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Introduction to Media
Relations in Sport
wo seminal events in the history of sports television occurred within just weeks of
each other in 1980.
In February, no one expected a team of American college kids to challenge the Soviet
hockey machine, at that time the dominant team in the world. Just before the Olympic
Games opened, the Soviets had humiliated the U.S. team, 10-3, in an exhibition game
in New York. Somehow, the American team pulled itself together and on February 22
found itself in a rematch with the Soviets in the semifinal round of the Olympics. Led
by coach Herb Brooks, who told them before the game that “the moment is yours,”
team USA stunned the Soviet Union, 4-3, in a game that may rank as the greatest upset
in Olympic history. Two days later, the Americans captured the gold medal with a win
over Finland. “I still can’t believe this happened,” said captain Mike Eruzione, who
scored the winning goal against the Soviets (Shapiro, 1980).
On May 16, a precocious 20-year-old named Earvin “Magic” Johnson led the Los
Angeles Lakers to a clinching victory over Philadelphia in Game Six of the NBA Finals.
With Kareem Abdul-Jabbar out with an injury, Magic played all five positions for his
team, scored 42 points, collected 15 rebounds, and dished out seven assists. The 123107 win for the Lakers may have been the greatest game Magic ever played. “I don’t
even know if Kareem could have done things Magic did tonight,” Julius Erving of the
76ers said after the game (“Sports now,” 2011).
Magic’s dominating performance and the unexpected success of the U.S. Olympic
hockey team share more than drama and athletic excellence. Incredibly, neither game
was shown live to U.S. television audiences. In the case of the NBA Finals, the league
had gone through a difficult period in the 1970s with declining interest and revenues.
CBS had rights to the games, but at several times from 1973 to 1981 showed the Finals
on a tape-delayed basis. “Think about that,” wrote Jack McCallum in Sports Illustrated.
“The NBA’s premier event consigned to late-night TV, after most viewers had watched
their sitcoms and gone to bed. Cable was in its infancy, and the Internet was little more
than a dream” (2005, para. 4).
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Chapter One
The hockey game was played on a Friday afternoon and ABC, which had the Olympic broadcast rights at the time, wanted a large prime-time audience. Pressure mounted
on ABC in the days before the game to show it live, but the network could not get permission to do so. So, ABC tape-delayed the game for broadcast that night. When the
hockey game began on television—roughly three hours before viewers heard Al Michaels make his historic call, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”—only a few thousand
people actually knew who had won. Hockey writer Dan David wrote:
In 1980, you could still put a game on tape delay and assume that only a relatively
small portion of the audience would know the result in advance. . . . ESPN was in
its infancy and most people didn’t get it on their cable systems. CNN did not exist yet and there was no such thing as 24-hour sports talk radio. You had to be an
absolute newshound or have a friend in the know that Friday night to be aware of
the final score before watching the game on TV. (2010, para. 16–17)
To tape-delay either event in 2014 would be unthinkable, in part because of the technology, economics, and culture that have drastically changed sport communication in
the intervening years. Even if the networks wanted to protect their prime-time lineups,
the games would likely be televised live. Both the NBA and NHL, for example, do this
during their playoff seasons by shifting the live telecasts of the games to sports-specific
cable or satellite channels such as ESPN or the NBC Sports Network. In the unlikely
event of absolutely no live transmission of the games, information could still get out
through real-time tweeting and blogging. Fans at the games could take pictures or video
of the action and post it immediately to sites such as YouTube, Flickr, or Tumblr. During and after the game, audiences could discuss the action through a series of interconnected and interactive conversations across multiple Internet platforms. “In the world
that existed on Feb. 22, 1980,” wrote David, “a miracle wasn’t just the outcome of a
hockey game. It was also the notion that there could be a world with mobile phones, instant access to information, and the comfort of knowing that no important game might
ever be seen for the first time on tape” (2010, para. 29).
THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPORTS COMMUNICATION MODEL
To fully understand how things have changed so drastically requires a closer look at how
we define media relations in sport. As the phrase would suggest, there are three key
components—media, sport, and how the various parts of the sport communication
process relate to one another. That relationship has changed significantly over the years.
The Old Model (1850s–1980s)
There is no precise time to date the emergence of mass media coverage of sports in the
US. According to Enriquez (2002), one of the earliest known sports stories was a description of a prize fight that appeared in a Boston newspaper in 1733. Media coverage
of sports was fairly sporadic until the middle of the 19th century. Sowell (2008) argues
that the birth of national sports coverage began in 1849 when the telegraph was first
used to help cover a championship boxing match, and partly for that reason we’ll use
Introduction to Media Relations in Sport
3
1850 as the starting point for the model. By that time the forces that helped create the
mass audiences needed for mediated sports coverage—industrialization, urbanization,
and the growth of education—were already under way.
The media during this time were characterized by the traditional mass media that
still exist today: first newspapers and magazines, followed by radio and then television.
These outlets had exclusive access to the athletes, games, events, and news related to
sport. They would take this content and distribute it to large mass audiences through
their distinct media. In return, the athletes and events received the important publicity
they needed for economic growth and survival. Even as far back as 1950, long-time
baseball manager Connie Mack (1950) observed, “How did baseball develop from the
sandlots to the huge stadiums? From a few hundred spectators to the millions in attendance today? My answer is: through the gigantic force of publicity. The professional
sporting world was created and is being kept alive by the services extended the press.”
That publicity made both sports and the media unbelievably rich. As the media
helped the sports become more popular, the rights to distribute the content became
more valuable, and the fees sports and leagues charged to distribute their product skyrocketed. For example, in 1960 CBS paid $394,000 for the rights to televise the Summer Olympic Games in Rome. NBC acquired the rights to the Olympic Games in
2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 for $4.4 billion (McCarthy, 2011). In 1962, the NFL sold
the rights to televise its games
to CBS for $4.65 million. The
league’s current broadcast contract, which includes CBS, FOX,
NBC, ESPN, DirecTV’s “Sunday Ticket,” and Westwood Radio, is worth $27 billion (Badenhausen, 2011). Television rights
fees for the NFL have increased
10,000% since 1970, which reflects the tremendous audience
interest in NFL programming.
The 30 seconds of commercial
time in the Super Bowl that cost
$239,000 in 1967 went for
nearly $4 million in 2013 (de
Moraes, 2013).
All that money coming in
drastically increased the economic power and prestige of
sport organizations and athletes.
TV rights fees afford networks such as CBS great
While the effect of free agency
control of the distribution of content for events
such as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. cannot be discounted, it has
been primarily the infusion of
(Courtesy of George Mason Athletics/John Aronson)
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Chapter One
media dollars that have enriched athletes beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. In 1969 the
average Major League Baseball salary was $24,909. By 1990 the figure had risen to
$578,000 and in 2006 it was $3.2 million (“Average salary,” 2012). Forbes magazine estimates that 65 professional athletes are now making more than $20 million per year,
led by the $85 million earned by boxer Floyd Mayweather (“The worlds,” 2012).
For its investment, the media had almost total control in shaping the presentation
and image of the content providers. While the number of media outlets was still fairly
small, the publicity generated by the media was typically positive. Sports reporters could
develop relationships with athletes and coaches that often developed into friendships.
As a result, reporters would be reluctant to publish material that would damage the athlete’s reputation. There is a story, possibly apocryphal, of reporters covering Babe Ruth
during the baseball star’s height of popularity in the 1920s. While the team was riding
the train between cities Ruth ran through one of the cars stark naked. Right behind
Ruth was a similarly naked woman chasing him with a knife. One reporter who witnessed the scene turned to another and said, “It’s a good thing we didn’t see that; otherwise we’d have to report on it” (Braine, 1985).
This symbiotic relationship worked well for sports and media, but in many ways limited the enjoyment of the audience. The media completely controlled the content in
terms of its amount, scheduling, and distribution. McCombs and Shaw (1972) called
this the agenda-setting function of the media—their ability to exert a significant influence
on public perception through the control, filtering, and shaping of media content. For
example, the three New York City baseball clubs banned live radio broadcasts of their
games for five years in the 1930s because they were concerned the broadcasts would hurt
attendance. More recently, television networks have scheduled event times to maximize
potential profit, even if it inconveniences a large portion of the viewing audience. World
Series games, even those on weekends, have shifted from daytime to much later at night,
in some cases not ending until after midnight in the Eastern time zone. Bear Bryant, the
legendary former football coach at Alabama, once commented, “You folks (the networks)
are paying us a lot of money to put this game on television. If you want us to start at two
in the morning, then that’s when we’ll tee it up” (Patton, 1984).
Technology was also a limiting factor for sports audiences for several reasons. The
distribution of sports content has depended on technology such as radio and television
airwaves, and broadcast receivers. During the primitive stages of development for these
technologies the quality of sports content often suffered. Recalling the early days of
sports on radio in the 1920s, pioneer sportscaster Harold Arlin remembers, “Sometimes
the transmitter worked and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes the crowd noise would
drown us out and sometimes it wouldn’t. And quite frankly, we didn’t know what the
reaction would be; if we’d be talking in a total vacuum or whether somebody would
hear us” (as cited in Schultz, 2001, p. 2). Television went through similar growing
pains. Long-time football director Harry Coyle remembers that “the equipment always
kept breaking down. There were always hot smoldering irons laying around for repairs.
You could recognize a television guy by the burn marks all over his clothes from those
irons” (as cited in Schultz, 2001, p. 9).
Introduction to Media Relations in Sport
5
Table 1.1. The Growth of Television Technology
Some important advances over the years in terms of televising live sports. The latest
innovation is 3D broadcasting, which requires special receivers and viewing glasses.
Year
Video
innovations
Audio
innovations
Graphic
innovations
1939
2 cameras; no zoom
or replays possible
1 microphone for
announcer
No graphics
1944
3 cameras; no zoom
or replays possible
1 microphone for
announcer
No graphics
1953
4 cameras; no zoom
or replays possible
Microphone for
crowd noise added
One monochrome line
of graphics
1957
5 cameras; one
added in centerfield
2 microphones;
analyst added
Two lines of graphics possible
1961
5 cameras; limited
zoom and replay
2 microphones
Two lines of graphics possible
1969
5 cameras; color now
standard
2 microphones;
improved audio
Electronic graphics introduced
1974
7 cameras; split-screen
and chromakey used
Audio still mono
Electronic graphics
1985
8 cameras; super
slo-mo introduced
Mono
Computer-generated graphics
with multiple colors
2000
10 cameras; digital
technology
Stereo surround;
wireless mics
Computer-generated
2010s
10+ cameras; digital
technology. 3D cameras
and reception
Stereo surround
and digital audio
Interactive web services that
allow viewer to participate in
the game experience
The technology obviously improved, but remember that during this time sports content providers had total control over distribution. The only place to get the content was
from the established mass media, which determined all facets of distribution, including
how much, when, and where. Even as sports started to become extremely popular on
television in the 1950s there was a limit on how much content could be provided by the
three major networks at the time. And into the early 1980s television networks offered
no more than one or two games per week, no matter if it was professional football,
baseball, basketball, hockey, or college sports. In a broadcast sense, audiences were typically restricted to getting games or information for a few hours on the weekends, which
provided great depth, but not much frequency. Fans had the opposite problem with
print outlets like newspapers. The information came out daily, but generally not in
great depth.
If we consider sport communication at this time as a model, it would look something like what we see in Figure 1.1. You can see lines going from the mass media to
Chapter One
6
Sports
Content
Athletes
Distribution
Mass
Sports
Audience
Mass
Media
Organizations
Events/Games
News
Publicity
Feedback
Figure 1.1. Historic model of sports-media-audience communication, 1850s–1980s.
mass sports audiences, which represents the power and control these media had in the
distribution of sports content. The fainter dashed line going back from audiences to the
media represents a limited amount of feedback and participation. In almost every sense
of the word, sports audiences during this time were passive. They were participants in
the communication process only to the extent that they watched, read, or listened to
the content distributed by the mass media. Otherwise, sports audiences had very little
input other than the occasional letter to the editor in the newspaper or an appearance
on sports talk radio, and sports radio was very limited. The format didn’t appear until
the 1970s and sports talk truly didn’t catch on until the late 1980s when WFAN in
New York became the first all-sports talk radio station in the country (Eisenstock,
2001). Thus, not only could audiences not really talk with the content providers, but
they also had a hard time connecting with each other. In many respects, sports
audiences were isolated and powerless.
As a result, sports content providers did not look at the audience as comprised of distinct individual units, but rather as a homogenous whole. They were a mass audience
defined by sheer size. For print outlets it meant circulation and for broadcasters it
meant ratings, but in both cases the bigger the better. Content providers wanted those
big audiences so they could get more advertising dollars. Even today, the economic system is still largely based on this simple principle; it just worked better in the old days
because technology limited the amount of sports programming and content providers
had relatively captive audiences.
Mass also meant captive. Audiences tended to congregate around the same type of
content simply because they didn’t really have anyplace else to go; because of limits in
technology there wasn’t much choice in programming. Events like Major League Baseball’s Game of the Week and the NFL’s Monday Night Football became extremely popular
in part because they had no real sports competition. When you consider the mostwatched programs of all-time, the top five are all recent Super Bowls (see Chapter 3).
That’s no surprise, because more people are watching television today than ever before.
But when you look at the highest-rated programs in terms of percentage of the audience
watching, most of the shows on the list are from the 1980s or earlier. The last episode
of M*A*S*H, which aired in 1983, had an audience of more than 77% of all people
watching television that night. By contrast, today’s top-rated shows get a share percentage of 20–25% (“Nielsen television,” 2009).
Introduction to Media Relations in Sport
7
The New Model (1990s–Present)
Through the 1970s the sports distribution system remained much as it had since the
advent of television—radio and the three major television networks distributed the majority of live sports programming, while delayed coverage of those events was handled
by television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. These mass media had a monopoly in
terms of agenda setting and gate keeping; they decided all facets of distribution, including the what, when, and how.
The first cracks in this system began showing in the 1970s through the rise of pay cable television. Home Box Office (HBO) began programming in 1972 relying first on a
network of microwave relays then ultimately satellites. It was satellite technology that in
1975 allowed HBO to show its subscribers a live transmission of the heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier from Manila; the broadcast networks had to wait for taped copies of the bout before they could show the fight (“Wired,
zapped,” 2009).
Thus, it was the growth of technology that signaled a new era in sports content distribution, especially live satellite transmission. Other important advances included the
development of fiber optic cables, which could carry 65,000 times more information
than conventional copper wires, and home video recording. In 1977, RCA introduced a
VHS version of the video cassette recorder, which soon came to dominate the market
(“Wired, zapped,” 2009). In the following years, breakthroughs in technology would
Some of the many magazine options for niche sports audiences. (Courtesy of Brad Schultz)
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Chapter One
introduce into American homes the personal computer, Internet communication, home
satellite reception, and digital transmission.
These new technologies had two immediate impacts for sport communication—they
weakened the power of the traditional mass media and they empowered the sports audiences as never before. The “Thrilla in Manila” between Ali and Frazier showed that
the networks no longer had exclusive control over sports content. That control continued to fragment in succeeding years with the growth of new regional and specialized
content providers. When ABC owned exclusive rights to televise almost all college football games, the NCAA limited teams to six appearances over two years. Some of the bigtime programs filed a lawsuit and in 1984 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such a
plan violated anti-trust laws (Hiestand, 2004). Today, there are literally dozens of national and regional networks that televise college football, increasing the viewing
options for the sports audience.
The growth of college football on television is just one example of how the audience
has much more choice in consumption. In addition to the television offerings, fans
could also listen to the games through several Internet and satellite radio services. In
some cases, games not available on television could be viewed via live streaming on the
Internet. And it’s not just college football. During a typical week, nearly 645 hours of
sports-related content is available across a multitude of broadcast and cable outlets
(Brown & Bryant, 2006).
These multiple consumption options caused the sports audience to fragment into
smaller niche audiences. Where once there was one mass audience that received the
same content from a single provider, technology had created literally hundreds of audiences based on content interest. Under the old model, someone might be labeled as a
“college football fan” and get one football game a week on national television. That
same person might read about the sport in the local paper and subscribe to a general
interest magazine like Sports Illustrated.
Today, that same fan could more precisely be called a “Big Ten football fan” or “University of Iowa football fan” because there is specialized content devoted to those niche
topics. He or she might visit or subscribe to specialized Internet sites or magazines that
focus on Big Ten football. This same person might look at the college football television
schedule and decide not to watch any of the games, but instead take advantage of games
made available over the Internet or through the conference’s Big Ten Network (BTN).
The success of BTN is an example of how sport communication has changed in the
new model. BTN was created in 2007 as a platform for Big Ten sports of all kinds, with
football and basketball considered the main attractions. But critics wondered how BTN
would fill its ambitious 24/7 programming schedule having to televise only those games
the major networks didn’t want. Several years later, BTN is thriving with a dozen primetime football games and more than 100 basketball games scheduled each season. The
network also devotes plenty of time to such non-revenue sports as baseball, field hockey,
ice hockey, softball, and volleyball. The 25-year deal between BTN and Fox has an
estimated value of $2.8 billion, meaning that each year individual schools in the conference pull in around $7.2 million from the network (Korman, 2013).
Introduction to Media Relations in Sport
9
“Now you can see that the network has become ingrained in the sports television
landscape,” said Northwestern University’s Senior Associate Athletic Director John
Mack (Matter, 2010, para. 24). Other conferences and schools have taken notice. In
2011, the University of Texas, with the largest athletic budget of any school in the
country, debuted the Longhorn Network, a joint venture with ESPN that will give
Texas $300 million over the course of the 20-year contract. And in 2013, the Southeastern Conference, considered the king of college sports, announced a 20-year partnership
with ESPN for creation of an SEC Network set to begin in August 2014. The chase for
networks and television dollars has been instrumental in the recent rush of NCAA conference realignment, and in general, teams that have switched their affiliation have
increased revenues (and costs) over those that stayed put (Dosh, 2012).
It’s important to remember that the demand for sports content did not suddenly appear overnight. People didn’t wake up one day and decide they wanted to see two dozen
college football games on Saturday instead of one. The demand has always been there;
it’s just recently that technology has been able to meet that demand through such developments as digital transmission, home satellite reception, and Internet streaming. The
Big Ten, the NFL, the NHL, and other organizations that now have their own sports
networks have simply taken advantage of new technologies and economic opportunities
that have allowed them to expand their product. In the case of college football and the
Big Ten, the conference signs an agreement that gives the major networks (in this case,
ABC) the first choice of what game that network wants to broadcast on a given Saturday. ABC pays the Big Ten for those rights, which are considered “first-tier” revenues.
Up until the 1980s, that was the only money involved because the major networks were
the only distribution channels available.
Today, the Big Ten can also sell its “second-tier” rights for games ABC doesn’t want.
These are the games seen on ESPN and its sister networks. Then, the conference has
“third-tier” revenue from the games on its own BTN. It’s a very simple formula in
which everyone seems to be a winner—people want to see the games, the technology
makes it possible, and the money increases almost exponentially.
Providers also found that customers would pay extra fees for this content when it was
not available on broadcast networks. Technology made possible the birth and growth of
subscription services such as MLB’s “Extra Innings” and the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket.”
Customers pay an additional fee to receive the games they want to see through cable or
satellite channels, which can be extremely lucrative. The NFL “Sunday Ticket” package
has more than 20 million subscribers each paying around $200 (Van Riper, 2013). If
you do the math, those are net revenues of $4 billion for DirecTV, which pays the NFL
$1 billion per year for exclusive rights to the “Sunday Ticket” package). In a similar way,
sports leagues are using satellite radio to reach consumers. In addition to dozens of specialized sports channels, Sirius XM satellite radio currently has an 11-year deal worth
$650 million to carry Major League Baseball games (Walker, 2009).
But audiences are getting more out of the process than just extra programming and
content. They are now able to communicate directly with athletes, journalists, and each
other. New broadcast technologies such as the Internet and social media such as Face-
10
Chapter One
book and Twitter have changed the nature of athlete-media interaction, allowing athletes to bypass the traditional media such as newspapers and television
and take their message directly to fans.
In 2013, the website tweeting-athletes
.com reported that soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo had 18 million followers
on Twitter, while another soccer player,
Kaka, had 15.2 million. Such technology is now interactive and allows athletes to communicate directly with fans,
meaning they have the potential to
“change the athlete/fan interaction forever” (Gregory, 2009, para. 24). When
former NBA player Shaquille O’Neal reThe popularity of social media and tech- tired in 2011, he first made the annology has led to a revised communica- nouncement through social media. “He
tion model. (Courtesy of Flickr/Jason A. Howie)
had full control of when, where and
how he wanted to make that announcement,” said Amy Jo Martin, a social media consultant who works with athletes. “No press releases needed. It was about him using this
influence he had built to communicate directly with his fans” (Ortiz, 2011, para. 20).
Platforms such as blogs, mobile television, and social media have become the new
frontier for content providers looking to find audiences. In 2013, the NCAA announced
that live video streaming of the men’s basketball tournament—“March Madness”—set
a record with 14 million hours of consumption—an increase of 168% from the previous year (Reynolds, 2013). “There is tremendous growth in live streaming sports,” said
Jason Kint, senior vice president and general manager of CBSSports.com. “It is not cannibalizing television audiences but providing dynamic opportunity across platforms”
(Miller, 2008, para. 2). There may be even greater growth for mobile phone and tablet
content. In 2013 alone, mobile phone sports viewing expanded 309%, while tablet
consumption was up 194% (Reynolds, 2013).
So when we speak of greater audience empowerment we can understand it partially
in terms of better technology and more content offerings. The other part of that empowerment is that audiences have become actual participants in the mediated sport
communication process, and not just in the limited sense of providing feedback to the
established media outlets. Not only are audience members much more connected to
each other, they are now starting to challenge the mainstream media in terms of creating and distributing their own content.
One part of participation is the interconnectivity fans now enjoy with athletes, journalists, and each other. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become
common tools for fans to comment on their favorite sports stories, athletes, or breaking
news. A variety of message board and fan outlets also exist in cyberspace—some run by