Sports formed part of the human activities of the early years of man, and it was mostly a concern of human communities. The love for games by human society dates back to 590BC when Greek athletes began to receive awards for their victory in the Olympics (Giulianotti, Numerato, 2018). Since then, sports have crossed international borders and are fast becoming a world culture. The sport started as a community affair, but due to globalization that is currently experienced in all other sectors, the sporting industry was not left out; as such, globalization has set foot on this vast field of sporting. According to Giulianotti, Numerato, 2018, sport stopped being a community thing that happened for fun; it became a business and has since grown through stages up to and including the step of its commercialization. Sport is currently regarded as a business in whose context people use marketing strategies in the form of sponsorships, clubs, leagues and other governing bodies to make personal gain from the sporting industry.
This reflection is going to focus on three major aspects: impact of globalization and commercialization on sports, the issues that impact the sports industry and finally the effect of these issues on the growth of the sector. The three major topics reflected upon on this piece are culture, gender, and social class. Others like money, power, and age are also mentioned.
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Commercialization of sport has seen nations coming together through competitions for medals and other awards and this; the world is one big society- a globalized world (Giulianotti, Numerato,2018). Globalization of sport creates a sense of teamwork, promotes equality among the participating nations and equips countries with the skill of solving problems to a level they would not have attained on their own.
Many issues have impacted sports in various ways. Such include gender, race, money, power, age, social class, youth violence, and deviance. For example, gender impacts the sport through its influence on social justice and grounds of intersecting identities and power relations (Bandy, 2016). Some sports are regarded as being a male-only domain and as such, females may not take part in them. The impact of culture looks at cultural diversifications of the world and the need to interact harmoniously with others. As Bandy (2016) puts it, professional sportspersons should be culturally competent with an ability to work with and compete against people from diverse cultures. Cultural and ethnic issues have led to an expansion of the sports industry, steering it to a commercialized and globalized affair. Managers of clubs and leagues and the sponsors of the sport have searched across cultural boundaries in search of ‘talent’ that is believed to be found in people of this or that lineage. As such, the world has become one small village where all people interact and compete with a common interest (Long et al., 2017). Race and social class status also impact the sports industry from the perspective of discrimination against one social class or the other and even racial and ethnic discriminations.
The information in these topics has significantly impacted my awareness of the significance of sport to human life. It reveals the necessity of being culturally competent and being able to work and interact comfortably with all people in the world (Long et al., 2017). This knowledge emphasizes the awareness that the world is a ‘village’ and that no country is too far from the other as to bar any global interactions.
In conclusion, sport moved from being a community event to becoming a commercialized and globalized affair. Many issues have influenced the development of sport up to where it is currently. Cultural and ethnic issues, gender and socioeconomic classes have significantly impacted on the sports industry (Bandy, 2016). However, despite all these, the sports industry is steadily growing by the day with its membership board attracting international participation.
References
Bandy, S. J. (2016). Gender and the ‘cultural turn’in the study of sport and physical cultures. Sport in Society , 19 (5), 726-735.
Giulianotti, R., & Numerato, D. (2018). Global sport and consumer culture: An introduction. Journal of Consumer Culture , 18 (2), 229-240.
Long, J., Fletcher, T., & Watson, B. (Eds.). (2017). Sport, leisure and social justice . Taylor & Francis.
