impact of globalization
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PROJECT REPORT
ON
IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION IN SPORTS
Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirement of PGDM (IB)
Batch 2012-2014
Submitted to: Submitted by:
SEEMA AGARWAL RISHABH BATRA
Associate Professor 65/PGDM(IB)
JAGANNATH INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT SCHOOL
KALKAJI
1
CONTENTS
S. no DESCRIPTION Page no.
1 Acknowledgement 4
2 Certificate of completion 5
3 Student’s Declaration 6
4 Executive summary 7-9
5 Chapter-1
Introduction
- Introduction of globalization
- Introduction of globalization in
sports
10-19
6 Chapter-2
Objective of the project
20
7 Chapter-3
Research Methodology
21-25
8 Chapter-4 Analysis and Findings
- Historical background
- Current state of the field
- Impact of Globalization in sports
- Related Examples
26-82
9 Recommendations and Limitations 83
10 Conclusion 84-86
2
11 Appendices 87
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
3
I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my
guide Seema Agarwal for her exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant
encouragement throughout the course of this thesis. The blessing, help and
guidance given by her time to time shall carry me a long way in the journey of life
on which I am about to embark.
I also take this opportunity to express a deep sense of gratitude to Company,
Shelly Chopra (External Mentor), for her cordial support, valuable information and
guidance, which helped me in completing this task through various stages.
Lastly, I thank almighty, my parents, brother, sisters and friends for their constant
encouragement without which this assignment would not be possible.
RISHABH BATRA
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION
4
This is to certify that Mr. RISHABH BATRA, pursuing PGDM (IB) from JIMS KALKAJI,
has completed his project on the topic “IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION IN
SPORTS” under my guidance.
His work is appreciable.
Project Guide:
Seema Agarwal
Associate Professor
STUDENT’s DECLARATION
5
I hereby declare that the project report titled – “Impact of globalization in
Sports “ is my own work and has been carried out under the table guidance of
Seema Agarwal (Associate Professor at JIMS Kalkaji) and
Shelly Chopra (External Mentor) . All care has been taken to keep this project
error free and I sincerely regret for any unintended discrepancies that might have
crept into this report
Thank You
(RISHABH BATRA)
PGDM (IB) (2012-2014)
Jagannath International Management School
(KALKAJI)
Date- 25/02/2013
Place-Delhi
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
6
Globalization can be defined as the process of change, increasing
interconnectedness and interdependence among countries and economies,
bringing the world closer through better world-wide communication, transport
and trade links. This process is changing the world dramatically and quickly,
affecting economic, social, political and cultural aspects of life.
The process of globalization is an inevitable phenomenon in human history which
has been bringing the world closer since the time of early trade and exploration,
through the exchange of goods, products, information, jobs, knowledge and
culture.
What is unique is the emergence of a modern form of globalization in recent
decades, aided by the pace and scope of global integration resulting from
unmatched advancements and reduction in the cost of technology,
communications, science, transport and industry.
Markets have become more interwoven and the production process has been
made more efficient by the option to create ‘world products,’ i.e. products whose
components are made in different locations around the world. Also, the ability to
ship information and products easily and cheaply from one country to the next
and to locate the manufacturing process where labour and work processes are
less expensive has changed the pattern of production and consumption across the
world.
Improved technology in transportation and telecommunications
Movement of people and capital
7
Rise of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
Transnational Corporations (TNCs)
Nowadays, you see people from India wearing NFL hats, people from America
wearing soccer jerseys with the names Messi or Henri, and people from France
wearing basketball caps. How has this amazing internationalization of sports
fanaticism occurred? The answer, I tell you, is globalization, or the integration of
facets of life from different cultures into comprehensive proclivities.
Before-hand, at the advent of modern sports, these sports were popular
only in the nations they were created in. Basketball, football, and baseball were
only popular in the US, soccer was only popular in international Spanish nations,
and cricket was only popular in Britain. However, as time passed by and
globalization mechanisms increased, the sports popularities increased. Cricket
expanded to Australia and India, as well as many other Middle-Eastern countries.
Basketball has spread to almost all countries around the world. In fact, with the
new popularity of basketball all over the world, many NBA teams recruit from
outside of the US now. Look at Yao Ming: this guy is one of the most dominant big
men in the game, and he isn’t from an American city, he’s from China. Look at the
big-man sharpshooter Dirk Nowitski—from Germany. Hakeem the dream Olajuan
—Nigeria. The list goes on and on.
Also, while America is still at the top of the basketball, other teams have
reached the top of the basketball world. Teams like Germany, Lithuania, and even
8
Argentina, who won the Olympic basketball tournament in 2004. The days of the
“Dream Team” are long gone.
Globalization has also occurred extensively in soccer: actually, it has
probably had the most widespread globalization. Soccer has the most popularity
out of any sport worldwide, as evidenced by the different international leagues,
the recruitment of international players, and the World Cup for soccer that is held
every four years.In baseball, Japan has gained ground and has become a baseball
power.Tennis has also been globalized. Currently there is a tennis player on the
professional circuit from every nation of the world, except Afghanistan. This truly
shows the widespread popularity of tennis. Every year, there is the Davis Cup,
which is like a World Cup for tennis that takes place every year. Now, foreign
players win majors more than the hometown favorites. The last player to win
Wimbledon, the British major, was Fred Perry, and he did it 76 years ago.
It’s part of the NFL’s promise to have increased international participation. And
the commissioner of the league says that soon there will be more international
games played.
Whereas beforehand there was no diversification of sports internationally, now
the globalization of sports has caused more sports to be popular worldwide. And
it’s not going to stop; there is an increasing amount of communication
mechanisms out there right now. There’s email, there’s the internet, and there
will continue to be an increase in international communication.
Chapter-1
INTRODUCTION
9
Globalization can be defined as the process of change, increasing
interconnectedness and interdependence among countries and economies,
bringing the world closer through better world-wide communication, transport
and trade links. This process is changing the world dramatically and quickly,
affecting economic, social, political and cultural aspects of life.
The process of globalization is an inevitable phenomenon in human history which
has been bringing the world closer since the time of early trade and exploration,
through the exchange of goods, products, information, jobs, knowledge and
culture.
10
What is unique is the emergence of a modern form of globalization in recent
decades, aided by the pace and scope of global integration resulting from
unmatched advancements and reduction in the cost of technology,
communications, science, transport and industry.
Markets have become more interwoven and the production process has been
made more efficient by the option to create ‘world products,’ i.e. products whose
components are made in different locations around the world. Also, the ability to
ship information and products easily and cheaply from one country to the next
and to locate the manufacturing process where labour and work processes are
less expensive has changed the pattern of production and consumption across the
world.
Improved technology in transportation and telecommunications – the
cost of how people communicate and travel has drastically reduced in the
last few decades, from cheaper air travel and high-speed rail to the rapid
growth of the internet and mobile phones.
Movement of people and capital – increasing numbers of people are now
able to move in search of a new home, job, or to escape danger in their
own country. Money is being moved globally through electronic transfer
systems.
Developing countries are becoming a more common place for international
investment due to the huge potential for growth.
11
The lowering of trade barriers since the Second World War has been a
major factor in the growth of world trade.
The World Trade Organization (WTO), formerly the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, has been responsible for negotiating reductions in tariffs
and other barriers to trade in rounds of talks, the most recent of which was
the Doha round.
Rise of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) – as global awareness of
certain issues has risen, so has the number of organizati
ons that aim to deal with them. Many of these issues are not constrained
by country boundaries, e.g. climate change.
Transnational Corporations (TNCs) – accessing new markets across the
world which are opening up in developing countries. Businesses are also
encouraged to source workers globally, as some jobs can be done by
foreign workers for a much lower cost than domestic workers, such as
manufacturing jobs.
Benefits and disadvantages
While globalization is a catalyst for human progress, it is also a chaotic process
which offers both benefits and disadvantages to people across the world. Within
Britain the benefits are often seen as unevenly distributed.
12
Those that have been successful in opening up to the world economy, include
countries such as China, India and Vietnam, who have significantly reduced
poverty in their respective countries. The World Bank states that between 1990
and 2005, poverty rates in China fell from 60% to 16%, leaving 475 million fewer
people in poverty.
For consumers, globalization can mean a wider choice of goods at lower prices,
for example, supermarkets now source produce from all over the world. Clothes
shops are able to source cheaper clothing from overseas factories.
The last decade has also seen an increase in the outsourcing of innovation, where
research and development (R&D) is increasingly outsourced to cut costs and get
products to new markets faster.
Alex Steffan, co-founder of WorldChanging.com, discusses how we are affected by
being so disconnected from the process of creating the things that we consume.
Positive consequences of globalization include:
• improvements in local productivity can promote prosperity
• the movement and sharing of information, knowledge and expertise
• the improvement of international standards for variables such as
education and health
• increases the variety of goods available to the world market and provides
a bigger range of markets for internationally sourced products
Negative consequences of globalization include:
• the loss of employment in manufacturing in developed countries such as
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Britain
• a drift towards a more homogenized culture and society internationally
• local economies may be more vulnerable to fast changes in the
international economy
• increased centralization of power in the hands of large transnational
corporations
• the location of industry in less developed countries, for many reasons,
often leads to environmental degradation
Globalization is often criticized on the basis that is has led to the exploitation of
workers and the environment. With an increasing awareness of the
environmental impact of what we buy. Consumers are increasingly aware of the
distance produce has travelled before being sold to us (known as food miles).
Similarly health and safety laws and regulations are often less demanding in
developing countries.
GLOBALIZATION IN SPORTS
14
In a few short centuries, primitive pasture games relying on balls of rocks, rags,
feathers or hair transformed into global events with intricate rules, with television
and the internet tracking cricket matches in Australia to soccer in Zaire.
Any sport can now attract players or audiences in any part of the globe, and yet
conventional wisdom suggests that as an activity takes on global stature, it
becomes more controlled and competitive, disconnecting from local origins.
But does the process of global growth necessarily eliminate local connections or
fervor? Can innovation accompany tradition? And how do endeavors that require
fierce competition reveal a common humanity? Editors Richard Giulianotti and
15
Roland Robertson delve into such questions with “Sport and Globalization,” a
compilation of essays written by sociologists and anthropologists.
The nine essays largely assume global-local tensions, and yet also highlight the
powerful role of sports in social and cultural change. “As modern sport has
become global in scope it has largely lost its playful character and its professional
practice has become both a global media spectacle and a serious and financially
significant global business,” concludes sociologist Barry Stuart.
Yet despite such global growth, agues political sociologist Chris Rumford, sport
still emits a clarion call to the most rigid of characters, including the Taliban in
Afghanistan, who anxiously sought International Cricket Council recognition for
Afghanistan shortly before their ouster in 2001.
The editors and other essayists in “Globalization and Sport” point to two forms of
global growth, referring to the integration of local practices as “glocal” and the
overwhelming of local ways as “grobal.”
Some sporting formats adapt more readily than others and some impose more
constraints, often through national or international regulatory boards. “Local
appropriation is seldom simply assimilating and imitating,” notes William W. Kelly.
Styles can emerge in sports that reflect and reinforce both local and national
values.
The local does not necessarily resist the global, and yet many researchers tend to
privilege the local, much as audiences tend to cheer and admire the underdogs,
explain David L. Andrews and George Ritzer.
Sport’s purpose is no longer limited to entertainment, often intermingling with
trade, business and politics. Talent, speed and innovation are recognized
16
transnationally in business or sport, and Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s essay details
reasons why some sport phenomena spread while others do not: The most
popular cultural products – whether books, food or sports – tend to require little
culturally specific knowledge, have an “emotional, sensory or intellectual appeal”
that transcends local concerns; and can be effectively marketed across borders,
particularly via television or the internet. “In other words,” he writes, “low
common denominators, a cheap entrance ticket and immediate gratification are
factors facilitating global dissemination.” For Eriksen, soccer is a hamburger, and
speed skating is akin to ahusmanskost, or a Swedish fish meatball.
Competition and its regulation need not be totally centralized.
Global sports such as golf and tennis manage without a world championship,
instead competing with a set of world tournaments, with frequent upsets of even
the most dominant players, explains Rumsford. Other sports, such as cricket,
undergo post-Western transformation as former British colonies tussle with
traditionalists over one-day versus multiple-day matches. Rumsford maintains
that a global sport such as cricket lacks a single global modernity.
Skill combined with simplicity in regulations, reduced time requirements and
viewer friendliness are characteristics that can merge diverse cultures, Eriksen
suggests. Likewise, in an essay about Dutch soccer style, Frank J. Lechner joins the
editors in pointing out that “Postmodern nations engage complex globalization to
produce new identities, defining their particularity in relation to universal
standards.”
17
The most intriguing parts of the book are where historical details of specific sports
– cricket, soccer, Gaelic football, hurling, speed skating, baseball – are offered as
evidence for the essayists’ arguments on how the local interacts with outside
forces, whether protecting, mimicking or influencing. The United States,
originator of many cultural trends, is almost “an island until itself when it comes
to team sports,” notes Eriksen, as he rejects baseball, US football, basketball or
ice hockey as sports with true global reach.
The book is academic in tone, with too many parentheses and “–tion” words, such
as legitimization, annihilation, commodification and spectacularization. Still, the
essays are provocative and far-reaching, and the book could discover a wide
audience beyond sociologists. Anyone involved in the highly competitive,
interdisciplinary and multicultural world of sport will want to understand
globalization’s influence and patterns.
This student of globalization welcomed a set of essays addressing diverse sports,
regions and issues, but would prefer a more specific overarching theme in future
collections. One approach might be to compare the movement of sports around
the globe with the promotion of governance or religion, pointing to similarities or
differences. Another approach could center on economic issues. The book was
published prior to widespread recognition of the global economic crisis now
under way.
Giulianotti and Robertson briefly point out that poverty, unemployment and
forced migration in the developing world have “disconnected large populations
from their sporting facilities and outlets.” Yet readers can’t help but be curious
about a recent abrupt shift in attitudes – from widespread expectations that of
18
rising global wealth to thriftiness and caution about investments – and which
sport traditions might endure the current downturn.
Another intriguing approach might center in on conflicts among sports or even
disdain for a sports culture. Indeed, the book’s closing essay, by Gary Armstrong,
centers on the 2005 national election in Liberia when international soccer star
George Weah lost to Harvard-educated grandmother Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and
offers a reminder of sport’s limited power. Gender concerns, economic troubles
and diverse talents can outweigh the media attention directed at major figures in
sports. Despite sport’s special appeal and symbolism, societies expect
responsibility from organizers and individual players.
Much of sport’s power is derived from the narratives of players and teams that
emerge over time, and over-commercialization, rapid growth, intrusive
nationalization, arrogant celebrity hierarchies as well as relentless quests for
victory or profits that can taint those stories.
Chapter-2
OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
19
TO STUDY WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION, WAS IT INVOLVED IN SPORTS IN THE
EARLIER TIMES AND WHAT ALL TRENDS IT HAS DEVELOPED IN THE RECENT
YEARS, AND TO ANALYZE WHAT ARE ITS IMPACTS ON SPORTS.
Chapter-3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
20
Marketing research is the function which likes the consumers, customers &
public to the marketer through information which is used to identify & define
marketing opportunities & problems, generate, refine & evaluate marketing
action; monitor marketing performances & improve understanding of marketing
as a process.
It has following steps:
I: PROBLEM DEFINITION
II: DEVELOPMENT OF AN APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM
III: RESEARCH DESIGN FORMULATION
IV: FIELDWORK OR DATA COLLECTION
V: DATA PREPARATION AND ANALYSIS
VI: REPORT PREPRATION AND PRESENTATION
2.1 RESEACH DESIGN:
It is framework or blueprint for conducting the market research project. It
specifies the details of procedures necessary for obtaining the information
needed to structure and/or solve marketing research problem. Research design
broadly classified into two parts :
21
Exploratory Research
Conclusive Research
EXPLORATORY RESEARCH:
Exploratory research looks for hypothesis in well-established fields of
study. Hypothesis usually comes from ideas developed in previous researches or
are delivered from theory. Hypothesis is tentative answer to the question that
serves as guide for most of the research projects
It seeks to discover new relationships. All marketing research projects
start with it. This is a preliminary phase & is absolutely essential in order to
obtain a proper definition of problems at hand. The major emphasis is on the
discovery of ideas & insight.
CONCLUSIVE RESEARCH:
Conclusive research provides information that helps the executive so that
he can make a rational decision. This study has done well while attempting to
arrive at a more clear description of an apparent problem.
2.2 TARGET POPULATION:
The collection of elements or object that possesses the information sought
by the researcher and about which inferences are to be made. Target population
should be defined in term of Element and Sampling unit.
22
ELEMENT:
Object that possess the information sought by the researcher and about
which inferences are to be made.
SAMPLING UNIT:
The basic unit containing the elements of the population to be sampled.
2.3 SAMPLE SIZE:
Sample size refers to the number of elements to be used in a study.
2.4 SAMPLING TECHNIQUES:
Sampling Techniques are of two types:
a) Non probability (non random)
b) Probability sampling (random sampling)
2.5 SCOPE OF STUDY:
The scope of the study will be useful in future. Through this study we can
know what is the scenario of globalization in the recent years and what are the
globalization factors that influence the business. Through this study we will find
out the globalization effects on business.
2.6 DATA COLLECTION METHOD:
The data collection process can be relatively simple depending on the type
of data collection tools required and used during the research. Data collection
23
tools are instruments used to collect information for performance assessments,
self-evaluations, and external evaluations. The data collection tools need to be
strong enough to support what the evaluations find during research. Here are a
few examples of data collection tools used within three main categories.
Secondary participation:
Postal mail
Electronic mail
Telephone
Web-based surveys.
In-person observations
In-person surveys – used to gain general answers to basic
questions
Direct or participatory observations – where the researcher is
directly involved with the study group
Interviews – used to gain more in depth answers to complex
questions
Focus groups – where certain sample groups are asked their
opinion about a certain subject or theory.
I. Case Studies And Content Analysis:
Case studies and content analysis are data collection tools which are based
upon pre-existing research or a search of recorded information which may be
24
useful to the researcher in gaining the required information which fills in the
blanks not found with the other two types during the data collection process.
Some examples of this type of data collection tool would include:
Expert opinions – leaders in the field of study
Case studies – previous findings of other researchers
Literature searches – research articles and papers
RESEARCH METHODLOGY OF THIS PROJECT REPORT:-
The ability to gather, analyze, evaluate, present and utilize information is
therefore is a vital skill today.
1) Data Collection:-
• The analysis will be done with the help Secondary data.
• The data is collected mainly from websites, annual reports, research
reports, already conducted survey analysis, database available etc.
Chapter-4
ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS
25
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
A brief history of globalization
Globalization involves the interplay of markets, technology and State, which are
amongst the oldest and most distinctive human innovations. Exchange, the
26
fundamental principle on which markets are organized, is known to exist in the
most primitive human societies. Man is not the only living creature with the
ability to store surpluses and live in complex societies controlled by chiefs —
consider the industrious ants and bees — but he is unique in his ability to socially
redistribute these surpluses through increasingly complex divisions of labour
under the authority of the State.
The saga of globalization is that of an unbound Prometheus, with surges in
productivity and growth unparalleled in history as markets, technology and states
are progressively freed from local demand and supply constraints. Although the
term 'globalization' has gained currency only recently, the forces driving this trend
can be traced back to the end of the middle Ages in Europe.
Pre-modern societies, however, were above all else defined by localism and
decentralization. Most people remained at their place of birth right through their
lives. Migration was a one-way street to resettle in virgin territory in response to
conquest, calamity or local demographic pressure. Religious experience was
mostly limited to the local parish, with wider pilgrimages limited to a select few.
Empires meant mostly march of armies over land, and were never
transcontinental, with the notable exception of North Africa adjoining the
Mediterranean. State power was a coalition of local power elites owing allegiance
to a monarch who never had access to centralized administrative machinery.
With near universal poverty a structural constraint on demand, markets were
neighborhood-trading places, with long distance trade mostly limited to luxury
goods for the small power elite. New ideas, information and technology spread
27
slowly since transportation and communication were based on animal traction.
Four distinct phases of globalization can be discerned in modern history.
The first phase began in the sixteenth century with the passing of pre-modern
localism, improvements in maritime technology leading to the great age of
maritime exploration, discovery and mercantilism, the European Renaissance,
centralizing tendencies associated with absolute monarchy and the emergence of
modern nation states following the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, and the spread
of the ideals of the American and French Revolutions from the eighteenth
century.
The second phase from the late eighteenth century was marked by the spread of
the Industrial Revolution and vast improvements in human technology, inanimate
traction, productivity and demand, which led to mass production and conveyance
of merchandise goods and people, cross-border integration through bulk long-
distance trade, colonial plunder, investment flows and empire during a phase of
European imperial expansion which saw the flag follow trade across the globe.
The Industrial Revolution opened up a rapidly widening income gap between
Europe and America on the one hand, and the rest of the world on the other.
History of globalization in Sports
28
Sports in American History: From Colonization to Globalization journeys from the
early American past to the present to give students a compelling grasp of the
historical evolution of American sporting practices.
29
This text provides students with insights that will allow them to develop new and
alternative perspectives, examine sport as a social and cultural phenomenon,
generate a better understanding of current sport practices, and consider future
developments in sport in American life.
This expansive text is the most comprehensive resource on sport history,
providing coverage of sport by historical periods—from the indigenous tribes of
pre-modern America, through colonial societies, to the era of sport in the United
States today. Unlike previous sport history texts, Sports in American
History examines how women, minorities, and ethnic and religious groups have
influenced U.S. sporting culture. This gives students a broader knowledge of the
complexities of sport, health, and play in the American experience and how
historical factors, such as gender, ethnicity, race, and religion, provide a more
complete understanding of sports in American history.
30
GLOBALIZATION IN RECENT YEARS
Yet, based on experiences throughout the world, several basic principles seem to
underpin greater prosperity. These include investment (particularly foreign direct
investment), the spread of technology, strong institutions, sound macroeconomic
policies, an educated workforce, and the existence of a market economy.
Furthermore, a common denominator which appears to link nearly all high-
growth countries together is their participation in, and integration with, the
global economy.
31
There is substantial evidence, from countries of different sizes and different
regions, that as countries "globalize" their citizen’s benefit, in the form of access
to a wider variety of goods and services, lower prices, more and better-paying
jobs, improved health, and higher overall living standards.
It is probably no mere coincidence that over the past 20 years, as a number of
countries has become more open to global economic forces, the percentage of
the developing world living in extreme poverty—defined as living on less than $1
per day—has been cut in half.
As much as has been achieved in connection with globalization, there is much
more to be done. Regional disparities persist: while poverty fell in East and South
Asia, it actually rose in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN's Human Development
Report notes there are still around 1 billion people surviving on less than $1 per
day—with 2.6 billion living on less than $2 per day. Proponents of globalization
argue that this is not because of too much globalization, but rather too little. And
the biggest threat to continuing to raise living standards throughout the world is
not that globalization will succeed but that it will fail. It is the people of
developing economies who have the greatest need for globalization, as it
provides them with the opportunities that come with being part of the world
economy.
These opportunities are not without risks—such as those arising from volatile
capital movements. The International Monetary Fund works to help economies
manage or reduce these risks, through economic analysis and policy advice and
through technical assistance in areas such as macroeconomic policy, financial
sector sustainability, and the exchange-rate system.
32
The risks are not a reason to reverse direction, but for all concerned—in
developing and advanced countries, among both investors and recipients—to
embrace policy changes to build strong economies and a stronger world financial
system that will produce more rapid growth and ensure that poverty is reduced.
The following is a brief overview to help guide anyone interested in gaining a
better understanding of the many issues associated with globalization.
33
Globalization in Sports in Recent Years
Throughout the twenty-first century, globalization has spread across economy,
political relations, people, and popular culture all over the planet. The world of
sports has also been radically globalized during this same period of time.
34
NBA and MLB are filled with players that reside from countries outside of the
United States. The arrival of Yao Ming added thirty million Houston Rockets fans
to a team that only has one million viewers in the US currently.
With the rise of the US Soccer team, the World Cup has truly become a global
competition. Regular season football and hockey games are now played abroad,
while foreign soccer teams tour on American soil.
How will the globalization of sports change the games we know and love today?
Will these changes improve sports for the fans or only line the pockets of owners
and corporations?
To what extent will the relevancy and hierarchy of the established leagues be
transformed by the pressures of global markets?
In a six-part series, these and many other questions will be addressed and also
explained how each of the major sports can best transition into this global society
while maintaining its quality of play.
The history of international sports, up to this point, has been sporadic.
In 1896, the revival of the summer Olympics was the first truly global competition,
but it was restricted to amateurs.
The World Soccer Cup emerged in 1930 as the first global competition that
allowed professional athletes.
35
Soccer championships (such as the European Champion Clubs' Cup, which later
evolved into the Champions League) would also arise throughout the world in the
mid-twentieth century.
Outside of soccer, globalization has been limited. American sports leagues have
added Canadian franchises in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal while the NHL
expanded hockey to the United States.
However, since the 1990’s, globalization has excelled with the advancements of
technology and the acceptance of professional athletes in the Olympic Games.
The domination of the 1992 USA Dream Team basketball squad has inspired
foreign youth to play American sports while the 1994 World Soccer Cup led to the
AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) to supersede Little League.
Today, players from across the world fill American sports leagues and European
soccer clubs and these games, broadcasted on national television and the
Internet, began the globalization of sports.
What changes does globalization provide for professional sports leagues?
The future of sports lies in the change from continental markets to global
markets. Americans in the past five years have been seen regularly wearing
Manchester United jerseys and Lakers fans can be found in China.
Eventually, leagues will have multi-continental franchises and road trips will tire
players even more. Franchises and the surrounding sports league will see greater
profit as the global market provides limitless expansions of revenue.
36
The percentage of international players will continue to grow along with the
popularity of global competitions, such as the World Baseball Classic and the
UEFA Champions League.
It is not even unlikely that ESPN International will appear in some countries.
These trends seem general, but different industries have different reactions to the
global economy. For how each of the major sports is dealing with globalization
and how it affects them, please read the rest of this series.
The next edition will be released tomorrow, when I will discuss how NBA has
made basketball the world’s most popular sport and what challenges does the
League face with its international fan base.
IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON SPORTS
37
Impact of globalization and technology on professional sports
Technological advances are bringing sporting events to more people than ever
before. Mobile devices, net books, laptops and satellite televisions have increased
international viewership of sporting events. For the 2010 World Cup, ESPN3
clocked nearly 7.4 million viewers, generating 15.7 million hours of viewing. The
network's World Cup application was downloaded more than 2.5 million times
and accessed by an average of one million users per day.
38
Though the World Cup may be seen as an outlier in terms of revenue generated
and number of viewers, the international fan base continues to grow—even for
smaller scaled local sporting events—with the aid of ever-advancing technology.
This is due in part to athletes playing abroad, which may generate interest in a
player's native country, and in part to the relatively new ability to watch games
taking place anywhere in the world through live web stream or satellite television.
Cross-border deals are also part of the equation as foreigners increasingly
purchase interests in local teams, such as Mikhail D. Prokhorov recently becoming
the first foreign owner of an NBA team. The potential sale of Liverpool, a soccer
team in the English Premier League, has drawn the interest of potential
purchasers from across the globe. This influx of interest creates opportunities for
local and foreign sponsors and advertisers. The
increased globalization of sports has also increased the value of many sport
properties as evidenced recently by the $2 billion price tag—double the previous
contract—for overseas television rights for the next three years of Premier
League games.
Globalization of the NBA is not a new phenomenon, but technological advances
are helping it continue. Today, the NBA finals are televised to more than 200
countries in over 40 languages. More than half of all NBA.com traffic comes from
outside of the U.S. Due to its enormous popularity in China and because of high-
profile players Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian, the number of Chinese sponsors and
advertisers in the NBA is growing. Recently, the NBA announced a multi-year
marketing partnership with the BBVA Group, a leading Spanish bank.
39
As part of the partnership, BBVA will serve as the official bank of the NBA, WNBA
and the NBA D-League in the U.S., Spain and Puerto Rico. MLB is also seeing its
brand grow. Thanks to players such as Ichiro Suzuki, a significant number of
Japanese sponsors, including Nintendo, MasterCard Japan, Ajinomoto, Sanyo
Electric and Hitachi, can be seen throughout MLB stadiums. The benefits of
globalization are not limited to foreign companies; many U.S. companies are also
getting in on the action. The NBA's popularity in China is a significant reason for
Nike's revenue growth in that country, which rose 22% in 2009.
Many sports are using advances in technology to expand, driving an
increase in opportunities for advertisers and sponsors. Because international
games are so easily accessed, they reach more people in more countries than
ever before.
Sponsors and advertisers are no longer limited to local markets or traditional
forms of advertising and should explore different markets and media to reach as
many "local" sports fans as possible.
Nowadays there is no doubt that sport and physical activity have become
universal phenomena. All countries could find common points in their cultures
and strengthen them. In the era of globalization, close cooperation among
countries is more urgent than ever. This necessity has become more visible due to
special world conditions and gradual growth of communication beginning in the
late1950s and early 1960s. The international federations, international World Cup
associations, and common wealth country competitions are examples of
globalization in sport. Under such conditions, one could claim that every change
in the vision of a nation could affect other nations too.
40
Additionally, it could be expected that social demand, ideas, interests and even
world values are being manipulated and are beginning to resemble each other
more day by day. Since even a tiny event can be seen live throughout the world, it
is not difficult to predict people’s interactions during forthcoming years in the
21st century (EICHBERG, 2003). It is now obvious that planning for each and every
phenomenon entails a global vision, and sport is not an exception to this trend.
Globalization is a process of political, economical, social and cultural changes that
Culminates in improvement of relations and more interaction and mingling in the
world. Researchers claim that forming of a third universal culture, the
combination of available cultures, is underway.
According to Hall (1990) globalization is not equal to the breaking down and
substitution of cultures but it is a kind of minor renovation of conventional
cultures. However, some other researchers see it as a kind of Americanization.
Emergence of various amenities such as the internet, e-mail, satellite
communication and so on, plays an important role in the development of
organizations. In most cases, the emergence of such amenities increases the
information transfer and exchange in a less expensive manner. The incurred cost
recoveries due to these amenities, in terms of transportation, manpower and
other resources makes the role of globalization and communications even more
plausible.
Therefore, in most countries of the world, the increasing investment is occurring
for purpose of developing communication facilities and improving information
systems in sport organizations. The main reason for this should be sought in the
impact of information technology and communication in all organizations
41
including sport organizations. Globalization and information technology are
considered the determinants of social demand and its harmonization. Apart from
the negative aspects of globalization, it should be emphasized that the same
change is happening in sport; therefore, we are seeking the answer for this
question: -What is the role of globalization in future
Strategies of the country?
Experts in a particular field are the most reliable and authenticated groups that
could provide beneficial information about the policies and strategies for the
same field. Unfortunately, the viewpoints of experts have not been exerted, in a
widely and planned manner, in sport policy development so far. Therefore, this
study is likely to apply the experts' ideas in sport policy development. The goal of
this study is to determine the role of globalization in future strategies of the
country’s sport.
METHODS
-Subjects
Subjects of this study were 169 active academic staffs in physical education
departments, from all over Iran. Subjects held either M.S. or PhD degrees. They
ranged in age from 32 to 61years. They were contacted and asked to review the
questionnaire to be sent to all faculties of departments specializing in sport
studies working at universities in Iran.
42
- Procedures
The protocol was done in two steps. In Step 1, a panel of five sport management
faculty with an aggregate of 31 years of experience in the field consensually
identified the five “most important factors effecting sport strategies”. In Step 2,
the panel was asked to name the physical education scholars they felt should be
included in the Delphi panel. Four of the five responded, yielding a list of 19
potential panelists. The purpose of the study was explained, the timetable for the
study was presented, and each was asked whether he or she would participate.
All agreed to participate. The panel consisted of Ten men and four women, all
from universities of Iran. The Delphi technique consists of iterated rounds of
survey questions, with each round building on the preceding round. Findings from
each round are fed back to the panelists who then respond. Responses can be
both qualitative and quantitative. In successive rounds, panelists are encouraged
to explain their responses and to indicate the bases for agreement or
disagreement with other panelists. Research indicates that three iterations are
typically sufficient to identify points of consensus and systematic points of
difference, and that more iteration can bore panelists, thus reducing the validity
of findings. The purpose of the first round was to elicit respondents’ views about
the ability of the questionnaire to reach to the goals of study. The experts were
faculties of large Iranian university sport management schools who had extensive
experience in planning and management.
In the first phase, the focus and intent of the questions were determined. In the
second phase, the appropriate sequence for questions was identified.
43
In order to check the appropriateness of the questions for the research goals, the
questions were then submitted to the faculty members who had participated in
steps 1 and 3 of the selection of Delphi panelists. The faculty members approved
the questions. The questions were then e-mailed to each of the 14 panelists, who
were asked to provide detailed responses to each question. Their responses were
collated and the content was analyzed independently by an analyst using the
procedures described by Weber.
Once the independent analyses had been completed, the analysts met in order to
compare the themes each had identified. Initial agreement ranged from 84–92%,
depending on the question being analyzed. Disagreements were resolved
through consensual discussion. Eleven to 16 themes were identified for each
question. Likert -type scales were used in order for the Delphi Panel members to
refine their responses.
For all questions panelists were asked to rate the importance of each theme on a
five point scale ranging from no importance to critical importance. They then
specified their estimate of the probability that the ideal quality represented by
the theme would occur. All qualitative comments and explanations panelists
provided for each theme under each question were provided as well. Panelists
were also reminded of their own rating for each item. After completing the
questionnaire it was sent to all faculties mentioned before.
- Statistics
This study was conducted in descriptive way and the data were gathered via
questionnaires with their validity approved by Chronbach’s alpha. In the data
analysis, to determine the concomitant weight of each variable’s internal factor,
the method of Factor Analysis was adopted.
44
To ascertain the difference among the educational background of subjects and
their comments the MANOVA method was applied.
The Sport and Identity Paradox
Sports events and their outcomes become most meaningful and powerful — and
so most amenable to capital accumulation and political exploitation — where
there can be an extrapolation of socio-cultural significance from the action on and
around the field of play. This split discourse of sport is produced in the interplay
of tensions between ‘noble’ universalism and ‘base’ partisanship. Sport’s reliance
on passionate national differentiation and celebrity is so thoroughgoing as to
question its suitability as an exemplar of global culture. In this sense, sport is
rather less sympathetic to globalization than other cultural forms, such as music
(Rowe, 1995) or film, which may be more easily communicated as universal in
nature and, even when deeply connected to notions of identity, do not
necessarily foreground the idea of hierarchically based, competitive national
performance.
The history of sport in modernity is conventionally written as a process of cultural
diffusion from Victorian Britain, with rationalized and regulated physical play
either directly exported as part of the apparatus of imperialism and/or absorbed
through the unfolding process of colonialism.
The co modification of sport, perfected in the United States, then produced
second and successive waves of sports diffusion, as much through appropriation
and advocacy by the state as by the market.
45
The development of the apparatus of sport in each country varies according to
the specific character of its historical social formation, but there are few sports
that have not — either voluntarily or under duress— been aligned with some
conception of nation.
This is because international sporting competition functions so effortlessly as
metaphor for the state of the nation at the popular political level, while at the
level of cultural economy ‘indigenous’ sports are less tradable within the
burgeoning ‘media sports cultural complex’ in all but the largest and most affluent
sports markets. In fact, despite the success of sport in the institutionalized
diffusion of the framework for regulated, competitive physical play, the record of
the actual ‘export’ of national sports is much less impressive. Truly international
sport consists only of a relatively small set of games that are regularly and readily
translatable as the ‘Esperanto’ of mediatized entertainment.
Nonetheless, any sport can claim to be ‘international’ even where contested by a
limited set of territories marked by geopolitical and/or sporting systems of
governance (for example, rugby league), or where it is dominated by one country
while attracting overseas fan interest and foreign labour (as in the case of US
baseball and its domestic World Series). This structural importance of the nation
persists despite the increasing circulation of sportspeople around the globe as
part of the new international division of cultural labour. For example, more
association football players operate outside their countries of origin than ever
before, and their clubs complain of the loss of, and potential damage to, their
labour power caused by international demands.
46
Football more than any sport can lay claim to be the ‘global game’. Yet the clubs
still retain a ‘national’ brand irrespective of the composition of their playing and
coaching staff and of their shareholder register, and their players are still
expected to return to ‘home base’ in their respective continents for peak
international sports tournaments like the World Cup.
Furthermore, as Patrick McGovern (2002) has recently noted in analyzing patterns
of recruitment of foreign players2 to the English football leagues between 1946
and 1995, labour-market trends have been international rather than global in
nature, and the range of supply countries highly limited. His study (albeit one that
stops just before the crucial 1996 Bosman European Court of Justice ruling that
deregulated footballer movement within the European Union)3 shows that: In
particular, a preference is shown for players who socially, culturally and
linguistically resemble those who are hiring them — a case of ‘homosocial
reproduction’ (Kanter, 1997).
The nation, therefore, is never far below the surface of sports discourse, always
threatening to assert itself and to circumscribe the free circulation of sports
personnel and the meanings that can be derived from its operation (e.g. Duke and
Crolley, 1996; Stevenson, 2002). As Dayan and Katz (1992) note, media sports
events generate ‘contest’ narrative forms that are perfectly suited to articulations
of nation. Sport’s dependency on the nation, therefore, always reinserts the
restrictive framework of modernity into the fluid workings of post modernity.
47
In so doing — and in a highly emotional manner — sport operates as a perpetual
reminder of the social limits to the reconfiguration of endlessly mutable identities
and identifications. This does not have to be the literal invocation of the nation
state.
As noted above, the sporting nation is not coterminous with the sovereign, legal
nation. In events like the football World Cup, the non-existent English nation, as
symbolized by the flag of St George, can materialize in international sporting
competition just as Catalan nationalists strategically capitalized on the
opportunities afforded by the 1992 Barcelona Olympics (Hargreaves, 2000).
International sport can, then, be a key marker of national fantasy or aspiration,
but above all it is generative of a symbolic entity that comes into being by affixing
a notion of identity that is likely to be an impediment to the free-floating
cosmopolitanism so crucial to the ethos of globalization. It could be objected that,
in an adaptation of a classical Marxist economic base–cultural superstructure
model, sport’s fixation on the nation functions as cover for more profound
changes occurring at the political economic level.
Sport can, therefore, be seen as a sop to sovereignty and difference, masking the
creeping control of global institutions.
On screen, the world secular religion of football might appear to fuse with
branded transnational capitalist consumption, leading the football teams of
nations to resemble just so many niches in a global market. Mega-media sports
events do, indeed, reflect the domination of the North America–Europe–Japan
triad in trade and foreign direct investment.
48
Of the 15 partners of the Korea/Japan 2002 World Cup, 14 came from the Triad ,
with the remaining partner coming from co-host Korea, in a tournament
organized by FIFA (the acronym for the Federation International de Football
Association), the historically Francophile peak governing body . Of course, the
restricted scope of globalization in such examples provides its own questioning of
the globalization thesis, but even if global power were to be more widely
dispersed, a left functionalist perspective reduces sport’s complex workings
within the popular socio-cultural sphere to that of a mechanical effect of capitalist
ideology. While the potential for ideological manipulation of sport and the
tendency towards conservatism of sporting organizations and personnel is readily
apparent, the ideological complexion of the institution of sport cannot
be so neatly classified, just as expressions of nationalism do not in all instances
operate as ideological cement preserving the unity of class-ridden societies for
the benefit of their ruling class. Here globalization might be said to have its
progressive side as a counterweight to ultra-nationalism. The rhetoric of
globalization does, however, in practice predominantly reflect the drive of global
capital to extend and deepen its dominion.
But even if its dynamic impulses were more benign, sport’s constant evocation of
the nation as its anchor point and rallying cry makes for an uneasy relation to
globalization advocacy. It is improbable that sport can be reconfigured as post-
national and substantially stripped of its ‘productive’ capacity to promote the
forms of identity because these are, simultaneously, the source of its affective
power and the potentially activated resistive impediments to the globalization
process. This paradox was evident in global sport’s most recent and spectacular
festival.
49
Reflections on the Korea/Japan World Cup, 2002
Observation of the recent Korea/Japan World Cup from three different vantage
points illustrates how the nation, imagined or real, is so central to sport as to
present a constant potential interruption to the smooth passage of globalization.
This was not a rigorous methodological exercise, but an attempt to trace
elements of national cultural formations during a mega-media global sports
event. ‘La Coupe du Monde’, as the peak spectacle of the self-described ‘world
game’, generating massive broadcast rights fees and recruiting major corporate
partners, seems to represent globalization in and through sport par excellence.
But there are limits even to the cultural portability of association football. In
countries where it is known as ‘soccer’, like Australia, Canada, New Zealand and
the US, the linguistic marker signifies that it is not the dominant code of football.
This word choice may also have an explicitly political edge, as in the case of the
Irish nationalist preference for the term ‘soccer’ to demarcate it more effectively
from ‘indigenous’ Gaelic football. Korea/Japan 2002, it could be argued,
nonetheless represented a substantial step towards the globalization of football
with the appearance for the first time of China, the world’s most populous nation.
China’s involvement, however, also raised the stakes of the nationalist rivalry in
east Asia that was so starkly revealed in the difficult relationship between the co-
hosts, whose deep historical enmity is well known, and between whom there is
continuing tension over the Japanese educational erasure of culpability for
Second World War atrocities, and reluctance to make reparation.
50
Ironically, furthermore, as Korea met Turkey in the play-off for third place, North
Korea and its southern neighbor were involved in a naval engagement resulting in
several fatalities on both sides, and placing the militaries of both nations on full
alert. This failure of the World Cup’s equivalent of the Pax Olympia dramatically
revealed the limitations of sport as a global pacifier and, in this case, the potential
of the World Cup to exacerbate regional national resentment. Mega-media sports
events like the World Cup and the Olympics take place at particular sites, and
what occurs is relayed to differentiated audiences in customized fashion.
Watching the World Cup from the vantage point of three countries with different
historical and contemporary experiences of football demonstrated how the same
spectacle mutates according to national context and viewing position. The main
focus here is on the UK, where interest in the event was more intense, with brief
observations of contrasting national cultural milieu.
In Australia, the World Cup could be watched on television in prime time as
the tournament was taking place in the Asia-Pacific region for the first time.
Australia, however, has only once qualified for the World Cup (in 1974), and
failed to do so again in 2002. This meant that football spectators in Australia had
a wider repertoire of viewing positions than those of participating nations. These
included the universalist appreciation of the world game; ‘adoption’ of a favourite
team (on some grounds of affinity, glamour and so on); the finding of Australian
connections (such as an Italian player who had lived in the country as a child) and
(as would have often occurred irrespective of Australia’s involvement) support for
a team of the viewer’s national-ethnic origin, such as Italy, England, Turkey, China
and South Africa.
51
In the case of Australia, therefore, the absence of direct national representation
opened up more diverse viewing spaces than would have been possible had the
national team qualified, which would have immediately mobilized an intense,
nationalist discourse. The nation, present or absent, is then still crucial to the
experience of the World Cup. The location, geopolitical position, history and
demography of the nation will, in turn, condition responses to the event at the
various points of intersection with global forces.
This observation was borne out in a different country visited briefly during
the World Cup (not counting the credit card advertisements and screened games
in the quasi-postnational space of the airport transit lounge). Holland, unlike
Australia, usually reaches the World Cup but also did not qualify for Korea/Japan
2002. Association football is the dominant winter sport in that country (rather
than the ‘poor cousin’ as it is in Australia), thereby seeming to create greater
resentment at non-participation. Far distant from the site of the tournament,
‘Europeanness’ came to the fore in Holland, with a greater concentration on and
identification with Dutch- and Europe-based players and teams.
Some supportersof the Dutch team were able to express negative identification in
the form of the teams that they didn’t want to win (and, contra European unity,
this seemed mainly to be France or Germany).
In cabled European televisual space, however, British, German, Belgian,
French and other nation’s viewers could watch their team as presented by their
own national broadcasters.
52
Touristic spaces were created for viewing the World Cup, some of which had the
quality of postmodern pastiche, as in the cases of the English and Irish theme
pubs promising ‘All World Cup Games Live’. At a time when the most conspicuous
political issue in the European Union (signalled by a turn to the right in France,
Italy, Denmark, Austria and Holland itself) was immigration and asylum seekers,
there was visible support on Dutch streets for the various nations of origin that
comprise the contemporary Netherlands, such as Tunisia, Brazil and Nigeria. As
might be expected of viewers of an international tournament, the emblems of
nation were everywhere to the fore, and few seemed to take the opportunity to
adopt a position of neutrality in the role of global cultural citizen. This role was
even less visible in the next nation state visited — the UK — and, within it, the
sporting nation of England. ‘Britishness’ had been much fore grounded during
recent golden jubilee celebrations of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II as a
constitutional monarch, although the flag of St George, as an emblem of England,
supplemented and often replaced the Union Jack (the sign of the nation state in a
now post-Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution Britain) in bedroom and
shop windows, and other publicly visible sites. The World Cup offered an even
more compelling opportunity for the aggressive assertion of
‘Englishness’ through the flag of St George and licensed a temporary, symbolic
secession from Great Britain (mirrored, it might be noted, in pre-tournament
debates in Scotland concerning the ‘traitorous’ tendency there to support any
team playing against England).
53
As in earlier tournaments (e.g. Carrington and McDonald, 2001, and Garland and
Rowe, 1999, on jingoism during Euro ’96), the participation of a team, extracted
from the nation state and invested with a specific national character for the
purposes of sport, activated conceptions of the nation that were the antithesis of
‘progressive’ global cosmopolitanism. While it is necessary to be cautious in
naively ascribing cultural and ideological representativeness to the tabloid press,
the popular media amplified strong, nostalgic and inevitably fantastical myths of
nation in and through football.
To take a small number of examples, The Sun opened its front-page text with the
anticipatory statement that ‘All of England will get up for the Cup tomorrow to
see our heroes tackle Nigeria . . . at half past Sven [the given name of the
England’s Swedish-born manager]’, while the back-page headline recorded the
‘Beckham Battle-Cry’ to ‘FINISH THE JOB LADS. For the next game, The Sun
promised that, ‘ENGLAND’S soccer heroes will inflict pain on the Danes today by
booting them out of the World Cup’. As a game against Brazil approached, the
wrap-around front and back page consisted of only player and manager
headshots and the headline ‘YOU CAN DO IT LADS’, while inside stories included
‘One Flies Flag for the Lads’ carrying a fake internet photograph of the Queen in
an England shirt with her face painted with the flag of St George. The story ‘BEAT
’EM FOR MY GRANDAD, Says Bobby Moore’s [the late, World Cup winning
England captain] grandson’ was one of many nostalgic references to England’s
solitary World Cup tournament win in 1966. The Daily Mirror, for example, on the
same day listed 12 reasons ‘WHY WE’LL WIN’ on its front page, adding that these
were all precedents from 1966.
54
On the day of the game, the front page of the Daily Mirror consisted of white
space, a small flag of St George and the small, centered headline, ‘This page is
cancelled. Nothing else matters.’ Its World Cup supplement noted that, while the
‘loyalties’ of Japanese fans were ‘split’: ‘The whole of England has been brought
together with a dream of victory. We want it, we need it, we crave it. The country
is speaking with one voice: DO IT FOR US!’.
The next day, after England’s loss, the Daily Mirror’s black wrap-around carried a
front-page picture focusing on distraught England goalkeeper David Seaman,
accompanied by the headline ‘Anyone for tennis’, while the back page carried an
image of a controversial German victory in the same round with the statement
‘AND JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE . . .’
Within a few days, The Sun rearticulated football and monarchy with the
emphasis on the latter, carrying a prominent front-page image of Prince
William in jeans juggling a football.
This brief snapshot of English tabloid media discourse during the 2002 World Cup
illustrates the ways in which international sport compulsively reactivates and
recalculates’ long-standing and emergent myths of nation.
Constant homage were paid to ‘our lads’ and ‘our heroes’, with frequent cross-
references to serving military personnel in Afghanistan such as the Royal Marines,
who were ‘hunting Taliban’ while monitoring the progress of the World Cup
during their tour of duty. Interpellations of the national ‘us’ (despite the fact that
the national ‘we’ is an effect of sporting governmentality — and incorporates
‘citizens’ who are not football supporters of any kind) constitute the kind of
discourse that is inimical to globalization rhetorics.
55
For example, in Britain, confronted with the prospect of a referendum on the
replacement of the national currency (sterling) in favour of the multinational
Euro, the World Cup fostered a political and cultural climate that was unlikely to
be favourable to changes seeming to infringe national sovereignty by replacing
the heavily symbolic pound in the name of cross-border exchange rate efficiency.
The cultural atmosphere in early 21st-century England was close to the kind of
discourse reflected in much earlier representations of sport and nationhood, such
as Geoffrey Green’s famous reflections in the London Times on the significance of
the English national team’s first home defeat at Wembley Stadium by
‘communist’ Hungary in 1953: ‘England at last beaten by the foreign invader on
solid English soil’. During the 2002 World Cup, the English nationalist fetishization
of David Beckham’s hair and left foot, and of Michael Owen’s groin; the
continuing reference to the Falklands/Malvinas War on the eve of its 20th
anniversary in the lead-up to the game against Argentina; and the anxiety about a
possible German tournament win, were all examples of the foregrounding of
local, idiosyncratic rivalries and identifications.
On a wider stage, the victory of first-time participants Senegal over world
champions France in the opening match was open to colonial interpretation, just
as the first-time hosting of the World Cup in Asia provoked interpretive narratives
of the rising nations of the Orient challenging the established hegemony of the
Occident.
Spectacular expressions of South Korean nationalism and the more general
carnivalesque presentations of national culture that football generates
problematize the meanings and effects of sport.
56
The sport carnival’s turning of the ‘world upside down’ by celebrating the nation
may be interpreted in functionalist terms as a safety valve for resistance to
globalization. But, less automatically, it can clearly operate as a force that
provides considerable cultural reinforcement for those who wish to preserve
older structures and boundaries — and, indeed, to (re)construct new ones.
DISCUSSION
In this study the loading of globalization was relatively high and its impact on
sport strategies was significant. In addition, the most significant impact of
globalization should be sought in harmony with the values and needs of different
countries. This issue is confirmed by other researchers as well. Any shift in the
visions and values of a society affects other societies and these values interact
strongly with each other. There are multiple reasons including, products, air
pollution, and difficulty in making decisions for space, the seas and a special area
health, education and so on. The globalizing flow that connects the countries
together indicates that could build the wall around them and protect themselves
from this flow.
Fishman (1996) considers globalization as a process in which geographical
limitations in social and cultural compositions are being abolished. Some
researchers are pessimistic about these changes and do not consider them helpful
for world community. Mannington (2001) sees the globalization as a form of
imperialism or cultural empire building in which receivers of these universal
cultures become the new workforce and consumers of its market products.
57
The process of globalization does penetrate into native cultures. The native
culture could survive subjectively but the competition between these two
cultures is not fair. Although the subjects of this study did not believe the above-
mentioned idea, they did not suppose that this process would culminate in
destruction of native culture. They regard the introduction of new sports helpful,
in part, for native culture. Various amenities such as the internet, e-mail, satellite
communication and so forth play an important role in developing these structures
and in many cases presence of such amenities pave the way for transferring large
amounts of information inexpensively and utilizing a minimum of the existing
workforce. In the current study, the significance of congruence of large scale
planning with developed countries was emphasized and to a lesser degree, the
congruence with developing countries. It goes without saying that the governing
process in place in the developed countries is the source of innovations and
creation of new ideas. The reason for such comments probably lies in the
subjects' interest in moving forward.
Considering that all routine activities including sport are affected heavily by
communication technology, how could we neglect the scientific organizations?
There is some evidence that the more we move forward the greater will be the
gap between developed and developing countries in terms of talking of
phenomena. Some research finds commonalities between the European
community and African countries in terms of sanitary priorities. Sport for all is
going to become more common among developed and developing countries .
58
The final result of this process, namely emergence of harmony, but not in an
imperialistic form, could reflect the people’s demand and commitment .
On the other hand, in many developing countries sport is given lower priorities. In
Kenya even the most elementary sport facilities are not provided (MONNINGTON,
2001) and generally speaking economic and social problems hinder the
investment in sports in these countries. Some other developing countries like
Malaysia, Singapore, India, Pakistan and Hong Kong meticulously try to improve
their industrial and technical capabilities. It seems that the first priority in such
countries is not developing elite sports. Rather, they should try to enhance health
and community sports among the people in their nations. The respondents to the
questionnaire not only emphasized protecting native culture against any damage
but also focused on the congruence of sport strategies with globalization. This
comment is concordant with previous studies. Even the most pessimistic
researchers against globalization see it as indispensable and numerous sources,
confirm the shifting of people’s vision toward sport and its ever increasing
development in the world. Instead of various visions on globalization, the incurred
impacts could not be denied in all areas including sport. Therefore, it is necessary
to be aware of the ways of exploitation from amenities instead of adopting the
irrational policies. The results of the current study also emphasize the necessity to
pay attention to globalization. Globalization is an indispensable process and
successful managers are those who understand strategic opportunities. Social
demand is strongly affected by globalization. Therefore, when developing
strategies, the social demands should be taken in to account.
59
How Globalization Is Making Sports Better
Nowadays, you see people from India wearing NFL hats, people from America
wearing soccer jerseys with the names Messi or Henri, and people from France
wearing basketball caps. How has this amazing internationalization of sports
fanaticism occurred? The answer, I tell you, is globalization, or the integration of
facets of life from different cultures into comprehensive proclivities.
Before-hand, at the advent of modern sports, these sports were popular
only in the nations they were created in. Basketball, football, and baseball were
only popular in the US, soccer was only popular in international Spanish nations,
and cricket was only popular in Britain. However, as time passed by and
globalization mechanisms increased, the sports popularities increased. Cricket
expanded to Australia and India, as well as many other Middle-Eastern countries.
Basketball has spread to almost all countries around the world. In fact, with the
new popularity of basketball all over the world, many NBA teams recruit from
outside of the US now. Look at Yao Ming: this guy is one of the most dominant big
men in the game, and he isn’t from an American city, he’s from China. Look at the
big-man sharpshooter Dirk Nowitski—from Germany. Hakeem the dream Olajuan
—Nigeria. The list goes on and on.
Also, while America is still at the top of the basketball, other teams have
reached the top of the basketball world. Teams like Germany, Lithuania, and even
Argentina, who won the Olympic basketball tournament in 2004. The days of the
“Dream Team” are long gone.
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Globalization has also occurred extensively in soccer: actually, it has
probably had the most widespread globalization. Soccer has the most popularity
out of any sport worldwide, as evidenced by the different international leagues,
the recruitment of international players, and the World Cup for soccer that is held
every four years.
In baseball, Japan has gained ground and has become a baseball power.
Tennis has also been globalized. Currently there is a tennis player on the
professional circuit from every nation of the world, except Afghanistan. This truly
shows the widespread popularity of tennis. Every year, there is the Davis Cup,
which is like a World Cup for tennis that takes place every year. Now, foreign
players win majors more than the hometown favorites. The last player to win
Wimbledon, the British major, was Fred Perry, and he did it 76 years ago.
The same with golf. You may think that Tiger Woods is the only dominant
golfer out there, but this simply isn’t the case anymore. There are so many great
golfers from all around the world now.
Last but not least is football. This sport has long been called America’s
Game. The cheerleaders, the tailgating, the game itself; If you like football, you
must be an American right? WRONG. It is true that American football hasn’t
globalized as fast as many of the other sports out there, it is well on its way in the
right direction. Real-time example: right now the New England Patriots have
traveled to Old England to play a football game. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers also
made the long journey to play.
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It’s part of the NFL’s promise to have increased international participation.
And the commissioner of the league says that soon there will be more
international games played.
Whereas beforehand there was no diversification of sports internationally,
now the globalization of sports has caused more sports to be popular worldwide.
And it’s not going to stop; there is an increasing amount of communication
mechanisms out there right now. There’s email, there’s the internet, and there
will continue to be an increase in international communication.
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The Global Flows of International Professional Baseball System
Abstract
This paper employs concepts drawn from a five-phase model of globalization
adapted from the work of Maguire et al. in 2002, which aids in developing an
understanding of the global phenomenon of professional baseball. It reports that
the five flows of globalization, namely, migrant dimension, technology dimension,
economic dimension, media dimension, and ideological dimension are shaping
the outcomes of various local professional baseball cultures within the global
context and vice versa. The paper concludes that Major League Baseball (MLB) in
63
the U.S. is confirmed as the core economy within world professional baseball; and
the global forces, the power of MLB in particular, have been impacting and
shaping the outcomes of different local professional baseball cultures with a
particular focus on the relationships between the above five flows.
Introduction
During the past generation, especially from the 1980s to the present, the world
has experienced fundamental changes, and “globalization has emerged as one of
the foremost discourses” (Jackson & Hokowhitu, 2002). According to Bramham
and Spink (2001), such dramatic changes can be thought of in six separate
dimensions. First, there has been a growing awareness of
the ecological environment and the global impact of human activities upon a
fragile and interdependent biosphere. Second, social action groups and political
movements have tended to transcend the local and to make common cause at a
transnational scale. Some of this activity has been facilitated by a revolution of
global technology. Third, there has been a cultural transformation, particularly in
terms of the decline of tradition. Cultural values can no longer be contained and
constrained within a single nation state. Boundaries become increasingly porous
as they experience growing flows of people, culture, information, goods, and
services. Fourth, social transformations are taking place that loosen the
constraints of traditional institutions and local communities on individuals. Fifth,
in relation to political change, the growing importance of transnational
institutions and agencies, such as the European Union (EU) has become
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increasingly apparent. Finally, there are economic factors changing global patterns
of investment, production, distribution and consumption (Bauman, 1998).
The global development of sport has also accelerated from the 1980s. For
example, one can find the flows from country to country of sporting goods,
equipment, and landscapes that have grown such as the development of the
media-sport production complex and project images to global audiences. In the
academic field, the subjects of growth of internationalization or globalization have
received much attention from numbers of academics (cf. Chiba, 2004; Lawet al.,
2002; Magnusson, 2001; Maguire et al., 2002; Takahashi & Horne, 2004). In this
paper, the authors employ concepts drawn from a five-phase model of
globalization approach, adapted from the work of Maguire et al. in 2002, with a
focus on understanding the global phenomenon of professional baseball. They
seek to report how the five flows of globalization: migrant dimension, technology
dimension, economic dimension, media dimension, and ideological dimension are
shaping the outcomes of various local professional baseball cultures within the
global context and vice versa.
Theoretical Background
With the radical changes taking place in this global context, a major concern has
been raised regarding the consequences of globalizing the sport field. Elite sport
now occurs on a worldwide scale and is patterned along what academics term
‘global flows’ (Maguire et al., 2002). In a set of flows in global processes,
Maguire et al. propose an elementary framework for exploring such
65
phenomenon, suggesting that there are five dimensions of global flows: migrant
dimension, technology dimension, economic dimension, media dimension, and
ideological dimension.
According to Maguire et al. (2002), “the migrant dimension involves the
international movement of people such as tourists, exiles and guest workers and
so on.” This concept of migration refers to the make up of persons who have
constituted the shifting world where guest workers, other moving groups, and
persons constitute an essential feature of the world in general. In the sport arena,
the global migration of sports personnel (e.g. players, coaches etc.) has been a
pronounced and established feature of the sporting ‘global village’ in recent
decades (Maguire, 1999). For instance, the movement of player migration occurs
in some sports, such as professional baseball, between North America, Latin
America, and East Asia.
The technology dimension, “created by the flow between countries of the
machinery and equipment produced the flow between countries by corporations
and government agencies,” (Maguire et al., 2002) making technology “a shaping
factor at the nexus of alternative global sport futures, and as such it is a pivotal
driver of sport’s global evolution” (Westerbeek & Smith, 2003: 153). Modern
technology, such as the development of media, sport equipment etc., has created
financial benefits and publicity for professional baseball.
“The economic dimension has been obviously concerned on the rapid flow of
money and its equivalents around the world” (Maguire et al., 2002). It is evident
that the flow of finance in the global sports arena has come to focus on the
66
international trade in personnel, prize money and endorsements, and the
marketing of sport along specific lines. Some good examples are manifested in the
transformation of sports such as USA basketball and baseball, Olympic Games,
and Football World Cup etc. into global sports.
Another factor that must be considered is “the media dimension, entailing the
flow between countries of information and images that are produced and
distributed by newspapers, magazines, radio, film, television, video, satellite,
cable and the World Wide Web” (Maguire et al., 2002: 5). Currently, global and
local media sport organizations have aligned a range of sporting events to meet
the global audiences’ interests, of which spectacle, personality, and excitement
are emphasized. The sport-related media continuously ‘broadcasts’ images of
sports to large global audiences. For example, consider worldwide audiences for
the World Baseball Classic in 2006.
The ideological dimension is “linked to the flow of values centrally associated with
the state or counter-state ideologies and movements” (Maguire et al., 2002). In
the professional baseball business, players are regarded as individual
entrepreneurs with rights (e.g. negotiation) (Suzuki, 2000). Nevertheless, except
for the MLB, the leagues seem to have different stories (Lee et al., 2006).
Discussions
“Sports migration is bound up in a complex political economy that is itself
embedded in a series of power struggles characterizing the global sports system”
(Maguire et al., 2002: 32). The U.S. is a central part of the global system. The most
striking example of transnational power of sports organization is Major League
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Baseball (Rosentraub, 2000). Players from outside the United States are defined
as guestworkers in this system. In MLB, many players have been recruited from
Latin American countries, such as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and
Venezuela. Indeed, U.S. domination increasingly relies on Latin America talent, as
illustrated by the professional sporting relations between the U.S. and Latin
America (Klein, 1995). On the other hand, one could find that players came from
Netherlands despite the fact that football is the most popular sport in Europe.
There has been an influx of talented players from Latin America, Europe, and
Australia because U.S. capital, technology, and media have provided rapid
development related to professional baseball labor conditions. This, together with
the infusion of Asian players (Takahashi & Horne, 2004) has fostered the
exploitation of the North American professional baseball market over the past
years.
The baseball business is booming in Asia as a rapidly-swelling band of fans follow
the exploits of home-grown players on the other side of the Pacific.
The growing prominence of foreign born baseball players in MLB appears not only
in the performances of foreign superstars such as Sammy Sosa but also in overall
number of foreign players now on MLB rosters (Marcano & Fidler, 2000). By 2005,
242 overseas players, which occupied 29.2% of 829 Major League players, were
featured from 15 countries together with Puerto Rico and the Virgin Island. The
Dominican Republic leads all countries with 91 players; Venezuela is second with
46; and Puerto Rico is third with 34 (Major League Baseball, 2005). The import of
MLB players from East Asia in this half decade has also shown a dramatic growth.
68
Twenty-one Japanese, 9 Koreans, and 3 Taiwanese played in the U.S. during the
2001-05 period. “These results indicate that most of the demand for major league
players is focused on foreign-born players”. Foreign players strive to play in the
Major Leagues because that is the highest level. More importantly, this claim
clearly implies “the global migration of sports personnel has been a pronounced
feature of recent decades and appears likely to continue in the future”.
69
EXAMPLES
1. Globalization Of Football
Football in one of the most popular sports of the world, and is often regarded as
most globalized profession. Today, the best players and their services can be
offered to clubs in different countries and whatever the price they want and the
top players can make salaries of millions a year plus whatever additional
70
endorsements they receive. The globalization in football has benefited many
players and teams enabling them to find a wider support base outside their
traditional local areas. Today, majority of the clubs have multiple foreign players,
simply implying football as global sport.
To be very precise, the game of football has now become a global sport where
spectators from all over the world can enjoy variety of different leagues. The
globalization of football has created international rivalries yet it has also the
power to bring communities together.
Simply referring FIFA World Cup, we can say the tournament brings the world of
football together for an entire month. According to Franklin Foer, the national
teams usually create a tribal sense of nationalisms amongst the football
supporters and fans. He further explains that the nationalism is show in wearing
football shirts, craves as well as flying flags for expressing pride. According to him,
the tournaments including FIFA World Cup, the Africans Cup of Nations as well as
the UEFA European Championship bring football supporters from different
nations of the world and this naturally lead to the globalization of football game.
We can simply say that different tournaments plays major role in making football
as a global sport. However, the game of football brings players together form
every part of the world. Besides players, the game also brings together football
fans, coaches and clubs from every part of the world. For instance that game of
football helps to unite the nation of Ghana and it gained independence from
British imperial rule in 1957. Ghana has now become one of the most passionate
football nations in both Africa and the world.
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2. The Effects of Globalization on Soccer in India
The nation of India supports over fifteen percent of the world’s population,
making India the second most populous nation in the world. Interestingly, the
median age in India is 25; India is one of the youngest nations among large
economies. India’s history has been marked by numerous invasions from various
72
cultures which have been absorbed and modified to create the current racial and
culture synthesis India enjoys. India is home to many intense sporting fans.
Indians are passionate about a variety of sports – especially cricket, field hockey
and soccer. Despite domestic passion for the previously mentioned sports India
has not, yet, exported itself onto the world’s global sporting stage in the realm of
the World Cup or the Olympics. It is worth mentioning that the Indian cricket
team is considered one of the strongest teams in the world. At the Sydney
Olympics of 2000, India won one bronze medal, which seems surprising
considering India’s large population and the county’s love of sports. To better
understand the world of Indian sports it is helpful to look at some background
information. For instance, 44 percent of Indians spend less than a dollar a day,
which would seem to have a great effect on the training, recruiting and
development of many sports within India. The technology boom of the 1990s
created many technology driven industries within India. Likewise, the advent of
relatively easy access to satellite television created a vast market within India for
soccer, particularly European leagues such as the English Premier League (EPL).
The popularity of foreign soccer leagues has had a positive effect on the
development of soccer in India because it exposes many more Indians to the
game. However, the high ratings for English soccer have not done a great deal to
improve domestic interest. As in other countries, there is a disconnect in soccer’s
popularity. Though many avidly watch the EPL and similar top-ranked leagues,
fewer Indians have proven to actually follow their own local leagues. Watching
televised international soccer stars continues to be more popular than attending
or playing games locally. This lack of interest in Indian domestic soccer has hurt
the national team-dropping it to an all-time low rank in the FIFA world rankings.
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Globalization has had a deep impact on India in many positive and negative
ways. It creates technology-driven industries yet spurs the migration of Indians
with technical skills to other countries, creating a “brain-drain” at home. Likewise,
globalization has impacted the sporting culture in India, particular the sport of
soccer. Soccer clubs such as Manchester United and AC Milan are household
names in India, due to the effects of globalization. Soccer is basically viewed as a
commodity – created in Europe and then exported around the world to the
masses.
V. Krishnaswamy in his article, “Football and Globalization,” discusses the impact
of teams from countries such as Senegal and Korea making the World Cup:
But before you start clapping or dreaming of a Senegal or Korea up there on the
top of the heap in 2010 or 2014, look at the other side. Globalization does not
necessarily mean the gap between the first world (European and Latin American
teams) and the Third World (Asia largely and to some extent Africa) in football is
going to become narrower. Within Asia, only a handful of teams – primarily South
Korea, Japan and China – are likely to rise further. And in Africa it will still be the
same four to six countries – Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal or Algeria. Add to that
South Africa and in times to come, maybe Ghana or Sierra Leone. The
globalization of world football may only mean more European and Latin American
coaches in Asia and Africa and more talented Asian and African footballers in
Europe – not even Latin America, which is itself struggling from the lack of funds.
Just when it seems it is helping perk up standards, it turns its face and moves
74
away. It does enrich the world, but leaves its own home in tatters. Not even for a
fleeting moment should one believe that the rise of Senegal in the world cup … will
raise the standard of football in that country. Just forget it. It has not happened,
nor is it likely to happen. If anything, the domestic football scene in Senegal will be
even more impoverished.
This is an interesting and popular view of the impact of globalization on countries
that are not as developed as the Western industrial democracies. This quote
highlights the disconnect between the growth of the sport of soccer amount the
population in terms of viewership of foreign leagues without the growth of the
sport on the field. It is yet to be seen if the domestic league in India will gain
support and be able to grow talented Indian soccer players to be able to qualify
India for the World Cup in the future. It is now unclear what the future effects
globalization will have on the sporting culture of India.
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3. The globalization of cricket
The ICC seems quite serious about promoting cricket around the world even in
countries without any serious tradition of the game. The recent discussion about
20/20 at the Olympics is part of that trend.
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There is no question that the format is quite well-suited to the Olympics and the
presence of cricket there will promote the game globally.
So what are the prospects of cricket becoming more popular around the world?
And how will it affect the balance between test cricket and 20/20?
Personally I seriously doubt that test cricket will ever catch on anywhere outside
the existing countries; considering that its popularity is on the wane among
several of the current test countries. If you haven't grown up watching test
cricket, it's not a very accessible sport IMO.
OTOH I think 20/20 has huge potential in terms of global appeal. From the
entertainment point of view 2-4 hours is probably the ideal length and it is the
first cricket format which is down to that length. Its closest competitor is baseball
and IMO 20/20 with its high scoring and greater variety of action is more
accessible to someone who is new to both. Once you have an entertaining format,
cricket has a lot of obvious advantages when it comes to spreading globally. It
makes a lot of money already and will probably make even more in the near
future. Its existing base is nicely spread across the world in five continents
The bottom line is that I could see cricket becoming global but only for 20/20. The
inevitable effect would be test cricket being overshadowed. Is that likely to
happen? Is it a good thing? Obviously it will be sad for fans of test cricket but it
will mean a lot more cricketers around the world able to make a living from
cricket.
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4. The globalization of golf: A future Tiger Woods world golf tour?
The Globalization of golf is a must. The world is in a constant mode of change.
There should be areas of commonality that all people can enjoy and participate.
Gold is one of them, as the greens add to a community, and are a pleasant site.
If we cannot choose the direction of world events, then we must realize that
there does exist a choice. A choice to not simply sit back and complain while the
world rolls along in its usual fashion. Conflict, pain, pre-determined destinies.
Then the choice exists to find areas where all people can identify and strive
toward a better life. Golf can do this, and perhaps bring about the realization of a
dream for those who wish to be the next Tiger Woods.
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For some reason, when a nation pursues sports it generates much attention - not
only for the athlete, but the very fabric of its social structure. True, most athletes
are young, but the world is interested in how nations develop their young.
There are some things that cannot be learned quickly, and time - which is all that
most folks have or possess, is a costly commodity. Each nation, each citizen must
return to its inhabitants a certain nominal percentage of what it harnesses in
terms of achivement and knowledge to the next.
From this vantage point it then takes its departure and perhaps claims its legacy.
A Tiger Woods is, without his realizing, a Good Will Ambassador. This of course
opens the door to the next question, which this writer prefers: Do nations or the
global world need heroes? Particuliarly in sport? I think that the answer is
evident. If a people desire freedom to the extent that they are willing to walk
through a desert or paddle a leaky craft to freedom, then the globalization of golf
will certainly offer an incentive to pursue a more democratic existence as
democracy breeds opportunity, advantage, and the pursuit of pleasure. More
demands more.
And what of the impact on golf widows? Guess that will be addressed at the 19th
hole after the first major golf tournament. After all, once a player always a player,
as any golfer will attest to.
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5. Badminton Hand Signals
In any sports that we see today, participants and game supervisors use hand
signals to communicate with each other, regulate the game and keep track of
scores. The same is followed in badminton, which we may name as badminton
hand signals.
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In this era of globalization, it is often difficult to communicate verbally during a
game, particularly by the game supervisors. It is because the players' attention is
primarily riveted to the game. Moreover the players come from different parts of
the world.
Some of them may not know the language used and others may have difficulty in
following the accent, even if they know the language. Above all, when the crowd
is excited, it is often difficult to adjust scores and manage the game properly if
verbal communication alone is used to regulate the game and keep track of
scores.
Badminton hand signals are used precisely to overcome this difficulty. In
badminton, besides participating players, there is a Referee who is in overall
charge of the game, an Umpire, a service judge and a line judge. All these people
use badminton hand signals to regulate the game.
Hand signals followed by the umpires are
Raising his right hand straight above his head. When misconduct sufficient
enough to apply rule 16.8 is reported about a player or the umpire witnesses it,
he should call the player. The service judges are responsible for monitoring
whether a player serves correctly as per rules. Hand signals followed by the
service judges are
Raising the right arm in front slightly, flexing the elbow and keeping the palm
vertically facing the opposite direction. It is done to indicate that the shaft of the
racket when hitting the shuttle was not below the level of the wrist holding the
81
racket and/or the shaft of the racket was not facing downwards when hitting the
shuttle during serving.
Keeping the palm horizontally facing downwards at the level of the abdomen,
followed by moving it to the left and right below the level of waist. It is done to
convey that the shuttle, as a whole was not under the level of the waist while it
was struck during serving.
Extending the right leg and pointing the hand towards the foot. It is done to
indicate that one or both feet were not in the service court or remains constant
till the serve was completed.
Resting the palm of the right hand on right side of the abdomen, keeping the
palm facing the left side of the body, with fingers pointing downwards and
pointing the fingers of the left hand to the palm of the right hand with the palm
of the left hand facing the abdomen. It is done to show that the first point of
contact with the shuttle was not the base of the shuttle.
Hand signals shown by line judges include –
Extending both hands horizontally to the sides of the body. It is to indicate the
shuttle landed outside.
Pointing the hand to the line. To show that the shuttle has fallen inside correctly.
Closing both eyes with hands. To convey to the umpire that you are not sure
where the shuttle landed.
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Chapter-5
RECOMMENDATIONS AND LIMITATIONS
1.) Improvements in new technologies and strategies in sports can promote
prosperity.
2.) The movement and sharing of information, knowledge and expertise.
3.) The improvement of international standards for sports.
4.) Increases the variety of Games and countries which are interested in
getting involved into the sports.
5.) The loss of new talent in the games in developed countries such as Britain.
6.) A drift towards a more homogenized culture and society internationally.
7.) Under development countries may be more vulnerable to fast changes in
the internationally developed countries.
8.) Increased centralization of power in the hands of developed countries.
9.)Globalization is often criticized on the basis that is has led to the
exploitation of players and the playing environment.
10.) Rights and safety of player’s laws and regulations are often less
demanding in developing countries.
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Chapter-6
CONCLUSION
Our paper has identified and described the emerging phenomenon of the
globalization of sports, and has shown that existing management concepts
are difficult to apply as the business parameters are different from those of
any other business and not very well covered so far in existing research.
84
Although sports is becoming commoditized, the business rules are still
unclear off the pitch, offering a broad area for further research in
international business.
This paper has sought to highlight how commercialization and globalization has
changed the worldwide picture of sports. As we can conclude a sport manager, in
order to be competitive in the global marketplace and in order to be able to react
to the changes of the international rules of commercialization have to be aware of
the needs of the market and “consumers”-fans that address.
According to Markle(1997), sports managers need to understand the nature of
the business and the disposition of the consumer through demographics,
psychographics, socioeconomics, etc…sports managers need to built their
business, the product and the perception of the product to be attractive and
appealing … to built relationships with sponsors, to learn their business needs and
become an agency rather than a salesperson. They should under-promise and
over-deliver”
Also we should always have in mind what Robert L. Boucher suggests : “ call me
naïve, but it is possible that today’s promoters of commercialism in sport have
become intoxicated by sponsorship revenues? …is it right for a sport manager
only to be conduit by which a sponsor can achieve greater market penetration?
My contention is simply that in our quest for legitimation, we may have sold our
souls to the interests of big business.
85
It can be argued that much of what comprises the Sport Management domain is
not related to business and producing entertainment for profit. In fact, a large
percentage of sport enterprises in the global community are of an amateur nature
where the motives of participants, spectators and administrators are of a more
altruistic nature. Perhaps Chelladurai’s (1992) observation that there are really, in
fact, two fields, that management of human services in sport and management of
entertainment services through out sport, is entirely accurate. In any event, the
need to return in a balance in orientation and to refocus has never been more
pressing”.
In conclusion, sport program growth and development which pays attention to
globalization could maintain the national values. It is suggested that in future
planning after policy makers pay attention toward social needs, universal needs
should also be taken in to consideration. The conducted studies showed that the
21st century is the century of approaching the world’s nations’ values and need
for each other. In addition, establishing sport internet websites tends to play an
important role in sport development.
The ever-increasing trend of people using personal computers provides the
appropriate opportunity for sport policymakers to transfer a variety of
information to the community beyond applying conventional methods. In future
planning for sport, special attention should be paid to new sport activities and
providing the amenities necessary for those people at the recreational and non
official levels, without any mention of damaging native sport and culture.
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Chapter-7
APPENDICES
- Maguire, J. (1999). Global sport. Identities, societies, civilizations Polity
Press: Cambridge.
- Maguire, J. (2005). Power and Global Sport: Zones of Prestige, Emulation
and Resistance. Routledge: London
- Maguire, J., Jarvie, G., Mansfield, L., & Bradley, J. (2002). Sport Worlds: A
Sociological Perspective. Champaign: Human Kinetics.
- BEYER, P. Religion and Globalization, London, Sage, 1994.
- BOULTBEE, J. Expert for sport for all or elite sport? Professional coaching
and management – paper presented in the 9th world sport for all congress-
the Netherlands, 2002.
- COALLER, F. The mixed economy of leisure, In: Henry I. (editor)
management and planning in the leisure Industries, London, McMillan,
1990.
- DAVIS, B.; ROSS, B.; JAN, R.; DENNIS, R. Physical education and the study of
sport- Mosby 11th edition, 2000.
- DIETZ, T. Methods for analyzing data from Delphi panels: Some evidence
from a forecasting study. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 31:
79-85, 1987.
- EICHBERG, H.; JARIVIE, G.; MIDOL, N. Youth Body Culture and Identity-
report to European Commission No. 98-10EET_0026-00, 1992.
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