Sports and Television, Essay Example

Sports and Television: A symbiotic relationship

Sports and television almost seem to be made for each other. Even basic cable package now comes with about a half dozen channels dedicated entirely to sports, while more advanced packages have even more. Network channels frequently program around sports blocks like Sunday Night Football for NBC or the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for CBS. Their willingness to show these types of events is evidence that they’re successful and helpful to television broadcasting companies. However, through the huge fees they pay for rights to sporting events have also provided a tremendous boom to sporting teams and leagues. Since the rise of television in America in the 1950s, television and sports have been extremely beneficial to one another, helping both achieve a popularity that would have been impossible without the other.

While initially television may have been viewed with distrust, it eventually became seen as a vital and necessary source of revenue for teams. Broadcasters paid rights fees to get the games on television greatly enriching teams especially as the increase in cable channels lead to a situation where many major professional teams have nearly all of their games broadcast on top of larger national television contracts. However, this direct revenue was only part of the benefit of television. The games became more widely available, increasing the number of fans who felt a connection to the team. This access to games made them more likely to want to see a game someday as well as providing a serious boost to merchandising from fans who wanted to wear the jerseys they saw their favorite players wearing (Whannel, 2009, pp. 205-218).

One example of how this access can create fans is the English Premier League. Until the early nineties, fans of the English Premier League were almost exclusively located in England. The league restructured itself with an eye towards more television coverage and soon was being broadcast globally. In many developing nations they managed to become the first foreign league to gain any exposure, leaving other major leagues like the Spanish La Liga playing catch up on international growth. ,(Bakin) 2013) Today the teams regularly tour abroad during the preseason, bringing in huge sums, while also selling merchandise around the world. Brazil alone paid $50 million for television rights annually last year and some games are watched by over eighty million fans, not bad for a league representing a country with fifty million inhabitants (Salem).

Television has brought more sports than English soccer to the forefront globally. Competitions between nations such as the World Cup and Olympics have become global spectator events that reach countless nations around the world. This in turn has lead people to become more connected to the events since they appeal to their sense of community and relation to country. Undoubtedly this exposure aids the development of these sports, leading to more participants for the next generation in these events.

The impact of television on sports is not limited to its global exposure or other financial concerns, but also reaches to the actual play on the field. With more eyeballs on the action than ever before, teams started to see the revenues they could bring in with sponsors. Outfield walls, hockey boards, even soccer jerseys have become covered in advertisements. This trend that would be unlikely without such a large audience making sponsors willing to pay such large fees for the exposure.Another such impact is that games are now played to accommodate the television schedule. World Series games have moved from afternoon starts to prime time for the purpose of reaching a large television audience.

The games themselves are run differently with each major American sport pausing itself regularly to allow for television breaks. The initial revenue from television was great for sports teams and they have since chased more of it even altering their own games in the process.

It’s not just that sports have been affected by television, but sports have in turn impacted the direction of television permanently.  The most obvious example of how sports have helped television is the Entertaining and Sports Programming Network, much better known as ESPN. The first channel to dedicate itself to sports 24/7, ESPN is now one of the most lucrative media properties in the world. By securing the rights to live sporting events, ESPN has properties other channels do not have. If a cable carrier does not carry ESPN, it runs the risks of losing customers who simply demand that their television package brings them their favorite team’s game. This means that ESPN is able to charge cable companies huge fees to carry the channel as well as other ones like ESPN 2 or ESPNU, their dedicated college sports channel. Channels showing non sporting programs may have their devoted fans, but they can wait for shows to appear on DVD or many other ways around a cable subscription. Sports fans want their sports live and will make sure their cable company has it. Disney purchased the company years ago seeing its growth potential and now estimates for the value of EPSN are about forty billion dollars (Miller, 2011).

One way to see the mutually beneficial relationship between sports entities and television companies is to observe how often they end up officially combining forces. In 2007, the Big Ten conference, which sponsors a number of collegiate sports between Midwestern schools, went in business with FOX Sports to create the Big Ten Network which would show football and basketball games mainly between member schools. At first it was a struggle to get picked up, but now the BTN is on in nearly every home with a basic cable package in the nine states with Big Ten schools. The financial success has been evident as it lead the Big Ten to add three more members, the University of Nebraska, University of Maryland, and Rutgers University. On top of that, rivals such as the Southeastern Conference and even individual schools such as the University of Texas have started their own television channels. Obviously television benefits sporting teams if they’re willing to directly enter the television business and obviously there is a benefit to airing sports since every team seems to want to enter the market (Ozanian, 2012).

The trend of teams owning their own television channels did not begin in college sports though. Around the most recent turn of the century, the New York Yankees, along with investors started Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network. Soon their rivals, the Boston Red Sox, followed suit with New England Sports Network (NESN). Both teams became dominant forces in baseball with the two managing to use their wealth to attract the best players and routinely finishing first and second in the American League East, where both teams play. This also led to an interesting trend throughout the rest of baseball. Some teams started their own cable channels like the Yankees and Red Sox, while others used that as leverage. Local sports channels were afraid of letting sports teams leave to form rival networks, leading to huge fees paid to secure the rights to baseball teams’ games as well as help eliminate a potential competitor for those existing networks (Keri, 2014).

Many things in the past few years have been detrimental to television in general, while conversely making sports television even more valuable. For example, the Digital Video Recorder makes it easier for people to watch television at their leisure, and usually that means they skip commercials. Advertising space is less valuable since more people are skipping it. Another example is the proliferation of cable channels splitting the television viewing audience into smaller and smaller sectors, unlike the days when there were only three networks to choose from. Sports however, avoid both of these trends. Most people value watching their sporting events live which leaves them unable to skip commercials. Events like the Super Bowl or Olympics resist fragmentation better than most other programming as well. These two trends have made sports television programming extremely lucrative in recent years (Klatel., 1989).

Over the past half century, sports and television have both grown from much humble beginnings to be among the dominant institutions of our times. This has not been coincidental as both sports and television have contributed to each others’ rapid growth. Television has given sports a massive new revenue stream as well as a way to increase exposure, leading to more fans of higher devotion levels and therefore more merchandise and ticket revenue. In the other direction, sports have given countless people reason to own a television or subscribe to a specific cable package. With the current television landscape, it looks like sports will continue to be a massive part of the television business and of course, sports teams will always want that to be the case.

Marketing, being the bridge that connects television and sports has played a great role in making phenomenal determination on how the television industry progresses through time. For instance, business developers have found it more effective to promote their products when reputable and high-grossing games are in play. The effect of scheduled match or sports competition on the thoughts of the viewers is considered extensive, and at some point, the impact of such meets to viewers tends to develop each year. The interest that the society has on games increases especially in the manner by which they are influenced to get into the trend of knowing more about the current games. Such influence is taken into account by business operators as the choose the right timing to promote their products and specifically tie up with the themes of the games that are being shown on television. There are of course some distinct conditions on the part of the television networks [especially the sports-specific channels] to make sure that the advertisements they show along with the games has something to do with the game in schedule, the players and the promotion of the event itself. The reciprocal benefits that the business owners and the television networks get from each other specifically identifies the worth they have for each other especially in terms of increasing rate of social acceptance which in turn results to development of profit rate gained from such collaborative operations of marketing and promotion.

Overall, it could be understood that sports enthusiasts would continue to support the games they love and the players they vie for. The industry is also expected to increase in influence as the industry operators remain rather serious in promoting their players though relative marketing that also brings about the sense of development that the businesses want to give attention to. The reaction of the public on such marketing approaches intend to establish a much stronger tie between business operators and sports managers as well as television networks as they create relative influential ads that would motivate people to watch sports, patronize the games and players and buy the products offered within the industry. All these operations are considered effective enough to influence the movement and perception of the market. The psychological impact of such promotion on the thoughts of the market being influenced by the industry remains strong enough thus making an impact on how the whole industry of sports and television progresses together along with the changes and development happening in the market

References

Baskin, J. (2013, August 21). Is The Premier League About To Become An American TV Phenomenon?. Forbes. Retrieved April 5, 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathansalembaskin/2013/08/21/is-the-premier-league-about-to-become-an-american-tv-phenomenon/

Keri, J. (n.d.). For The BirdS.Grantland. Retrieved April 5, 2014, from http://grantland.com/features/baltimore-orioles-offseason-spending-al-east/

Klatel, D. (1989). Sports for sale: television, money, and the fans. Choice Reviews Online, 27(01), 27-0361-27-0361.

Miller, J. A., &Shales, T. (2011). Those guys have all the fun: inside the world of ESPN. New York: Back Bay Books.

Ozanian, M. (2012, September 27). The Big Ten Network’s Winning Game Plan. Forbes. Retrieved April 4, 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2012/09/27/the-big-ten-networks-winning-game-plan/

Whannel, G. (2009). Television And The Transformation Of Sport. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 625(1), 205-218.