Social Sciences in Sport

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).

Understanding Media: Core Concepts

As noted earlier, one central factor in the emergence of media studies was the appreciation that the establishment of capitalism, industrialism, and formal state institutions under modernity brought an enormous capacity and drive to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication by sending messages, simultaneously if possible, to a vast cohort of dispersed recipients who would probably never meet or resemble each other. These units of communication are conceived as texts but are seen as being far more diverse than the traditional idea of a written work to be read in linear fashion (that is, line by line, left to right, and front page to last, as prescribed in Western, though not in all, protocols of literary training). A text here might be anything—a passage of song, for example, or a moving visual image—that needs to be “read” (i.e., interpreted) in order to ascertain its meaning or meanings (Gillespie & Toynbee, 2006). Recognizing the plurality of meanings is central to media studies because it indicates that the world is not just “out there” waiting to be discovered but is actively constructed within human societies; thus the media and the texts they produce are inherently social (Holmes, 2005). In the case of watching, say, a soccer match on television, viewers experience an audiovisual text with various components to which they relate differently depending on which team they support. What might be regarded as a routine sports report in a newspaper can be analyzed for more than its literal meaning; one might consider, for example, how the reader is positioned by the journalist in terms of gender (e.g., the conventional implication that the reader is male) or the ways in which sport is related to wider issues of politics and society (e.g., the oft-seen curious mixture of demanding that politics and sport should be kept apart while actually linking them through assumptions about sport's positive functional role in promoting social solidarity) (Boyle & Haynes, 2009). Thus, mediated sport texts are seen as consisting of mini “sign systems” that need to be decoded in order to understand their meanings and significance.

Because mediated sport texts are produced in such profusion, it is also necessary not to treat them as unique, never-to-be-repeated communicative objects but to search for patterns that show them as being organized into highly predictable types known as genres. For example, a radio or television broadcast of a live sport event usually involves a build-up in which commentators and analysts anticipate what will occur, followed by description and discussion of the event while it occurs, and then a postmortem exploring what happened and why, what was good and bad, and what the result's implications are. Both broadcasters and audiences are familiar with these routines, which could be described as a pact between the media producer and the audience based on mutual expectations of what will be produced and consumed (Brookes, 2002; Rowe, 2004b). Indeed, sport program genres are usually so formulaic as to take on a quality of being eternal and natural. But what if the rules are broken and elements of surreal comedy are introduced or the usual forms of sporting language and tone are circumvented? One key function of media studies, then, is not only to identify the conventional ways in which the media render the world to audiences but also to denaturalize the conventional texts and genres that almost become part of the cultural “furniture.”

Questioning the innocence of everyday popular media culture in sport (e.g., match reports, live commentary, still photographs, action sequences, and player profiles) demands an interrogation of, to invoke the influential concept brought to the field by Barthes in 1957, its mythologies. In media studies, as in other areas of critical academic inquiry, myths (the building blocks of full-blown mythologies) can mean common (though not universally held) untruths and misapprehensions (Watson, 1998)—for example, that watching a particular television program involving violence will cause all children instantly to imitate what they have seen, or that only women watch and enjoy daytime soap operas. But media myths are more than just the products of prejudice and ignorance—they are integral to turning confusing and contradictory aspects of the world into a largely unquestioned common sense (Hall, 1997). Thus, a night's viewing of prime-time television might represent white people as the authoritative commentators in news and current affairs and as the heroes and heroines of drama programs, whereas nonwhite people might be presented as the problems being commented on and the villains that the white protagonists have to kill or capture. On the basis of such media representations (H. Gray, 2004), more extensive readings of the world—mythologies—might be favored, such as that the world relies on inherently law-abiding white people to control nonwhite people who have an inherent potential to be criminally destructive, apart from those who are willing to act in a support role for their white superiors in dealing with their nonwhite peers.

In the light of such highly charged accounts of the world that posit some people and types as ranking above or below others, mythologies communicated through the media (though not entirely created by them) are manifested as ideologies—that is, they have tangible political and social consequences that encourage (without entirely determining) acceptance of values, attitudes, and actions that tend to support (consciously or unconsciously) the interests of those who are already in power and who already have the media at their disposal. In an example from the world's biggest sport media moment, the entrance of the athletes into the arena at the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games is communicated to the world by the principal Olympic broadcaster (which, for several decades, has been the U.S. media corporation NBC). This “feed” (a revealing term in itself) structures the television experience for the rest of the world, while enabling television commentary on the event to be customized by countries that can insert their own commentary or, if they lack the requisite resources, carry commentary provided by another country (Moragas Spà, Rivenburgh, & Larson, 1995). The media representation of the event, therefore, tends to reflect the structure of power in the world at large through the world of sport (Tomlinson & Young, 2006)—for example, national teams that are smaller and less internationally prominent are likely to receive little attention. For obvious reasons, countries and their broadcasters privilege their own national interests, and dominant nations are prone to represent others, especially “minor” world and sport powers, as incidental, less important, and exotic—or barely to mention them at all. Such familiar media routines, drawing on a seemingly ordinary world order, carry over into the world of politics through mythologies and ideologies that are at their most effective when they are accepted unconsciously and in areas of culture that claim to be nonpolitical. Thus, media studies is above all concerned with the politics of representation in any context, from nightly news programs to situation comedies, from televised soccer matches to children's cartoons. There exists a range of explicit or implied sociocultural theories (i.e., systematic, generalizable propositions about the world, and in particular the relationship between cause and effect) that requires closer attention.

A Sociological Account of Sport: Critical Findings

Any study of sport that is not a study of the society in which that sport is located is a study performed out of context. In order to make sense of society—and how sport both reflects and reinforces societal structures and subcultures—one must bring to bear theoretical insight and empirical inquiry of the kind described in this chapter. The facts about sport and society do not speak for themselves, and sociological theories help us both make sense of our observations and develop analysis and explanations for the patterns we observe. The interplay between theory and evidence lies at the heart of the sociological imagination, which seeks to make sense of history, biography, and social structures (Sugden & Tomlinson, 2002). Hence, the study of sport sheds light both on the subcultures of particular sports and on the society in which they are located. Through the seemingly mundane and unserious aspects of sport, the sociologist can see serious aspects of society and the human condition.

This power can be illustrated with reference to the role and significance of champions in sport. What is it to be a sporting champion, and why do champions mean so much to people in various cultures and civilizations, both Western and non-Western? A champion usually refers to someone who is the first among all contestants or competitors, and in this regard the term refers to the ability of an individual or team to win a contest. Yet the origin of the word, in English, indicates a different usage and offers a clue to why champions are so much more important to us than their sheer ability to win and why people attach such meaning to them. The word's first usage emerged in the context of the medieval tournament—where the warrior would act as a champion of others and would defend, or champion, a cause (Hughson, 2009). Athletes, then, are not simply champions of their sport but also of their local community, nation, and, sometimes, humanity as a whole. One example is the American boxer Muhammad Ali. A champion is said to possess special gifts and exude a certain charisma: He or she performs a kind of miracle by achieving the seemingly impossible. Athletes become modern heroes—symbolic representations of contemporary cultural values and who some people would wish to be. Champions are talented individuals, but as heroes they are people whose lives tell stories to fellow citizens and to people from other nations (Huizinga, 1955).

People from diverse cultures appreciate excellence and desire to achieve it or at least share in it. Champions, by representing communities or nations, make people vicariously fulfilled human beings. They are framed as modern heroes because sport has become a forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. That is, modern sport is viewed by some sociologists as a form of surrogate religion and popular theater in which occurs the communal discovery of who people think they are. Sport stadiums are contemporary venues in which champions are observed by spectators or watched by viewers: People thus experience sacred moments of exciting significance while seemingly leaving behind the profaneness of ordinary life. In this sense, society needs its champions as heroes. They perform the manifest function of achieving sporting success for themselves and their local community and nation. But they also perform a more latent role: They are meant to embody the elements that a society values most. As idealized creations, they provide inspiration, motivation, direction, and meaning for people's lives. Champions as heroes act to unify a society, bringing people together with a common sense of purpose and values. That is how modern sport developed. Pioneers in the 19th century linked sport to Western muscular Christianity in terms of unselfishness, self-restraint, fairness, gentlemanliness, and moral excellence. This in itself supplemented traditional notions of chivalry such as honor, decency, courage, and loyalty. These qualities are some of the very attributes associated with what people describe as “true” champions. Yet, reality also intrudes into this setting.

That is, threats exist to the manifest and latent functions of champions as heroes. These threats stem from issues associated with authenticity and integrity. The status of the champion relies upon the authenticity of the contest; if the contest is tarnished by corruption, cheating, drug taking, or betting scandals, then the hero is diminished in our eyes. The contest is no longer either a mutual quest for excellence or society's forum in which communal self-revelation occurs. Authenticity is also lost when a sport becomes too make-believe, is rigged, or becomes too predictable. Professional wrestling may produce so-called champions, but they are not taken seriously, and they are not heroes. In addition, if the champion represents a state system that the people do not support, then their respect is withheld; alternatively, athletes can become signs of resistance and offer glimpses of a different social system or different social values (Dyck, 2000).

A champion can, as hero, embody the elements that a society holds most dear, but his or her integrity can be undermined in several ways. Champions may be flawed geniuses—either because they suffer from hubris and feel they need not dedicate themselves to the required level and intensity of preparation and performance or because their private lives intrude on their status as heroes. Whatever the cause, society's idealized image of them as athletes can be shattered; the cyclist Lance Armstrong is a case in point. In addition, our champion may be less a hero and more a celebrity—famous but not heroic. David Beckham's media representation may be seen in this light, though even here his status appears to oscillate between celebrity and hero. In such a case, fame is short lived, and the athlete fails one of the tests of a true champion as hero—the test of time. Indeed, a celebrity sport star can be famous yet be neither a champion nor a hero, and thus be easily forgotten. In order to understand why champions mean so much and what effect they have, the role that sport plays in society has to be considered (Horne, Tomlinson, Whannel, & Woodward, 2012). This is where sociological theory helps and why insights from this subdiscipline are crucial to developing a rich understanding of sport and society (Coakley, 2004; Tomlinson, 2005, 2007).

Distributing Resources:
Elite Sport and Mega-Events

The case of elite sport investment is slightly different. Here, I consider the political rationale for investing in elite sport and mega-events, bearing in mind that state investment is a finite resource. Sums invested in elite sport are not invested elsewhere, so the reasoning behind decisions about how to distribute resources is highly political (see Houlihan & Green, 2008).

Sport offers both an individual and a collective experience—something recognized by modern states that invest heavily in elite sport in order to engender a so-called feel-good factor among citizens that is said to exist in the collective experience of sporting events (Department for Culture, Media, and Sport/Strategy Unit, 2002). Riordan (1999) rightly points to the nation-building potential of sport when he suggests that sport extends and unites wider sections of the population than probably any other social activity. It is easily understood and enjoyed, cutting across social, economic, educational, ethnic, religious and language barriers. It permits some emotional release (reasonably) safely, it can be relatively cheap and it is easily adapted to support educational, health and social-welfare objectives. (pp. 49-50)

In addition to this inward-looking benefit from elite sport success, the outward-looking concept of international prestige is often invoked as part of the justificatory discourse for spending. Many states seek to use sport externally to promote the country's image, gain prestige, and even exert influence over other states (so-called soft power; see Nye, 1990; Grix & Houlihan, 2013; Grix, 2013a). Prestige has long been recognized by scholars as an “indispensable source of power” in international relations (Reinhold Niebuhr, cited in Kim, 2004, p. 40), one that works alongside traditional material forces of power such as guns and bombs. Sport is clearly part of a nation's package of measures available to improve and project its image abroad; success at (elite) sport is easily recognizable to other states, and it appears that in order to be considered a leading nation a state needs to produce internationally competitive athletes and teams (see Strenk, 1979). Internally, states seek to bind individuals around these collective, national experiences of sport success and engender both the feel-good factor and a cohesive identity akin to that of Benedict Anderson's “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1983; Nye, 1990).

The literature on elite sport development (ESD) is relatively new, and studies inquiring into why countries continue to invest heavily in supporting elite sport and hosting mega-events are few and far between in political science (early literature includes Green & Oakley, 2001; Green & Houlihan, 2005; Green, 2007b; Houlihan & Green, 2008; Grix & Carmichael, 2012). This is baffling, for if politics is in part about the struggle for resources and an analysis of who gets what, when, and how, then posing the unanswered question of why governments invest so much public money into elite sport ought to be second nature to students of the discipline. We ought to question both the uncritical acceptance of millions of dollars being pumped into elite sport and the concurrent discourse surrounding such investment that takes it as a given.

This is particularly the case in light of the fact that the rationales for state investment in elite sport (international prestige, identity formation) are not confined to advanced capitalist states. So-called emerging states are increasingly interested in using sport to accelerate their entry into the developed world. Take, for example, India's—and Delhi's—recent staging of the problematic Commonwealth Games in 2010. This could certainly be read as an attempt by a developing country to announce to the world that it has finally arrived. It appears that for developing countries the ability to stage a mega-sporting event is a rite of passage into the developed world. Unfortunately, a series of setbacks, collapsing infrastructure, environmental factors (including snakes and monkeys), and corruption appear to have scuppered India's ambition of holding an Olympics in the near future (“IOC Chief,” 2010). Indeed, students of politics can find a veritable Aladdin's cave in such an event as the Delhi Games, the political context within which it took place, the political ambitions of the host nation, and the struggle for interests, resources, and influence that surrounded its staging. Allegations of bribery, backhanders (i.e., under-the-table payments), and crooked politicians were commonplace, and the question remains unanswered of how India could invest billions of dollars in a sporting event when a large part of its population—who did not get to see, use, or benefit from the event—has no access to clean running water (Burke, 2010).

Cross-country and cross-regime comparisons can help us understand similarities and differences between states and their instrumental uses of sport. We can also compare across time; for example, an analysis of both capitalist states and the authoritarian socialist East Germany and (consumer-)communist China reveals parallels in the key characteristics of elite sport systems and the rationales behind them (Dennis & Grix, 2012). Not only are the key characteristics of the sport models similar (i.e., sport science, talent identification, professional coaching, funding for full-time athletes), but also all regime types appear to strive for international prestige on the back of elite sport success. Most, albeit to differing degrees, attempt to use sport to generate pride in their nation (the elusive feel-good factor). Such comparisons of the rationale behind elite sport investment reveal that, despite local variations and differences, national models of sport could be said to be (generally) moving toward convergence (Houlihan & Green, 2008; Dennis & Grix, 2012).