Scholarly Research and the Future of Body Aesthetics in the Sport Marketing Literature

Academy of Marketing Science Review,  2008  by S, George,  Konstantinakos, Pantelis D

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For Weiss in modern societies there is no other social subsystem that gives so many people, regardless of their religion, gender, age or social or educational level, access to a system of social validation and acknowledgement by others. Arguably the sports media are both aware and exploit such social validation and the feelings sports performances can and do engender in those who watch and follow a sport or a particular event - they are often involved personally with these processes as supporters/sports watchers themselves.

In the UK, the early 1990s and the emergence of a now major TV network has had a huge impact on the TV coverage of a range of sports and the utilization of increasingly sophisticated production values. It could be argued that this sea change in presentation was and is not confined to football but has extended to include a complete revision of the ways in which sports and sportspeople are depicted across the full range of media forms. The commitment made by the (then) new TV sports provider Sky to raise such standards concerning their presentation of the English football's Premier League not only enhanced the league's status in its early days but '...forced a reaction by the other media who were fearful of being left by the wayside. Commercial radio and the tabloids in particular responded in a manner, which brought a quantum leap in the perceived importance of football. Under Sky, the game blossomed from being merely a 90-minute action spectacle, into an art form worthy of discussion and analysis. Sport as drama. Sport as soap opera. If it was always the most important sport in the country, it was now the second, third and fourth most important sport as well.' (Fynn and Davidson 1996, p.217)

It is now a drama played out and marketed through the lives, performances, personalities and bodies of sportsmen and women. For Cashmore (2000), there is a strong link between the sports body and the ideal vision of the body portrayed within commodity culture. Given that the sporting body can be (at the highest levels of a high profile sport) a commodified body with elite athletes literally being bought and sold by the clubs they play for, whilst also commanding huge sums for endorsements.

Additionally here, as noted with the example of Michael Vaughan, those who gain pre-eminence within their sport will now be used to advertise it. For TV companies and sports sponsors, it is clearly desirable, if not imperative that the ambassadors for those sports possess a physique that can operate as a vehicle for marketing as well as performative purposes.

The implications within an organizational setting have been profound (especially within North America) as employees are implicitly held to account for their own body image and behaviors; going some way to explaining the 1990s incantation that everyone "wanted to be like Mike Jordan" As Helstein (2003) shows, through an analysis of the politics and production of desire within Nike advertising to women, how the organization through its association of knowledge power and truth has and continues to publicize and authorize a specific notion of who or what counts as a female athlete. This is manifest when an examination of the pairing of the themes of 'commitment', 'excellence' and 'emancipation' is made in relation to a specific set of Nike advertisements.