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Friday, July 4, 2025

The transformation of sports media

by

642 days ago
20231001
Shaun Fuentes

Shaun Fuentes

The word me­dia is a plur­al form of the Latin word ‘medi­um’. The word “medi­um” refers to the mid­way or the process of me­di­at­ing. In our sit­u­a­tion, in­for­ma­tion ex­change be­tween two or more peo­ple or en­ti­ties, the me­dia source and the con­sumer (Pe­tersen-Wag­n­er, 2020).

Foot­ball and crick­et have a long his­to­ry with me­dia, but the in­tro­duc­tion of new dig­i­tal me­dia plat­forms in the last decade has trans­formed the way we con­sume and in­ter­act with these sports.

The evo­lu­tion of me­dia from tra­di­tion­al me­dia to new me­dia en­hances live stream­ing of match­es to in­ter­ac­tive sta­tis­tics and fan en­gage­ment, me­dia plays a ma­jor role in the mod­ern-day fan ex­pe­ri­ence (Leck­en­by, 2005).

Sports me­dia has evolved sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the years in foot­ball. In the ear­ly days, cov­er­age was lim­it­ed and typ­i­cal­ly con­sist­ed of news­pa­pers and ra­dio, with oc­ca­sion­al tele­vi­sion broad­casts. News­pa­pers were the pri­ma­ry source of cov­er­age, pro­vid­ing de­tailed game re­caps, analy­sis, and oth­er sto­ries re­lat­ed to the game. Ra­dio broad­casts pro­vid­ed lis­ten­ers with play-by-play com­men­tary, as well as in­ter­views with play­ers and man­agers.

Sport­ing bod­ies are al­so de­vel­op­ing their own me­dia plat­forms and com­pa­nies, like NBL TV and Pre­mier League foot­ball by­pass­ing the tra­di­tion­al news me­dia to broad­cast their own games and break their own news.

This chang­ing me­dia land­scape, where sports or­gan­i­sa­tions can tell their sto­ries di­rect­ly to their fans through their own so­cial or dig­i­tal chan­nels, is mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for tra­di­tion­al news jour­nal­ists to get ac­cess to ath­letes or coach­es. The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s me­dia de­part­ment of­ten holds the pow­er to de­cide which play­er ap­pears, where and when, and it’s be­com­ing more com­mon that their own chan­nels win.

The first ma­jor break­through for me­dia in foot­ball came in the mid-90s when the Pre­mier League was es­tab­lished. This al­lowed for un­prece­dent­ed cov­er­age of the match­es, with broad­cast­ers push­ing for live stream­ing of games and in­creased ac­cess to play­ers and man­agers. This gave fans a chance to watch their favourite teams in ac­tion from the com­fort of their own homes (Rook­wood & Hugh­son, 2017).

What is no­tice­able to­day with the emer­gence of so­cial me­dia and the rise in de­mand for on­line con­tent, is that tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion net­works are al­so find­ing it in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to ac­cess live in­ter­na­tion­al broad­cast of events such as in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball and even some crick­et events due to high costs and com­pe­ti­tion. Many fans to­day will tell you that it was eas­i­er to see Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball match­es on lo­cal tele­vi­sion in the 80s and 90s than it is to­day. And it's not be­cause the match­es aren't avail­able or that the TTFA isn't pro­vid­ing the plat­form but rather most in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions or match­es sim­ply cost too much for lo­cal sta­tions to eas­i­ly af­ford.

To­day, many ath­letes use so­cial me­dia to mar­ket them­selves, while sports as­so­ci­a­tions are in­creas­ing­ly stream­ing events on­line. This is rais­ing ques­tions about the fu­ture of tra­di­tion­al sports jour­nal­ism. Kristi­na Vo­gel an ex­cep­tion­al Ger­man cy­clist added two more world ti­tles to her long list of awards in 2017. How­ev­er, her fans rarely got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fol­low her achieve­ments live on tele­vi­sion. Reg­u­lar World Cup sea­son events sim­ply aren’t broad­cast by free-to-air tele­vi­sion chan­nels in Ger­many. How­ev­er, the World Cy­cling As­so­ci­a­tion (UCI) does stream the events on YouTube. Such as­so­ci­a­tions are in­creas­ing­ly turn­ing to stream­ing to try to give their events ex­po­sure. Vo­gel, though, doesn't see it as a com­plete­ly pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment.

"I don’t think that the sport should be shown ex­clu­sive­ly on­line," she said. "It’s bet­ter to have some re­al tele­vi­sion chan­nels there telling a bit more of the sto­ry."

Ath­letes and ex­perts agree on one thing: Jour­nal­ists can of­fer some­thing of added val­ue if they de­liv­er in-depth back­ground sto­ries and unique in­sights in­to sports. Sports jour­nal­ists are al­so in a po­si­tion to ask crit­i­cal ques­tions about de­vel­op­ments and is­sues such as match-fix­ing, tour­na­ment prepa­ra­tion and squad se­lec­tion while at the same time putting them in­to con­text for their read­ers or view­ers.

Whether a sport man­ages to gain wide ac­cep­tance among the gen­er­al pub­lic al­so de­pends on the at­ten­tion it gets in the tra­di­tion­al me­dia. To­day there is an in­cred­i­ble amount of me­dia at our fin­ger­tips and with that comes an in­cred­i­ble amount of op­por­tu­ni­ty to be seen, heard, read and viewed. Sports me­dia pub­li­ca­tions and jour­nal­ists now need to be re­spon­sive to the needs of their au­di­ences. Ca­su­al fans and diehards alike have grown ac­cus­tomed to new in­no­va­tions in their favourite sports. Mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of West In­dies, Chica­go Bulls or In­ter-Mi­a­mi FC fans might con­sume sports jour­nal­ism dif­fer­ent­ly. It's no longer a one-size-fits-all ap­proach to sports cov­er­age.

The biggest au­di­ences for round-the-clock up­dates are found in dig­i­tal me­dia rather than tra­di­tion­al out­lets. Writ­ers are now ex­pect­ed to craft unique sto­ries con­sum­able on mul­ti­ple de­vices that stand apart from their com­peti­tors.

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He was a FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion. shaunfuentes@ya­hoo.com


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