline of ratings during that period.

Even as sports television ratings declined, however, other media forms were attracting the interest of sports fans. The early 21st century saw an explosion of new platforms that enabled people to follow sports over the Internet, from league and team websites to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In "Survey Spots Social Media Trends among Fans" (SportsBusiness Journal, June 27, 2011), David Broughton reports on the results of a survey conducted by Catalyst Public Relations between May and June 2011. Facebook was the most popular social media platform among sports enthusiasts in 2011, with more than 75% of "avid sports fans" choosing the popular networking site as their primary means of following their favorite teams. According to Broughton, the popularity of social media sites varies from sport to sport. For example, 86% of NFL fans used Facebook to follow their favorite teams. In contrast, NBA fans were the most likely to follow their teams on Twitter (27%) and YouTube (35%). Overall, 40% of survey respondents stated they had become more enthusiastic about their favorite sport since using social media to follow their teams.

The key challenge for all the major sports leagues—beyond the obvious challenge of attracting as many viewers and listeners as possible—is to balance exposure and distribution of their product against consumer demand. In other words, in an era witnessing the emergence of new media such as the Internet, satellite radio, and live feeds to mobile devices, at what point does the coverage of a sport available for consumption outstrip the public's interest in that sport, thereby becoming a losing financial proposition?

Baseball and Television: The Convergence of Our Two National Pastimes

By 1939 baseball was already known as "America's national pastime." Television was still a novelty at the time. The only option for those who could not attend a baseball game in person was to listen to a live broadcast on the radio. The first televised professional baseball game, between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds, took place on August 26 of that year. The broadcast used two cameras: one positioned high above home plate and a second one along the third base line. Such a broadcast would appear primitive by 21st-century standards. To cover the World Series in 2010, the MLB used more than 20 high-definition cameras, capturing each play from multiple angles. In addition, early broadcasts offered none of the additional features that contemporary viewers take for granted, including color, instant replays, and statistics superimposed on the screen.

NBC was the network that first brought televised baseball to the American public. Because NBC used home-team announcers to call the World Series, and because the New York Yankees were in the World Series nearly every year, the Yankees announcer Mel Allen (1913-1996) became the first coast-to-coast voice of baseball. The Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean (1911-1974) became the first nationwide television baseball announcer when NBC premiered the Game of the Week in 1953, thus initiating the long line of former ball players who have transformed themselves into commentators when their playing careers have ended.

By the 1960s baseball had lost a large share of its audience to other sports, particularly football. Baseball nevertheless remains a solid ratings draw, especially when teams with well-known stars located in large markets square off during the postseason. However, the overall ratings for World Series broadcasts have been declining for years. The article "World Series Ratings Tie All-Time Low" (Associated Press, November 2, 2010) notes that ratings for the 2010 World Series, in which the San Francisco Giants triumphed over the Texas Rangers in five games, tied a record low. The series averaged an 8.4 rating (meaning 8.4% of all households were tuned in) and a 14 share (meaning 14% of those watching something were watching the World Series), figures that were identical to those for the 2008 World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays.

Professional baseball has increased its media income substantially in recent years. As of August 2011, the MLB was operating under a round of television deals signed in 2005 and 2006. Danielle Sessa reports in "Baseball Expands TV Coverage with Fox, Turner Deals (Update1)" (Bloomberg.com, July 11, 2006) that in 2005 ESPN agreed to pay $2.4 billion to start a series of Monday night baseball broadcasts as part of an eight-year contract, which runs through 2013. Under the terms of the deal, ESPN may televise up to 80 regular-season games per season. The agreement also affords ESPN substantial flexibility to move some of the games to Sunday nights. In 2006 the MLB also signed deals with Fox for the broadcast rights to the All-Star Game and the World Series through 2013. The MLB's other major television partner is TBS, which is slated to air all regular-season tiebreaker games, Division Series games, and a Sunday afternoon regular-season package through 2013.

Baseball has expanded its radio presence in recent years as well. The 2005 season marked the first year of a six-year contract with ESPN Radio worth an average of $11 million per year, a six-year Internet deal with ESPN for an annual average of $30 million, and a $60 million-per-year deal with XM Satellite Radio to transmit baseball games for 11 years. ESPN and the MLB have also expanded their reach into local radio markets. For example, the article "MLB Rangers Reach Four-Year Rights Deal with ESPN Radio Dallas" (Sports Business Daily, December 8, 2010) notes that in December 2010 ESPN Radio Dallas forged a four-year contract with the

Texas Rangers to broadcast the team's games. ESPN Dallas took over the rights from the local CBS-affiliate KRLD-AM, which had been broadcasting Rangers games since 1995.

Since the turn of the 21st century the MLB has been working to expand its presence on the Internet. In 2000 the league formed MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) as a way of consolidating the online businesses of individual teams into a single centralized location, MLB.com. Maury Brown reports in "MLB Advanced Media Rejects $1B in Offers from Private Equity" (Bizofbaseball.com, January 20, 2011) that within its first year of operation the new website had already become profitable. By 2005 Wall Street analysts were forecasting that an initial public offering for MLB.com would generate a revenue of between $2 billion and $2.5 billion. In spite of pleas from a number of major investment banking firms, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, the MLB refused to go public. In 2011 the league, intent on retaining complete control of its lucrative and rapidly growing online enterprise, again refused to accept $1 billion in investment capital from private equity firms.

Football: Biggest Athletes, Biggest Audience

Professional Football

It is not an exaggeration to say that television put football where it is today. Before the era of televised sports, baseball was much more popular than football. Stirring television moments such as the 1958 NFL Championship, a thrilling overtime victory by the Baltimore Colts over the New York Giants, helped establish professional football as a big-time spectator sport. A few years later, when Time put the Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi (1913-1970) on its cover in 1962—accompanied by the pronouncement that football was "The Sport of the '60s"—it was clear that the sport had come of age as a media phenomenon.

In April 2005 the NFL signed a deal for $1.1 billion per year to move Monday Night Football from its long-standing home with ABC—which was paying about half that sum under its expiring contract—to ESPN from 2006 to the 2013 season. (See Table 1.4:

.) Under the terms of the deal, ESPN would continue to make its NFL games available on regular broadcast television in the markets of the participating teams each week. However, unlike basketball, which experienced a loss of casual viewers when games were moved to cable in 2002, regular network television would continue to play a large role in bringing football to the viewing public.

The same day it shook hands with ESPN, the league reached an agreement with NBC, which had not broadcast NFL games since 1997. The NBC contract provides $603 million per year for the rights to carry 17 Sunday night games each season through 2011.

(See Table 1.4: .) The NBC deal was later extended through 2013, and the league granted the network the rights to broadcast Super Bowl games in 2009 and 2012. Meanwhile, the NFL had agreed in November 2004 to extend its existing relationships with CBS and Fox to carry regular-season American Football Conference and National Football Conference games, respectively. The new CBS agreement included two Super Bowls and guaranteed $620 million per year through 2011; the new Fox contract called for five years at $720 million per year, with two Super Bowls included in the deal. As with NBC, the NFL later extended its deals with both CBS and Fox through 2013. During this period the league received another $700 million from DirecTV Satellite in a five-year agreement covering satellite transmission rights. This deal was later extended through 2014, with the price tag rising to $1 billion per year.

What do the networks get for all this money? They get plenty because advertisers know how firmly football is entrenched in U.S. households and sports bars. Football is by far the most popular sport to watch on television in the United States. Indeed, the NFL's showcase event, the Super Bowl, owns the record for the most-watched broadcast in television history. (See Table 3.1:

.) In a poll conducted in January 2011, Harris Interactive found that 69% of Americans planned on watching Super Bowl XLV between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the

Green Bay Packers. (See Table 3.2:

.) As Table 3.3: shows, the magnitude of these television audiences generates enormous sums in advertising revenues for the NFL.

The United States' fascination with the Super Bowl extends far beyond the actual contest on the field. Every year, companies produce highly original, memorable television advertisements to air during the big game, pouring millions of dollars into 30- and 60-

second spots. As Table 3.4: , Table

3.5: , and Table 3.6:

show, these advertisements generate substantial buzz among consumers. According to Harris Interactive, 59% of Super Bowl viewers look forward to seeing the advertisements; another 30% who do not express enthusiasm about the advertisements in advance claim to enjoy watching them

during the game. (See Table 3.7: .) By comparison, the Super Bowl halftime show is not nearly as popular with viewers. Only 33% of fans look forward to the halftime show, with a higher proportion of women (37%) than men (29%) expressing enthusiasm about watching it. (See Table 3.8:

.)

In spite of professional football's widespread appeal among television viewers, the NFL labor dispute of 2011 threatened to erode the sport's popularity considerably. In March of that year the league imposed a lockout that prohibited players from using team facilities or signing new contracts. One month later, as negotiations between players and owners became more contentious, Harris Interactive conducted a survey of NFL fans. As Table 3.9:

shows, distaste for the labor dispute was relatively widespread among football viewers, with 19% of fans claiming they would be less likely to follow the NFL on television if the lockout resulted in the cancellation of even a portion of the 2011 season. The lockout was resolved in July 2011, so the full season was scheduled to be played.

College Football

Televised college sports have nearly as much appeal as professional sports for American audiences, and since the 1980s they have become the subject of large media contracts as well. In the early days of televised sports, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) determined which college teams could play on television. Officially, the NCAA's goal in making these decisions was to protect the schools from the loss of ticket-buying fans who were lured by the glowing screen in a warm home. The NCAA's dominance over the right to broadcast football games went virtually unquestioned for years. According to Welch Suggs, in "Football, Television, and the Supreme Court" (Chronicle of Higher Education, July 9, 2004), the only case of a college losing its membership in the NCAA came in 1951, when the University of Pennsylvania was dismissed for attempting to schedule its own broadcasts in defiance of the NCAA. The school quickly repented, and its membership was restored.

The networks, however, aware of the potential audience for games between large universities with esteemed football programs, kept courting college athletic departments. By the 1970s several universities with top football programs had become frustrated with the limits the NCAA was placing on their television exposure. In 1977 five major conferences, along with a handful of high-profile independents, formed their own group, the College Football Association (CFA), to fight for their interests within the NCAA. A few years later the CFA signed its own television agreement with NBC, the second-largest sports television contract ever signed up to that time. Naturally, the NCAA was unhappy about this development and moved to ban the teams involved from all championship events. The University of Georgia and Oklahoma University sued the NCAA, and the case was eventually decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (468 U.S. 85 [1984]). In the end, the NCAA was found to be in violation of antitrust laws. Thus, the NCAA's stranglehold on television broadcast of college football was broken.

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, the CFA took on the role of coordinating the television coverage of most of the nation's leading football conferences. Still, some teams found the arrangement too restrictive. Following the defection of a handful of teams and conferences, the CFA folded in 1994, and the conferences were on their own to negotiate television contracts with the networks. The dollars began to flow in an ever-greater volume during this period. Suggs notes that the Southeastern Conference (SEC) signed a contract in 1990 that brought in $16 million to be divided among its members. In "SEC, ESPN Agree to Milestone Contract" (August 25, 2008, http://blogs.tampabay.com/gators/2008/08/sec-espn-agree.html), Antonya English notes that in 2008 the SEC signed broadcast contracts with CBS and ESPN that extended for 15 years and guaranteed participating schools such as the University of Alabama, the University of Florida, and Louisiana State University an estimated $20 million each per year. With so much money at stake, the nation's leading college conferences also began to explore possibilities for expansion. Dennis Dodd reports in "Whenever Big Ten Expands, College Football Will Feel Trickle-down Effect" (CBS Sports, April 21, 2010) that in 2010 the Big 10 Conference and the SEC were by far the two largest conferences in the United States, together accounting for roughly 50% of the nation's college football television audience. As the two conferences jockeyed for dominance, they began exploring ways to attract more teams. According to the Big 10 Conference, in the press release "University of Nebraska Becomes Official Member of Big Ten Conference" (June 30, 2011, http://www.bigten.org/genrel/070111aaa.html), in July 2011 the University of Nebraska officially joined the Big 10 Conference, after years being a member of the rival Big 12 Conference.

With about a thousand universities participating in over 150,000 sporting events each year, competition for the right to put these events on television is fierce. In 2003 a network devoted strictly to collegiate athletics was launched under the name College Sports Television (CSTV). According to CSTV (http://www.cstv.com/online/), in 2011 the network was available in more than 21 million homes via cable and satellite. CSTV also operates a network of 215 official athletic websites for top colleges and streams audio and/or video for thousands of events per year on high-speed Internet to online subscribers. CSTV was purchased by CBS in January 2006. As often happens in the media world, success breeds competition. According to the article "BCS, ESPN Reach Deal to Air Games from 2011-14" (Associated Press, November 18, 2008), in 2008 ESPN entered into an agreement with the NCAA to cover Bowl Championship Series (BCS) football games from 2011 to 2014, in a deal worth $125 million per year. Two years later the NCAA signed a 14-year, $10.8 billion deal with Turner Broadcasting and CBS to provide expanded television coverage of its annual Division I basketball tournament, known as "March Madness." Brad Wolverton notes in "NCAA Agrees to $10.8-Billion Deal to Broadcast Its Men's Basketball Tournament" (Chronicle of Higher Education, April 22, 2010) that the agreement would generate a minimum of

$740 million for member colleges and universities each year.

The highlight of the college football season comes each December, when the annual bowl game season gets underway. Traditionally, the most prestigious bowl games included the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl. In recent years, however, the college bowl game schedule has expanded significantly. According to the article "Do We Really Need 35 NCAA Bowl Games?" (ThePigskinReport.com, June 18, 2011), there were a record 35 bowl games slated for the 2011-12 season, beginning on December 17. Each year the college bowl game season concludes with the BCS, culminating with the BCS National Championship Game to determine the top college football team in the country. Even though the more prestigious bowl games garner a great deal of media attention, the vast majority of bowl contests attract relatively small television viewing audiences. In "TV Ratings" (February 28, 2011, http://www.bcsfootball.org/news/story?id=4819384), the BCS indicates that during the 2010-11 season only two bowl contests, the BCS National Championship Game (15.3) and the Rose Bowl (11.3), earned television ratings higher than 10. In comparison, the New Orleans Bowl between Troy University and Ohio University earned the lowest ratings of any bowl game (1.5), followed closely by the Armed Forces Bowl between the U.S. Army and Southern Methodist University (1.6).

Basketball

NBA regular-season games have never drawn the kind of television audiences that NFL games routinely attract, simply because there are so many of them—the NBA season has 82 games, whereas the NFL season has just 16 games. In basketball, viewership increases significantly during the playoffs and is greatly influenced by the specific teams or personalities involved in a game. The NBA's television ratings have generally been sliding since Michael Jordan (1963-) retired in 1999, although there were signs that ratings were beginning to rebound during the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century. Ratings for NBA regular-season broadcasts in 2010-11 saw a sharp increase over the previous season. In "What's behind Jump in NBA's TV Ratings?" (USA Today, February 23, 2011), Michael Hiestand reports that by the midpoint of the season ratings had improved on all three of the NBA's main television networks. ABC's ratings increased by 32% compared to 2009-10, TNT's ratings climbed by 26%, and ESPN's ratings grew by 15%. Much of this growth was attributed to the number of young players beginning to emerge as NBA stars. For example, Hiestand points out that TNT's ratings in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, home to the basketball star Kevin Durant (1988-), grew by 150% over the previous season, the highest increase in the league.

Table 3.10: shows the history of the NBA's television contracts since 1953. The rate at which the money involved has increased is striking. The set of deals the league signed in 1990 with TNT and NBC were worth well under $1 billion for four years. The most recent contracts, signed in 2007 with ABC/ESPN and TNT, cover eight years (from the 2008-09 season to the 2015-16 season) and have a total value of $7.4 billion. Under these contracts ABC airs 15 regular-season games and the entire NBA finals, along with several early-round playoff games. ESPN broadcasts up to 75 regular-season games and one of the conference finals, as well as some early-round playoff games. TNT airs 52 regular-season games, the All-Star Game, and playoff games, including one of the conference finals.

In 2003 Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Cablevision Systems teamed up on a multiyear agreement with the NBA for distribution of NBA TV, the league's own 24-hour network, which as of 2011 was available via cable systems across the United States and in 79 other countries. In January 2008 Turner Sports, part of Time Warner, took over management of all of the NBA's digital assets, including both NBA TV and NBA.com, under a deal to run through 2016.

Hockey

Even though the National Hockey League (NHL) has experienced a general downturn in television ratings since the 1990s, there are signs that viewers are coming back. The article "NBC and NHL Agree to 10-Year TV Rights Deal" (Reuters, April 19, 2011) reveals that between 2005 and 2009 the NHL's television ratings grew by 84%. Among the most popular television events for the NHL is the

Winter Classic, an annual outdoor game that is played on New Year's Day. According to the article "Game 7 Preliminary TV Rating Ties Best on Record" (Associated Press, June 16, 2011), game seven of the 2010-11 Stanley Cup Finals between the Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks earned a 5.7 rating and a 10 share, equaling a league television record set in 2003. The NHL reports in the press release "Best-Ever Business Year Highlighted by Record Revenue" (April 13, 2011, http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=559630) that the 2011 Winter Classic between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals was the most-watched regular-season hockey game in 36 years.

The article "NBC and NHL Agree to 10-Year TV Rights Deal" reports that in April 2011 the NHL signed a new 10-year, $2 billion deal with NBC that granted the network the right to broadcast 100 regular-season games per year. As part of the deal, NBC will begin airing a nationally televised NHL game annually on the day after Thanksgiving. In "NBC, Versus Win NHL TV Rights in War vs. ESPN; Sources Say 10 Years" (April 19, 2011, http://sports.yahoo.com/), Greg Wyshynski notes that NBC outbid ESPN, which had expressed strong interest in forging its own television deal with the league. As part of the agreement, the cable channel Versus, which had broadcast professional hockey games since 2005 and had since been acquired by NBC, will continue to televise the NHL throughout the regular season and the playoffs.

Auto Racing

In "NASCAR TV Deals Done" (December 7, 2005, http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6289818.html), Mike Reynolds reports that in 2005 the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) signed a set of eight-year television rights contracts with ESPN/ABC Sports ($270 million per year) and Turner Broadcasting's TNT network ($80 million per year). Soon after these lucrative deals were signed, NASCAR's television ratings began to sag. According to Nate Ryan, in "NASCAR's Growth Slows after 15 Years in the Fast Lane" (USA Today, November 15, 2006), in 30 of the first 34 races of 2006, ratings were lower than they were the previous year. NASCAR's television ratings continued to fall through 2010. Ryan reports in "Action on Track Isn't Helping NASCAR Attendance, Ratings" (USA Today, July 21, 2010) that much of NASCAR's slump could be attributed to a decline in interest among males between the ages of 18 and 34 years. According to Ryan, Fox's ratings in that key demographic fell 29% in 2010. Meanwhile, TNT's overall ratings for NASCAR events fell 9.1% between 2009 and 2010.

Extreme Sports

Even though television ratings for extreme sports still have a long way to go before they are in the same league as professional football and basketball, the audience is growing. More important, at least from the perspective of advertisers, the audience watching extreme sports is youthful and predominantly male, with a lot of buying power. Not many sports can take credit for completely altering the public image of a soft drink, but extreme sports have done just that for Mountain Dew. Once perceived as a "hillbilly" drink, Mountain Dew is now almost universally associated with the youth culture as personified by practitioners of extreme sports. In "Going to Extremes" (Advertising Age, June 1, 2002), Joan Raymond explains that the transformation started in 1992 with the appearance of the "Do the Dew" advertising campaign. The campaign, which featured attractive young people engaging in a variety of extreme activities, helped make Mountain Dew the fastest-growing soft drink during the 1990s.

Raymond notes that by the turn of the millennium, while Monday Night Football's ratings were declining—viewership dropped from an average of 12.7% of the nation's households in 2000 to 11.5% in 2001—ratings for the two premier extreme sports events, the Gravity Games and the X Games, were increasing quickly. The average household rating was 1.7 for the 2001 Gravity Games, up from 1.6 the previous year. However, Chris Isidore states in "X-treme Marks the Spot" (CNN Money, August 6, 2004) that even though the best ratings for the 2003 Summer X Games on ABC showed 2.2% of the nation's households watching, that number was still barely half the rating ABC achieved for the final game of the NHL's Stanley Cup Finals, which were themselves considered a ratings disappointment.

Still, the audience for extreme sports remained steady, and by the end of the decade ESPN was offering Summer X Games coverage in a variety of television and online platforms. ESPN notes in "X16 Sees High Attendance and Sets Record" (August 11, 2010, http://sports.espn.go.com/action/xgames/summer/2010/news/story?id=5455079) that for the Summer X Games 16 of 2010 the network expanded its broadcast coverage from 20 hours to 31 hours on its two principal television channels, in addition to airing eight hours of the games on ESPN3D. The network also saw increased traffic on its online network, ESPN3.com, as viewership more than doubled over the previous year. Overall, ESPN estimated that 35.4 million Americans managed to view some portion of the games. Regardless, audiences remained quite small relative to other sporting events, as the games finished with a ratings share of only 0.7.

Broadcasters and advertisers are nevertheless optimistic about the future of extreme sports programming. According to Isidore, the sports' median (half are higher and half are lower) viewership age is 27, compared to a median age of 42 for ESPN's NFL football broadcasts. The ages for some other sports are even higher: baseball's median age is 48 and golf's is 55. Media companies are scrambling to ride this youthful wave. On July 1, 2003, Fox launched the digital cable channel FuelTV (2011, http://www.fuel.tv/), which is devoted to skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, BMX, freestyle motocross, wakeboarding, and other action sports programming that targets the under-40 demographic. Moreover, this young audience tends to be more comfortable with new media than their parents are. The emergence of mixed martial arts as a popular television sport also holds promise for attracting more viewers in this younger demographic group.

Advertising

Plunkett Research, Ltd., estimates in "Sports Industry Overview" (2011, http://www.plunkettresearch.com/sports %20recreation%20leisure%20market%20research/industry %20statistics) that sports in the United States was a $422 billion industry in 2011. Furthermore, approximately $27.8 billion was spent by U.S. companies on sports advertising, a large portion of which was

dedicated to television advertising. David Broughton reports in "Sports Ad Spending Roars Back" (SportsBusiness Journal, May 2, 2011) that the top-50 sports advertisers spent a combined $6.6 billion on television advertising in 2010, an increase of 27% over the previous year. The top advertiser during sporting events was the automobile industry, which accounted for 23.8% of all sports advertising spending in 2010. This figure was more than double the share of the next largest sports advertiser, the telecom industry, at 11.9%.

Many companies devote the vast bulk of their advertising budgets to promoting their products and services during sporting events. Broughton provides a list of the fifty top sports advertisers in 2010. Of these, the company that devoted the largest proportion of advertising money to sporting events was Nike. In 2010 Nike, a manufacturer of athletic shoes and apparel, spent $67.8 million (91.5%) out of a total advertising budget of $74.1 million on sports. Beer companies such as Anheuser-Busch (80.8%) and MillerCoors (75.3%) also spent large percentages of their advertising money on sports in 2010. By comparison, Procter and Gamble spent $118.5 million (6.5%) out of $1.8 billion on sports advertising.

A significant portion of sports advertising spending is on commercials that are aired during noteworthy games. The most expensive television advertisements of any kind are those placed during the NFL's Super Bowl games. Kevin Baumer explains in "Here's a Look at the Cost of Super Bowl Ads through the Years" (February 3, 2011, http://www.businessinsider.com/cost-super-bowl-ads-through- the-years-2011-2) that a 30-second television spot during Super Bowl XLV cost $3 million, compared to only $40,000 (or about $261,100 in 2011 dollars) in 1967.

Sports Advertising and Alcohol

Sports advertising is dominated by products that appeal to young adult males. One product in particular, beer, is the undisputed king of the sports advertising jungle. In "Sports Ad Spending Roars Back," Broughton points out that Anheuser-Busch was the top sports advertiser in the United States 15 times between 1994 and 2010; in 2006 and 2010 the company placed second behind Chevrolet and AT&T Mobility, respectively. Proportionally, however, the beer giant has typically spent more of its total budget on sports advertising than other companies. In 2010 Anheuser-Busch dedicated $356.2 million out of $440.7 million to marketing its products during sporting events.

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) has studied the relationship between sports programming and alcohol advertising. In Alcohol Advertising on Sports Television, 2001 to 2003 (October 2004, http://www.camy.org/bin/s/a/Alcohol_Advertising_on_Sports_Television.pdf), the most recent report on this topic as of August 2011, the CAMY indicates that even though sports programming accounted for only 16% to 18% of overall television advertising spending and only 4% of all ads between 2001 and 2003, 60.3% of the alcohol industry's advertising spending and 30.5% of its ads were on sports programs. Overall, the alcohol industry spent $540.8 million to place 90,817 ads on television sports programming in 2003. The CAMY notes that the percentage of commercials on sports programs that are for alcohol products is triple the percentage of commercials on all programming that are for alcohol products. Even though beer advertisements have long been omnipresent on sports television, in recent years ads for hard liquor have been appearing with greater frequency. Sports television advertising for distilled spirits increased 350% between 2001 and 2003. The CAMY also finds that alcohol advertising increased for the Super Bowl, Monday Night Football, and other top-rated games.

The CAMY states that soccer outranked all other sports in terms of the percentage of its advertising that was for alcohol products in 2003; 8.3% of the commercials on televised soccer games were for alcohol. Hockey was second at 7.2%, followed by professional basketball at 6.8%. Overall, 3.2% of all commercials shown during televised sporting events in 2003 were for alcohol products. Among professional sports, hockey games had the highest number of alcohol commercials per broadcast. A typical televised hockey game featured 5.3 alcohol commercials in 2003. Boxing matches averaged 4.5 alcohol commercials, followed closely by professional basketball with 4.4 alcohol commercials.

According to the CAMY, advertising on college sports presentations is at least as alcohol-oriented as on professional sports programming. In 2003 alcohol companies spent $52.2 million to place 4,747 ads on college sports programs. College basketball, at $28.3 million, accounted for more than half of this spending.

Sports Viewing and Gender

In "Olympics Bridge Gender Divide in Sports Interest" (February 1, 2010, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1481/interest-men-women- winter-olympics-super-bowl-world-cup), the Pew Research Center examines men's and women's levels of interest for various sporting events. In a survey that was conducted in January 2010, Pew finds that a larger percentage of women (63%) than men (59%) were looking forward to following the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. A similar survey conducted in December 2007 found that 54% of women were excited to watch the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, compared to 51% of men. By comparison, the 2010 survey showed that 67% of men were looking forward to watching Super Bowl XLIV, whereas only 50% of women expressed the same view. Likewise, a higher proportion of men (28%) than women (18%) stated they were eager to follow the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament on television.

Even though female athletes generally fail to generate the same television ratings as male athletes, during the first decade of the 21st century there were signs that the audience for women's sports was growing. The article "Women's Basketball Sees Higher Attendance, TV Ratings" (Reuters, September 16, 2008) reports that in 2007 the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) signed an eight-year, $30 million deal to extend its television contract with ABC and ESPN2, as the league continued to expand its fan base. The WNBA's television ratings rose 19% between 2007 and 2008, and its attendance increased by 2.2%. WNBA games also posted a record 46 sellouts in 2008, twice its previous high of 23 in 2004. According to the article "Attendance, TV Ratings up for WNBA" (Associated Press, August 13, 2010), attendance at WNBA games rose each year between 2007 and 2010. At the same

time, viewership for WNBA games broadcast on ESPN2 rose 23% between 2009 and 2010.

Nowhere was the increasing popularity of women's sports more apparent than during the U.S. soccer team's run to the women's World Cup final in 2011. Sports Media Watch notes in "World Cup: USA/Brazil Third Most-Viewed WWC Match Ever" (July 12, 2011, http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2011/07/world-cup-usabrazil-third-most-viewed-wwc-match-ever/) that the women's quarterfinal match against Brazil in July 2011 attracted nearly 3.9 million viewers, the third-largest television audience for a women's World Cup game in U.S. history and the highest rating in over a decade. Martin Rogers reports in "U.S. Women Lauded with Celebrity Tweets" (July 11, 2011, http://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/news?slug=ro-rogers_usa_women_soccer_celebrity_tweets_071111) that the U.S. team's dramatic victory over Brazil also elicited a wave of national pride among a wide range of celebrities and athletes, many of them male. Among the luminaries to post congratulatory messages were the actor Tom Hanks (1956-), who declared "I love these women" on his Twitter page; the hip-hop musician Lil Wayne (1982-); and the NBA star LeBron James (1984-). In the aftermath of this outpouring, the U.S. goalie Hope Solo (1981-), who blocked a critical penalty kick during the final shootout, spoke of the team's gratitude. "Go ahead, jump on the bandwagon and let's do this together," she told the press. "Thank you for standing behind us." Even though the United States ultimately lost the final to Japan, the article "Tweets-per-Second Mark Set during Final" (Associated Press, July 18, 2011) reports that the game inspired a frenzy on Twitter, as users sent a record 7,196 tweets per second during the game's thrilling conclusion.

Gaming

Not long ago there were only two options for sports enthusiasts: playing a sport yourself or watching others play it live or onscreen. In recent years, a third way has emerged in the form of sports gaming.

Sports-oriented video games have been around for years, but until the mid-1980s the graphics were mediocre and the action unexciting for a true sports buff. A big change took place during the late 1980s, when Electronic Arts (EA), at the time a relatively new company making interactive entertainment software, introduced the first-ever football video game to offer realistic 11-on-11 action. To make the game as realistic as possible, the company consulted extensively with the former NFL coach and current football commentator John Madden (1936-). EA eventually named the game after Madden, and in 1989 the first version of John Madden Football was released for Apple II computers. The game was an instant sensation. A version for the Sega Genesis home entertainment system was introduced the following year. Over the next few years the gaming industry grew exponentially, split about evenly between computer games and television-based systems. By the release of the 1995 version of the game Madden NFL '95, EA had hashed out licensing deals with the NFL and the NFL Players Association, allowing it to use the likenesses of real players and the official league and team logos and uniforms. Madden NFL was eventually made available for every major gaming system. John Gaudiosi reports in "'Madden NFL 12' Sales Will Suffer with Players' Lockout" (Hollywood Reporter, March 14, 2011) that total sales of Madden NFL had topped 90 million units by 2010. With the NFL owners and players caught in a bitter labor dispute, however, Gaudiosi also indicates that many analysts believed sales of the next version of the game, Madden NFL 12, could fall by as much as 50% if the 2011 NFL season was canceled. In the end, the lockout was resolved, and the 2011 season was scheduled to be played in its entirety.

Current Issues in Sports and Media

Violence and Athlete Role Models

Violence in sports is often a focus of media scrutiny and academic research because the behavior of high-profile athletes can have an impact on fan behavior, according to social scientists. In "Violence in Sports Reflects Society, Says IU Professor" (July 3, 2002, http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/449.html), Lynn Jamieson of Indiana University explains that "sport tends to reflect society, and we live in a violent era. We have a violent society where people use violence to solve problems instead of using other means... . The violence issue is not limited to professional sports. It filters down to the high schools and even to recreational activities... . This is because if it occurs at the professional level, it is likely to be imitated at the lower levels like Little League and city recreational programs."

Some sports include a measure of violence that is held in check by the rules of fair play and by officials who can enforce penalties or regulate the players' behavior to some extent. However, the violence below the surface can often erupt, and violent events involving professional athletes—either on or off the playing field—become major stories that are covered by news and entertainment organizations in addition to the sports media. The 2004-05 NBA season was marred by a huge brawl during a game between the Detroit Pistons and the Indiana Pacers; the fracas spilled into the stands, resulting in the involvement of both spectators and players. Several players received long suspensions, and the entire season took place under the cloud of the melee.

Basketball is not alone in contending with image problems stemming from extended media coverage of the actions of its players. In October 2005 several members of the NFL's Minnesota Vikings were allegedly involved in a party aboard a chartered boat that erupted into a drunken sex orgy. In August 2007 Michael Vick (1980-) of the Atlanta Falcons was suspended by the NFL after he pleaded guilty to felony charges stemming from his involvement in an illegal dog-fighting ring. According to Michael MacCambridge, in America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation (2004), such incidents result from the unique position athletes are afforded within U.S. society. In "Goodell Is Keeping the N.F.L. Inbounds" (New York Times, September 16, 2007), Judy Battista quotes MacCambridge, who stated, "There is a tremendous amount of money, free time and scrutiny in the lives of most pro football players, and the combination is more pronounced and more combustible than it was a generation ago." Vick's suspension indicated a no-nonsense response from Roger Goodell (1959-), who in his first year as commissioner of the NFL instituted a strict code of conduct for players and coaches. Goodell reinstated Vick following completion of his sentence in 2009, and Vick joined the Philadelphia Eagles, returning to play in September 2009.

Incidents in college sports also abound. In a Conference USA basketball game in January 2009, the University of Houston's Aubrey Coleman (1987-) stepped on the face of University of Arizona's Chase Budinger (1988-). The video of the incident spread quickly around the Internet. Ultimately, Coleman was suspended for one game. During the first weekend of the 2009 college football season, LeGarrette Blount (1986-) of the University of Oregon punched Boise State defensive end Byron Hout (1990-) and was suspended for the rest of the season. However, Blount was eventually reinstated after 10 games.

Even more concerning to college officials is the rise in criminal behavior among student athletes. In "Out of Bounds: College Athletes and Crime" (CBS News, March 2, 2011), Armen Keteyian examines the results of an investigation into the criminal backgrounds of top college athletes. Of 2,837 total players on the rosters of the nation's top-25 football teams, 200, or 7%, had been arrested or cited for a crime. More than 25% (56) of these incidents involved violent crimes, including assault and battery, rape, and robbery. The University of Pittsburgh held the dubious distinction of having 22 student athletes with criminal records, the most for any American college or university. Keteyian points out that only two of the 25 universities surveyed performed any kind of criminal background check on its athletic recruits, and none conducted research into the juvenile records of their players.

Athletes and Guns.

A related issue is the prevalence of professional athletes who carry guns. A large number of professional athletes feel they need to carry a weapon for self-protection given their high profile. The public knows the players are likely to be carrying a lot of money and wearing expensive jewelry, and they are often robbery targets for that reason. The problem is that the athletes sometimes use their guns. In August 2009 Plaxico Burress (1977-) of the New York Giants was indicted for offenses related to an incident that took place in November 2008, in which he accidentally shot himself in the thigh at a Manhattan nightclub. Burress pleaded guilty to the weapons charge and was sentenced to two years in prison. On Christmas Eve 2009 Gilbert Arenas (1982-) and Javaris Crittenton (1987-) of the Washington Wizards drew guns on each other in the team locker room following a dispute over a gambling debt. Both players received probation and were suspended for the remainder of the season.

Athletes and Domestic Violence.

Domestic violence is also a cause of concern in professional sports. Numerous examples of violence are reported in the media, and incidents are not limited to athletes who participate in contact sports or whose physical strength sets them apart from mainstream society. In 1992 the professional golfer John Daly (1966-) was arrested and charged with third-degree assault on his wife following an argument. The NBA guard Ron Artest (1979-), who had previously been suspended for 73 games after taking part in the infamous brawl with Detroit Pistons fans in Auburn Hills, Michigan, in 2004, was suspended for the first seven games of the 2007-08 season after he pleaded no contest to domestic violence charges. In Breaking into Baseball: Women and the National Pastime (2005), Jean Hastings Ardell quotes the law professor Phyllis Goldfarb of George Washington University, who noted that domestic violence is the leading cause of arrest among professional athletes. According to Goldfarb, "A celebrity athlete may simply be taught by the culture that he is superior to his wife, that she can ask nothing of him that he doesn't want to give, that if she persists in doing so, she deserves mistreatment, and moreover, is expendable, as there are countless women out there for him."

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Gale, Cengage Learning Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition) Meyer, Stephen. "Sports and the Media." Sports in America: Recreation, Business, Education, and Controversy, 2012 ed., Gale,

2012. Information Plus Reference Series. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ4189600103/OVIC?u=txshracd2512&sid=OVIC&xid=f021cf49. Accessed 4 May 2021.

Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ4189600103