tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/media-sport-8191/articlesMedia sport – The Conversation2017-02-08T03:23:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/724942017-02-08T03:23:38Z2017-02-08T03:23:38ZFight over live-streamed sport to go on after final bell sounds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155825/original/image-20170207-4240-5qs3ul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nearly 300,000 people tuned into two live streams on Facebook of the Anthony Mundine-Danny Green fight.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Mariuz</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When a Brisbane boxing fan who paid $59.95 for “live and exclusive” viewing of last Friday’s Danny Green v Anthony Mundine boxing match <a href="http://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/boxing-fan-live-streams-mundine-v-green-fight-over-facebook-live-wins-internet/news-story/72694120291078080d9b209fac9e67c4">streamed it off his TV</a> through a smartphone and Facebook Live, he landed quite a blow beneath Foxtel’s belt. An estimated 300,000 <a href="http://www.bandt.com.au/media/foxtel-take-legal-action-streamers-green-v-mundine-fight">tuned in</a> via this and another unauthorised stream.</p>
<p>This is the latest skirmish over premium live sport in Australia. Foxtel’s high-priced oligopolistic control over Australian pay TV has again clashed with the demands of sport fans and the increasingly sophisticated capture and relay technologies available to them.</p>
<p>In a constantly changing TV sport environment, pay-TV providers have many more bruising bouts ahead of them – unless they let go of their conventional model of TV-based subscription and move to multiple platforms.</p>
<h2>Foxtel scores an own goal</h2>
<p>The curious feature of <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/foxtel-threatens-to-sue-as-facebook-pirates-plunder-mundine-vs-green-fight-424052">Foxtel’s response</a> to this purported act of mass piracy is the surprise at its occurrence, and its ham-fistedness. The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-04/green-v-mundine-live-streamers-warned-to-brace-for-legal-action/8241276">national coverage</a> accorded to Foxtel’s open threat to sue the <a href="http://www.bandt.com.au/media/foxtel-take-legal-action-streamers-green-v-mundine-fight">“two ordinary blokes”</a> who streamed the Mundine-Green fight achieved twin outcomes.</p>
<p>First, it elevated the profile of the two men, Brett Hevers and Darren Sharpe, who have become unlikely symbols of online resistance against perceived corporate greed. </p>
<p>As half-owner of Foxtel, News Corp Australia’s flagrant <a href="http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/two-face-5-years-jail-streaming-green-mundine-figh/3140108/">use of its news media syndication</a> to canvass five-year jail terms and $60,000 fines for the live-streamers was a self-administered punch by Goliath in his contest with David.</p>
<p>Foxtel’s decision to charge so much for access to the fight contrasts with <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/foxtel-threatens-to-sue-as-facebook-pirates-plunder-mundine-vs-green-fight-424052">Hevers’ claim</a> that $10 would have been a fairer amount to pay. This is especially the case as pay-per-view subscribers would already have incurred the cost of ongoing subscriptions to be in a position to watch it. </p>
<p>Second, that Facebook Live and similar services can be used to bypass restrictions on subscription-based television content has now been advertised in headlines across Australia. A previously low-profile part of the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WQacCAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+informal+media+economy&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjptYHn1_zRAhWMNpQKHSRnA1IQ6AEIGTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false">informal media economy</a> is now common knowledge.</p>
<p>Almost the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/04/twitter-periscope-winner-mayweather-pacquiao">exact same scenario</a> unfolded in the US just two years earlier during HBO and Showtime’s live pay-per-view coverage of the blockbuster fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. The only difference was the brand of the smartphone app used to circumvent the control of broadcast rights holders over access to the fight. The Twitter-owned Periscope service was the live-streaming app of choice among users on that occasion.</p>
<p>At least HBO and Showtime had the good sense to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32584454">limit their public statements</a> on the use of Periscope during the fight. </p>
<p>Foxtel’s errors are compounded by Facebook’s efforts to build a clear association between sport consumption and its Live service in the minds of millions of users. A reported US$4.4 million <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-enlists-soccer-elite-to-help-live-video-1469727818">has been paid</a> to popular athletes, teams and sports media companies around the world to create video content for Facebook Live.</p>
<p>The combination of Foxtel, Hevers, Sharpe and <a href="http://www.bandt.com.au/media/foxtel-take-legal-action-streamers-green-v-mundine-fight">300,000 viewers on Facebook</a> during the Green-Mundine fight has added to this push. The stage could be set for a knock ’em down, drag ’em out corporate tussle between Facebook and Foxtel.</p>
<h2>Can Foxtel keep up?</h2>
<p>Despite these missteps, it would be a mistake to assume that Foxtel is powerless against so-called digital disruptors. </p>
<p>Increased marketing of the Foxtel Play streaming service, particularly following the recent closure of Presto, and the offer of a bundled broadband service to new subscribers are indicative of an evolving business model designed to deliver content across multiple screens. </p>
<p>Actions are also being taken to counter rising competition from operators in the telecommunications sector. </p>
<p>When Optus <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-optus-stole-the-english-premier-league-from-foxtel-2016-5">seized the rights</a> to the English Premier League from Foxtel for its mobile and broadband platforms, Foxtel contracted with beIN Sports to carry some premium European football and games on delay, and other material from the channels of six leading English Premier League clubs – at <a href="http://www.foxsports.com.au/football/epl-on-fox-sports-foxtel-ceos-open-letter-to-fans-about-optusfox-deals/news-story/9a26b28b92aad4bc596104dadb3efae1">no extra cost</a> to its subscribers.</p>
<p>So, Foxtel isn’t averse to giving away sport content when it suits its commercial interests. In this case, it did it to prevent the churning of paying customers to other services.</p>
<p>Rumbles like the one over the Mundine-Green live stream will no doubt proliferate. This technical knockout comes as Foxtel and other sport content owners transition from a service originally based on a big TV in the living room or the pub to a multiplicity of anytime, anywhere viewing platforms.</p>
<p>These owners won’t just have to deal with the spread of the NBN. They also must appreciate that the use of digital media technology is at least as much about capturing and uploading mobile content – say from the stands of a football stadium or the seats surrounding a boxing ring – as it is about receiving an expensive one-way communication provided by someone else.</p>
<p>Finally, there were other, non-pugilistic sport viewing opportunities on Australian TV last Friday night. People might have watched the A-League football match between Brisbane Roar and Sydney FC on free-to-air SBS.</p>
<p>Or, of greater historical significance, they could have resisted the dubious pleasure of paying $59.95 to watch <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/afl/eddie-everywhere-mcguire-missing-from-collingwoods-historic-aflw-debut-20170203-gu5gdi.html">Eddie McGuire</a> host the boxing in favour of witnessing – without charge – the opening match of the AFL women’s league between his Collingwood team and Carlton on Seven. </p>
<p>Women’s sport is on the rise on free-to-air TV. Anti-siphoning laws continue to prevent many of the major sports events in Australia from becoming the <a href="http://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Broadcast/Television/TV-content-regulation/sport-anti-siphoning-tv-content-regulation-acma">exclusive property of subscription TV</a>. And then there is the constant, rapid development of disruptive technologies and services. </p>
<p>All together, this means the pay-TV sector needs to adapt quickly in appealing to subscribers whose attention now moves freely between different screens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe has received funding from the Australian Research Council to support research relating to this article: Struggling for Possession: The Control and Use of Online Media Sport (with Brett Hutchins, DP0877777); 'A Nation of "Good Sports"? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia' (DP130104502), and 'Australian Cultural Fields: National and Transnational Dynamics' (with Tony Bennett et al, DP140101970). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brett Hutchins has received funding from the Australian Research Council to support research relating to this article: The Mobile Media Sport Moment: Investigating the Pivotal Role of Sport in Mobile Media Content, Markets and Technologies (FT130100506; <a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mobilemediasport/">http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/mobilemediasport/</a>), and Struggling for Possession: The Control and Use of Online Media Sport (with David Rowe, DP0877777).</span></em></p>Foxtel’s high-priced oligopolistic control over Australian pay TV has again clashed with the demands of sport fans and the increasingly sophisticated capture and relay technologies available to them.David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityBrett Hutchins, Professor of Media and Communications Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/630212016-08-04T01:27:57Z2016-08-04T01:27:57ZWill social media define the success of the Olympic Games?<p>Long before the opening ceremonies kicked off the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Games had already been playing out in the news for a while – and for all the wrong reasons. Brazil has been criticized for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/09/brazil-turmoil-rio-2016-olympics">political instability</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-poke-the-bear-what-could-russia-do-next-about-drugs-in-sport-62693">doping scandals</a>, <a href="http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14791849/trash-contamination-continue-pollute-olympic-training-competition-sites-rio-de-janeiro">environmental</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-rio-security-idUSKCN0YN50S">safety concerns</a> and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/health/what-is-zika-virus.html?_r=1">Zika virus</a>.</p>
<p>Although research has shown that <a href="http://olympicstudies.uab.es/lectures/web/pdf/rivenburgh.pdf">the media tend to be negatively biased</a> toward non-Western mega-event hosts, Rio has been left to contend with what is perhaps the most problematic mainstream media coverage of any Olympics so far. In turn, we’d expect the organizers and the International Olympic Committee to be battling to reclaim the Olympic Games’ image. But in an unprecedented move, they’ve done almost the opposite. </p>
<p>In their <a href="http://doc.rero.ch/record/255030">strategic communications plan</a>, drafted as early as 2012, Rio’s Olympic organizers relinquished a surprising amount of storytelling power not only to journalists but to the general public on social media, writing “citizens who publish content on the web are the ones who will ultimately define the success of the Games.” </p>
<p>While social media are a pervasive global force, it’s unclear how they’ll be used at the Rio Games. Which narratives will be told, by whom, and what impact will they have?</p>
<p>Indeed, if we think about <a href="http://doi.org/10.4324/9780203120415">sporting events as spaces for media consumption and evolution</a>, then the battles for Olympic “success” take place as much through various storytelling platforms as they do in the stadium. But what does success for such an event look like? </p>
<h2>Social so far</h2>
<p>According to one official IOC <a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Games/Summer-Games/Games-Rio-2016-Olympic-Games/Media-Guide-for-Rio-2016/IOC-Marketing-Media-Guide-Rio-2016.pdf">definition</a>, success is measured by media audience engagement. The more of it, the better. From that perspective, the IOC has done rather well in recent years, garnering substantial audiences on its official Olympic social media accounts.</p>
<p>London’s 2012 Summer Olympic Games had an official social media following of 4.7 million users across all platforms. Two years later, Sochi’s had gone up to over 5 million across two platforms alone: Facebook and <a href="http://vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks/">VKontakte</a>, the most popular Russian social media site. But beyond these official channels, what’s social media’s potential impact on the hames?</p>
<p>We certainly need to be <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2011-01-19/innovation-revolution">skeptical</a> about statements that exaggerate the role of social media. We know that social media alone <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell">does not cause revolutions</a>. And while social media numbers have increased for the Olympic Games, they pale in comparison to its 3.6 billion, and growing, in global television audience. But there are some examples of <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2010-12-20/political-power-social-media">social media facilitating alternate</a> types of storytelling. </p>
<p>In terms of the Olympics, my own research suggests <a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/2167479515576101">social media served as an important, albeit marginal, channel</a> in reframing NBC’s mainstream coverage of the 2014 Games in Sochi.</p>
<p>Through a mix of automated textual analyses and in-depth readings of hundreds of Tweets, I found that a new story emerges. An international group of Twitter users gathered around the #NBCFail hashtag to point out the network’s gaffes, to figure out how to watch the coverage live and for free and to piece together what was not shown. These Twitter users created their own highly politicized version of the Olympics, which often went against NBC’s <a href="http://www.totalsportek.com/money/olympics-2016-tv-rights-deals-worldwide-increased-52/">highly paid</a> broadcast rights to set the official storyline in the U.S.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"437630227162730498"}"></div></p>
<p>Twitter users publicized a series of important omissions from NBC’s coverage of the Olympic Games. These included the removal of a Soviet era act from the opening ceremony, a missing performance by t.A.T.u (a supposedly gay Russian band), the disappearance of the <a href="http://gawker.com/the-russian-police-choir-sang-get-lucky-at-the-openin-1518475274">Russian police choir singing “Get Lucky”</a> and the editing of IOC President Thomas Bach’s speech, in which he referred to the IOC being committed to human rights. And that’s all just in the opening ceremony. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"434732896595611648"}"></div></p>
<p>To be sure, there were also plenty of tweets dedicated to discussing the cause of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/12/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-bob-costas-s-olympic-pink-eye.html">Bob Costas’ pinkeye</a>. Humor was certainly the social lubricant and common language behind much of the content. One tweeter posted a cartoon and in Russian playfully compared the cutting of a peacock’s wings to NBC’s editing of the Sochi 2014 opening ceremony.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"432813175482748928"}"></div></p>
<p>Still, what #NBCFail revealed was more or less a counternarrative to mainstream media, with its focus on medal counts and heartwarming athlete backstories. </p>
<p>While these are not the first instances of a hashtag being used to <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/15/twitterers-protest-cnnfail-on-iran-coverage/">expose what was not shown</a>, they do speak to the role of the citizen social media user as alternate storyteller or <a href="https://danielkreiss.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/kreiss_politicalperformance.pdf">active spectator</a>. </p>
<h2>So what can we expect for Rio?</h2>
<p>In short, look for more content, more clutter and more contracts.</p>
<p>Research on #SochiProblems, which became more popular than the official Sochi handle, shows that the vast majority of those tweeting about the problems at the Winter Olympic Games <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5783/RIRP-8-2014-09-161-180">were not actually on the ground in Sochi</a> – or even in Russia at the time. And since the majority of the world participates in the Olympics remotely via media, we can expect this summer’s social media narratives will come from far beyond Brazil. Furthermore, despite being a country that’s very active on social media, it’s worth noting that the typical social media user is not the typical Brazilian. With just over <a href="http://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-in-2016">half of the population</a> having access to the internet, social media in Brazil remains a medium of privilege. </p>
<p>Similar to Sochi, we can also expect the real social media action in Rio to take place away from official media accounts and hashtags, which have grown in presence.</p>
<p><a href="http://vancouversun.com/opinion/opinion-ioc-sponsors-have-hijacked-social-media">According to Graeme Menzies</a>, communication director for the Vancouver Olympics, the 2010 Olympic Games were the first and last social media Olympics. In his view, social media at the 2010 games was “the people’s media,” with little to no organizational involvement. Not long after, the IOC moved to exert more power over this space, partnering with the likes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to create official Olympic social media content. Furthermore, social media platforms like Twitter saw the games as an opportunity to attract new users. For instance, Rio 2016 will see <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/twitter-revamps-moments-for-the-olympics-with-weeks-long-tracking-of-sports-and-events/">extensive coordination</a> with Twitter – and the largest launch of emojis to date.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"760555933244203008"}"></div></p>
<p>The IOC also developed <a href="https://stillmed.olympic.org/media/Document%20Library/OlympicOrg/Games/Summer-Games/Games-Rio-2016-Olympic-Games/Social-Media-Blogging-Internet-Guidelines-and-News-Access-Rules/IOC-Social-and-Digital-Media-Guidelines-Rio-2016.pdf#_ga=1.43008870.2142566050.1468331164">explicit sets of guidelines</a> for how athletes and Olympic personnel should use social media. Notably, this comes partly in an effort to attract younger audiences – but it also comes at the expense of a loss of some social authenticity. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"720636463273152517"}"></div></p>
<p>In addition, the IOC <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/how-olympics-new-advertising-rules-will-impact-athletes-and-brands-rio-172372">relaxed its sponsorship rules</a> for the Rio Olympic Games, meaning that the social media space will only become more cluttered with commercial content. Preliminary findings from my upcoming study about the Rio games show that one of the most popular Olympics-related topics on Twitter leading up to the event has been the promotion of Airbnb rentals. While locals are posting to advertise their own apartments, the company does have <a href="https://www.airbnb.com/press/news/airbnb-takes-gold-with-the-rio-2016-olympic-games-providing-the-official-alternative-accommodations-service">an official partnership with the IOC.</a></p>
<p>Still, if we think of the Olympics purely as media content, then part of its communicative power lies in the ability to engage people and spotlight a range of issues beyond sport, whether short-term apartment rentals or failures of major media networks.</p>
<p>We can almost be sure that social media will succeed in attracting bigger audiences this year. Whether it can have a meaningful impact in shaping the Olympic narratives beyond echoing the mainstream media or corporate partnerships remains to be seen. After all, general news coverage of the lead-up to the games has itself been fairly harsh and hardly evocative of the party atmosphere the organizers would like us to feel.</p>
<p>Although increasingly cluttered, the power of the citizens’ social media space in relation to the Olympic Games and media corporations lies precisely in its ability to show something unexpected. As long as there is still a possibility for that to take place, and as long as we are willing to do some more digging for it, we should expect some interesting material from Rio – and probably some entertaining memes, too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katerina Girginova does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The mainstream media has knocked Brazil for the Zika virus, doping scandals and safety concerns. But citizen social media users, by revealing an alternate narrative, could even the score for Rio.Katerina Girginova, Doctoral Student in Communication, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/275002014-07-01T19:12:00Z2014-07-01T19:12:00ZWorld Cup: round ball, square eyes and hungering to excess<p>Just before a critical World Cup game against Spain in Rio de Janeiro, scores of ticketless Chile fans <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/10910309/Chile-fans-cause-chaos-as-they-storm-Maracana-media-centre-ahead-of-World-Cup-2014-clash-against-Spain.html">broke into</a> the expensively rebuilt Maracana Stadium at its least secure point – the media centre.</p>
<p>Surprised sports journalists got a close-up view of the frustrated invaders crashing through the glass doors and flimsy walls of their workspace, but quickly generated pictures and stories of this literally “breaking news” to the outside world.</p>
<p>This incident dramatically contrasts the scarce opportunity of attending the World Cup with the virtual impossibility of avoiding it via the media. About 75,000 people can fit into the Maracana, but FIFA, association football’s world governing authority, <a href="http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/y=2014/m=6/news=fifa-world-cuptm-group-stages-break-new-ground-in-tv-viewing-2388418.html">estimates</a> that the 2014 World Cup will exceed the 3.2 billion audience reach of the preceding 2010 tournament in South Africa. </p>
<p>In other words, most of us who like football are symbolically compelled to be big-match gatecrashers through the media centre. </p>
<p>The media dominate mega sport events because of the obvious mismatch between stadium access and interest in what happens there. Scale and popularity make them prime-time news in their own right, much to the chagrin of those who couldn’t tell Lionel Messi from a boutique label of Argentinean malbec.</p>
<p>Sport permeates and sustains all media, but it was television that brought it vibrantly live into the lounge room and ensured massive – if incidental – attention to advertising and branding. For this reason, television corporations have been prepared to invest huge sums to secure broadcast rights – <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2014/06/05/the-billion-dollar-business-of-the-world-cup/">US$1.7 billion</a> for Brazil 2014 alone.</p>
<p>Broadcast television is under obvious threat from new media technologies, and it is live sport that has helped keep it alive. Television audiences may be fragmenting, but sport happens in the moment and so demands instant – and lucrative – congregation. </p>
<p>However, singular dependency on a “box in the corner” is long past. Brazil 2014, like the London 2012 Olympics before it, is a multi-screen experience enabled by the transition from analogue to digital media. This has been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27693809">described</a> as “the first truly digital World Cup” (by app performance company AppDynamics), but it is more convincingly the latest advance in <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415887182/">networked media sport</a>, which here draws football, fans, communication and commerce into an ever-more-intimate embrace.</p>
<p>Before the first game kicked off in Sao Paulo, FIFA <a href="http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/organisation/tv/salesdistribution.html">concluded</a> broadband and mobile rights deals alongside those for television. Therefore, with minimal effort, it is possible for those with the means to watch the action anytime, anywhere. </p>
<p>Giant screens at public viewing sites in cities across the globe, flat-screen pub televisions, office computer monitors, laptops, tablets, smartphones and home stadiums mean that, whether in public or private space, we can always, in some sense, be “at” the World Cup.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52603/original/nmhh5mcn-1404104222.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52603/original/nmhh5mcn-1404104222.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52603/original/nmhh5mcn-1404104222.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52603/original/nmhh5mcn-1404104222.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52603/original/nmhh5mcn-1404104222.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52603/original/nmhh5mcn-1404104222.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52603/original/nmhh5mcn-1404104222.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Giant screens at fansites in cities across the globe, such as Amsterdam, mean fans can always be ‘at’ the World Cup in some way.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Evert Elzinga</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the digital sport world means much more than proliferating options for watching football matches. Social media outlets provide multiple ways for football fans to converse with each other – and for the media, advertisers and sponsors to track the topics that exercise them.</p>
<p>Operations like <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-28015816">BBC Trending</a> monitor social media such as Twitter in order to tell the online audience what is running hot on social media and attempt to explain it all. The most noteworthy incident arising from Brazil 2014 so far, though, has not been spectacular goal-scoring by Australia’s Tim Cahill or Colombia’s James Rodriguez, but Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez biting his Italian opponent, Giorgio Chiellini’s shoulder. </p>
<p>Suarez’s snacking on the job created a spectacular Twitter spike, with the term Suarez and hashtag #Suarez used 3.1 million times in a single day (according to BBC Trending). Soon, memes evoking Jaws, Dracula and The Silence of the Lambs <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/worldcup/luis-suarez-bite-the-10-best-memes-doing-the-rounds-after-uruguay-strikers-latest-controversial-incident-9561470.html">were in circulation</a> along with sundry jokes involving blood-stained teeth. These spread in a now-familiar pattern from social media to mainstream reportage of what social media are saying, in turn to be commented on in social media in an ascending regenerative spiral of sport talk. </p>
<p>Suarez may have eliminated England with two goals and followed up with a celebratory dressing-room video <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/worldcup2014/article-2663166/Watch-Luis-Suarezs-video-message-inside-dressing-room-Uruguays-World-Cup-win-England.html">post on YouTube</a>, but his scandalous behaviour on the pitch has attracted attention from far beyond the ranks of football followers.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/52605/original/3ztg2c97-1404104851.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Luis Suarez bite controversy has been very much a mediatised event.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Ali Haider</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Blanket mainstream media coverage and social media chat have ensured that Suarez’s contribution to World Cup posterity has been with incisor rather than instep. Perhaps it will ultimately define the visual memory of the event itself (like Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt in the final of the Germany 2006 World Cup), sustained by the digital fossil record of slow-motion replays of the bite and the memes that it generated.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the Brazil World Cup, considerable media attention was paid to local opposition to it on grounds such as financial waste, corruption and oppression of the poor. As is usual with mega sport events, including the Beijing 2008 and Sochi 2014 Olympics, much of this political interest waned once journalists had regular sporting contests to cover. </p>
<p>The Suarez affair has had the effect of breaking the spell, if temporarily. It has taken the focus off the games and onto debates about <a href="http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/28036237">acceptable and unacceptable conduct</a> among footballers and the world game’s post-colonial structures of discipline and power. Had Brazil been eliminated early, the resultant vacuum might have been filled by renewed protest and media interest in the condition of the country.</p>
<p>Such are the uncertainties when so much professional and citizen media focus is applied to a single high-stakes sport competition in which national pride, sport governance authority and anxious corporate capital are deeply implicated. All the “big” media are there, but they are seemingly as interested in trending patterns among the watchers in cyberspace as in player formations on the field of play.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/27500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe has received funding from the Australian Research Council for 'Struggling for Possession: The Control and Use of Online Media Sport' (with Brett Hutchins, DP0877777), and currently for 'A Nation of "Good Sports"? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia' (DP130104502).</span></em></p>Just before a critical World Cup game against Spain in Rio de Janeiro, scores of ticketless Chile fans broke into the expensively rebuilt Maracana Stadium at its least secure point – the media centre…David Rowe, Professor of Cultural Research, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/233112014-02-18T19:10:47Z2014-02-18T19:10:47ZToo much sport is barely enough: what makes Roy and HG funny?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41732/original/wsp26jrb-1392675770.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C72%2C1800%2C1350&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Comedic duo Roy and HG simultaneously celebrate and critique the place of sport in Australian culture.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Network Ten</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Sochi Winter Olympics has seen the return to Australian television screens of sport parodists extraordinaire “Rampaging” Roy Slaven and HG Nelson. Roy and HG’s Russian Revolution presents the familiar routines honed since the 1980s on radio and television, and which reached Olympian heights at the Sydney 2000 Games and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_with_Roy_and_HG">The Dream with Roy and HG</a>.</p>
<p>At the Sydney Olympics they wittily skewered the pretentiousness, national chauvinism and commercialism that mar this most global of sport spectacles. They even managed to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/17/1089694613537.html">cause consternation</a> among the International and Australian Olympic Committees and their commercial sponsors by creating an absurd local fauna mascot, <a href="http://aso.gov.au/titles/tv/dream-days-9-and-15/clip1/">Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat</a>, to rival the official trio of Millie (echidna), Olly (kookaburra), and Syd (platypus), the last of which they preferred to call Dickhead.</p>
<p>An unlikely symbol of spontaneous popular Olympic resistance to bureaucratic and commercial authority, Fatso made guerrilla on-camera appearances, including at some medal ceremonies with successful Australian athletes. </p>
<p>Fatso embodied Roy and HG’s comic technique of playing with the visual grammar and language of sport, rendering super-slow motion replays of live action in absurdist ways, and attaching curious folk labels, such as the “battered sav” and “Chiko roll”, to arcane gymnastic manoeuvres.</p>
<p>In alternative live calls of games such as rugby league’s State of Origin during their self-inaugurated Festival of the Boot, Roy and HG also invent nicknames for players, the most renowned of which is “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/lazarus-makes-a-late-breakaway-20130903-2t37d.html">The Brick with Eyes</a>” for the now-federal Senator-elect Glenn Lazarus.</p>
<p>Repetition and circulation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_and_HG's_State_of_Origin_commentary">nicknames</a> for players (like “Backdoor Benny”) and for some of their practices (such as the “squirrel grip” to describe the practice of manhandling the genitals of opponents) provide an alternative framing of sport, substituting whimsy and wild extrapolation for the deadly earnestness of sports commentary.</p>
<p>And when stuck for a gag, Roy and HG can always resort to making fun of neighbouring New Zealand.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r1mZJxj4yRE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">From The Dream with Roy and HG, 2000 Olympics.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The vehicles for the performance of these feats are the stock characters that they inhabit. Roy is the know-it-all ex-sportsman prone to mythologise and re-invent his heroic past. HG is the combustible commentator always on the point of exploding into another barely comprehensible rant.</p>
<p>These archetypes are recognisable to anyone even mildly acquainted with the Australian sports media. But they also raise the question of whether Roy and HG’s humour only really works for the initiated: the people who understand and embrace the sport that is being parodied for comic effect. </p>
<p>And yet, to laugh at and with Roy and HG it is not necessary to know or to love sport, although sometimes it helps.</p>
<p>Roy and HG’s sport-related comedy works in two main ways and plays to rather different galleries. In their coverage of the most popular sports, they are making the familiar strange and exposing its inherent silliness. When covering the football codes or prominent Olympic sports like athletics, they are working with a substantial level of audience knowledge in a specialist, media-saturated environment.</p>
<p>Here Roy and HG’s shtick is to work with what is already well-known. They play around with the boilerplate clichés of sport coverage, stretching them to ridiculous degrees and exposing their banality and pomposity. This is familiarity breeding wry reflection rather than contempt.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41734/original/fnxtry7s-1392680394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41734/original/fnxtry7s-1392680394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41734/original/fnxtry7s-1392680394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41734/original/fnxtry7s-1392680394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41734/original/fnxtry7s-1392680394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41734/original/fnxtry7s-1392680394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/41734/original/fnxtry7s-1392680394.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Roy and HG’s unofficial mascot of the 2000 Olympics, ‘Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat’, became a symbol of their irreverent Australian humour.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Saberwyn</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By contrast, regarding minority summer Olympic sports like Greco-Roman wrestling or curling or Nordic combined in the Winter Olympics, most of the audience will know very little of the intricacies of the sports appearing on their screen, nor of the conventional ways in which they are described and analysed by commentators.</p>
<p>This lack of audience familiarity presents new comedic possibilities of making the already strange even stranger. It may eventually strike the viewer that both their beloved sports and the ones that they only encounter every four years have in common the bizarre artificiality of rule-governed competitive physical play.</p>
<p>Of course, audiences cannot be so easily quarantined. Those who know nothing and care less about sport may be amused by Roy and HG making sport with the obsessiveness of the diehard sport fan and their media servants.</p>
<p>Roy and HG simultaneously celebrate and critique the place of sport in Australian culture, as is encapsulated in their double-edged motto “Too much sport is barely enough”. They are clearly sport fans, and must walk a difficult line in which they do not turn into self-parodies, becoming too close to the people and behaviour that they are teasing or mocking.</p>
<p>But perhaps that is the secret of Roy and HG’s comedy: that in highlighting the foibles of others, they unerringly return the gaze to our own. Theirs is a rare insider auto-critique among sports presenters and commentators. They also offer a connection between the sport lover and the sport-phobic alike.</p>
<p>In the end, Roy and HG are funny because comedy runs, largely unacknowledged, through every sphere of human life. And none more so than in the oh-so-serious world of sport.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23311/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe is currently receiving Australian Research Council Discovery Project funding for A Nation of ‘Good Sports’? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia (DP130104502).</span></em></p>The Sochi Winter Olympics has seen the return to Australian television screens of sport parodists extraordinaire “Rampaging” Roy Slaven and HG Nelson. Roy and HG’s Russian Revolution presents the familiar…David Rowe, Professor of Cultural Research, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/207012013-12-02T19:30:13Z2013-12-02T19:30:13ZPolitical favours and the rights of TV sport audiences<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36577/original/js6prg2f-1385939332.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rupert Murdoch may look to a more sympathetic government for reform to the anti-siphoning list of sporting events.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Drew Angerer</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the dust settles after a decisive change of government, it is time for the main support players to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/murdoch-wants-his-pound-of-flesh-20131105-2wzhs.html">call in their favours</a>. Among the cheerleaders for a Coalition government, none was more vocal than the Murdoch media, which <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-2013-the-role-of-the-media-17543">subjected a wounded Labor government</a> to a barrage of obstreperous tabloid <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/05/daily-telegraph-election-australia">front pages</a>, relentless broadsheet criticism, and a constant stream of syndicated hostility across its many platforms.</p>
<p>News Corp Australia was not shy about being led from the top in this campaign. Chairman Rupert Murdoch <a href="https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/349904086902116353">took to Twitter</a> (with a characteristic apostrophic error) in June to declare:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australian public now totally disgusted with Labor Party wrecking country with it’s [sic] sordid intrigues. Now for a quick election.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With mission accomplished, and after Murdoch’s Lowy Institute <a href="http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/2013-annual-lowy-lecture-address-rupert-murdoch-ac">pep talk</a> on “Australian values” and “the key drivers of prosperity: trade, technology and free market” last month, attention has turned to the juicy concessions that might be extracted from a sympathetic government.</p>
<p>Australians need look no further than their multiplying television, computer, tablet and mobile screens. With an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ashes-where-the-indigestible-meets-the-indelible-20057">Ashes series</a> in full swing and Australian Open tennis around the corner, many will engage in the languid summer pursuit of television sport viewing. </p>
<p>As I have <a href="https://theconversation.com/sport-citizenship-and-the-right-to-watch-the-boxing-day-test-from-your-couch-11410">previously written</a>, Australians live in a country with the world’s strongest anti-siphoning provisions, which prevent “events of national importance and cultural significance” – in Australia that means sport events like football grand finals, the Ashes, Melbourne Cup, Olympics and Wimbledon – from being exclusively shown on pay-TV.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36579/original/wg3wqc49-1385940211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36579/original/wg3wqc49-1385940211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36579/original/wg3wqc49-1385940211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36579/original/wg3wqc49-1385940211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36579/original/wg3wqc49-1385940211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36579/original/wg3wqc49-1385940211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36579/original/wg3wqc49-1385940211.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1211&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Ashes cricket series is prevented from being exclusively shown on pay-TV in Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dave Hunt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Watching significant national sporting events on television free of charge can be regarded as a right of cultural citizenship. This means that no-one can be involuntarily excluded from participating in popular national rituals on the grounds that they cannot afford the price of entry – in this case, a pay-TV subscription.</p>
<p>But this sport-loving television audience is a great economic prize. In his 1996 pre-tweeting days, Rupert Murdoch famously told shareholders that “sport absolutely overpowers film and everything else in the entertainment genre”, creating a need to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…use sports as a battering ram and a lead offering in all our pay television operations. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Live sport is the most successful attractor of pay-TV subscribers, and doubly so when it is exclusive – as is the case with soccer and Ashes cricket in the UK, and rugby union in New Zealand.</p>
<p>In my current research on sport and cultural citizenship, interviewees repeatedly confirm that sport was crucial in their decision to subscribe to Foxtel. However, from the point of view of pay-TV bosses, there are just not enough paying customers, with subscribing households remaining stubbornly <a href="http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2012/09/pay-tv-exec-concedes-foxtel-facing-an-affordability-issue.html">around the 30% level</a>. Viewers clearly need more “encouragement” than the usual letterbox special offers. Migrating favourite sports events from free-to-air to pay-TV would certainly be a potent push factor.</p>
<p>So, with some solid political capital in the bank, the main Australian pay-TV players are <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-business/foxtel-boss-wants-fewer-media-regulations-20131125-2y5pm.html">lobbying in earnest</a> to reduce the scope of the current list of protected free-to-air sport events. Under the previous Labor government, following the <a href="https://secure.ausport.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/405850/ReviewReport.pdf">2010 Sport on Television Review</a>, limits to free-to-air TV “hoarding” the rights to sports that they didn’t broadcast were introduced, along with sport event tiers with different levels of protection.</p>
<p>But despite its submissions to the inquiry, the pay-TV industry did not achieve a major reduction in the size of the anti-siphoning list or de-throne “old” television in the media sport marketplace. The most active organisations currently agitating for change – Foxtel (co-owned by Telstra and News Corp Australia) and Fox Sports (wholly owned by News Corp Australia) – are reportedly targeting the delisting of overseas sport events. </p>
<p>These events include US Open tennis and US Masters golf, the Ashes in England, and overseas matches involving the national teams of the men’s football codes, the Socceroos, Wallabies and Kangaroos. Splitting the bidding processes for free-to-air and pay-TV rights to remove the dominant “gatekeeper” market role of the networks is <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/pay-tv-calls-for-sport-rights-rejig/story-e6frfkp9-1226767298428">also being urged</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36580/original/2h8ch3pm-1385940492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36580/original/2h8ch3pm-1385940492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36580/original/2h8ch3pm-1385940492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36580/original/2h8ch3pm-1385940492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=822&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36580/original/2h8ch3pm-1385940492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36580/original/2h8ch3pm-1385940492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36580/original/2h8ch3pm-1385940492.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1033&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">English Premier League soccer is broadcast exclusively on pay-TV in the UK, attracting many subscribers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Gerry Penny</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The pay-TV companies argue that these moves would be popular with sports bodies by generating more TV income, and would also recognise the coming digital post-broadcast environment in which sport can be accessed on all manner of screens.</p>
<p>Sports, though, are not always the best guardians of national cultural citizenship when tempted by media gold. For example, much is made of the financial enrichment of England cricket after Sky Sports acquired its exclusive live rights from 2006 onwards. But rather less is heard of the substantial <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/engvaus2009/content/story/422272.html">falls in viewership</a> – the 2009 Ashes series peak of two million viewers was barely a quarter of the 2005 viewership on Channel Four. It <a href="http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/ratings/englands-dramatic-ashes-win-delivers-13m/5058297.article">fell further</a> to 1.3 million in the 2013 series.</p>
<p>One <a href="http://historyhub.ie/the-impact-of-pay-tv-on-sport">researcher</a> explains the universal fall in viewership when a sport moves to pay-TV:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People who are older or poorer or who live in rural areas are substantially less likely to be able to watch it, regardless of their interest in or commitment to that sport. But, even in cities, significantly fewer people watch sport on pay-TV than watch it on free-to-air channels.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a recently co-edited <a href="http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415886031/">book</a> on sport, television and cultural citizenship with contributions from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Middle East, considerable regional/national variation was evident. Argentina recently “re-nationalised” soccer on television; there are inexpensive “show houses” for watching soccer in Africa; while Singapore charges premium prices for TV sport.</p>
<p>Last week, it was announced that the famous “Hockey Night in Canada” is secure on public broadcaster CBC for another four years, but that broadcast and digital rights of the National Hockey League are <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rogers-reaches-12-year-broadcast-deal-with-nhl-worth-52-billion/article15600412/#dashboard/follows/">now dominated</a> by Rogers Communications after a CAN$5.2 billion, 12-year deal.</p>
<p>In Australia, key constituents of the national cultural estate, such as the Ashes, are secure for the time being. But the heat is on the new government to show its gratitude by doctoring the TV sport pitch to favour its fair-weather friends.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe has received funding from the Australian Research Council for research on culture, media and sport, most recently: Handling the ‘Battering Ram’: Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation and the Global Contest for Dominance in Sports Television (DP0556973); Struggling for Possession: The Control and Use of Online Media Sport (with Brett Hutchins, DP0877777) and A Nation of ‘Good Sports’? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia (DP130104502)..</span></em></p>As the dust settles after a decisive change of government, it is time for the main support players to call in their favours. Among the cheerleaders for a Coalition government, none was more vocal than…David Rowe, Professor of Cultural Research, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.