Marketing and social media have shifted the way people think about sports. Sports have existed in one way or another since antiquity and are a cardinal human characteristic. The desire for athletic competition and challenge lived in the souls of ancient people, from the Olmecs in the jungles of Mesoamerica to the Egyptians on the banks of the Nile river. Sports were ordinarily a local, folksy affair. Particular sporting events were played in particular places and games were a centerpiece relative to each ancient culture. Today marketing and social media, search engine marketing, the internet, television, radio, mass print and digital advertising, telecommunications, and corporate sponsorship have both aggrandized and homogenized sports.
Twentieth century North Americans began the commodification of sports. Popular local sports like football, basketball, and especially baseball were transformed from activities of local habit to activities of commercial entertainment. The dawn of radio and newspaper media fueled the commercialization of sports in North America. In the late 1800s and throughout the twentieth century the American middle class expanded and people had disposable income to spend on recreation and entertainment. Americans were as eager to watch people play sports as athletes were eager to play on a team and be watched.
Commercialization and the media encouraged the rise of sports brands and corporate sponsorship. Athletes became celebrities with their photos printed on the front pages of newspapers and magazines. The advent of cinema meant that sports could be filmed and shown in theaters and eventually on television to consumers who live hundreds or thousands of miles away. By mid-twentieth century the commercialization of sports in North America had penetrated Europe and South America. Now pub dwellers in London and sports enthusiasts in Lima were talking about Major League Baseball.
Today the internet, marketing and social media, search engine marketing, satellite technology, and hyper-commercialism has expedited the globalization of sports. NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA games play on TV screens in sports bars in Moscow, Beijing, Sydney, Cairo, and La Paz. A kid in British Columbia wears an Eli Manning jersey and a pair of Jordan’s to school. Sports culture has been homogenized into a globally recognizable experience. Sports no longer have the specificity and uniqueness that they once had in antiquity. Although the process of commercialization and homogenization of sports culture started over one hundred years ago, the advent of the internet sped up the process.
Marketing and social media brought the faces, stories, highlights, statistics, images, and voices of athletes into households around the planet. Social media is an outlet that immediately connects people with athletes’ personal stories and most triumphant moments. The internet has been like dumping lighter fluid on a bonfire for the accessibility of information and communication in the digital age. People around the world were already mixing and matching sports culture long before the ascension of the internet. But the world wide web is like having the Great Library of Alexandria constructed in your backyard. Today every rule, play, athlete, logo, stadium, and history of any sport is just a Google search away.
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