Hello All,

As a part of my final year inquiry project, I am researching the relationship between media and the sports industry? Basically my inquiry question is "Why does Media play such an important role in the professional sports industry". I just wanted to get some feedback from the MI community about the topic question and kick off a nice on-line discussion. Free free to drop your ideas.

To start off, some of the key connections between sports and media stem from commerce, globalization, and fanbase. Would you consider the technological development of things such as twitter and b enhancing our sports experience? How does politics play into sports and media coverage, for instance the black power movement during the 1968 olympics? These are just some ideas about the interaction between sports and media that I am researching on, but what I am trying to establish is the public's opinion on this matter and to get other's perspective as well.

I would like this to be an open ended discussion and I will appreciate any comments, advice, tips and guidance on the topic and research. Thanking you guys in advance.


Best Regards,

Rami
Level V Engineering and Society

prime example: analyze the leafs. i remember (duno about now) before their stats were garbage. lots of losses but the acc is always constantly packed. They make so much money even though they lose. Why? Huge fan base. Owned by teacher's pension (Afaik)

Interesting topic, but seems very large (I'm not sure how many pages you've got). Like someone mentioned, I would pick 1 team or 1 sport and use it as an example throughout the time frame. Make sure its an iconic team if you pick a team, and know who might be reading it .

Hey thanks for the great replies. I think I will definitely try to incorporate something along those lines. Basically i was trying to narrow down the relationship between sports and media into three main categories for my project:

-commerce - how mass media market drives profits (e.g Superbowl, Nike commercials, sponsorships, etc)
- globalizationn - bringing people closer and experience global events and forming national/global identities (Olympics, Yao Ming, World Cup, hockey gold medal)
- the human connection - the experience of following sports event and the thrill of it (e.g kids playing sports and imitating their role models, education and inspiration tool, fan base and support)

the project is around 20-30 pages (5000-6000 wrds). the three points are not set in stone and are not weighted equally per say in their level of importance. i just think this is a good starting point and have began reading several books on the topic itself.

In my opinion, as long the leafs are run by Maple Leaf Sports entertainment, the board of directors will treat the sports organization as a business. Regardless of wins or losses, as long as you have seats filled and revenue being generated, it does not matter much.