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KEY POINTS:
You don't have to look far to find the influence of the corporate dollar on those who follow sport these days. In town this week, for one show only, it's David Beckham - the Frankenstein lovechild of an "indivisible trinity" embracing sporting heroes, corporates and consumerism.
More than 15,000 Wellington schoolchildren flocked to see the celebrity footballer train yesterday. All week, fans have snapped up Beckham merchandise imported from the United States ranging from $135 jerseys to clocks, cups, pennants and key rings bearing his picture - or a mini cut-out for the desk at $20.
Meanwhile in England, the International Rugby Board has spent the week trying to resolve the growing conflict between "club" competitions bankrolled by corporates and broadcasters and international rugby. But rugby is an also-ran in Britain where the sporting media has been consumed with the England football team's failure to qualify for the European Championships.
England's demise has been blamed on the internationalisation of Premier League clubs backed by major corporations, leaving little room for English-born players.
In yachting, New Zealand's pursuit of the America's Cup hinges on taxpayer funding despite a sponsorship deal with an Arab airline.
And the only real contest in the recent cricket series between Australia and Sri Lanka was the stoush between the media and Cricket Australia over the copyright of images of logo-laden players.
Truth is, professional sport has become much bigger than a stage for talented athletes and a leisure focus for fans.
It has been described as the most important thing in the world, notes British academic Barry Smart, a keynote speaker at an international gathering of sociologists in Auckland next week.
In an increasingly global marketplace, sport's ability to unite people worldwide has been seized on by corporations and the media for its potential to enhance brand power and sell product. By the late-1990s, Nike founder and chairman Philip Knight commented that sport was at the heart of contemporary culture and increasingly defined "the culture of the world" Smart writes in a recent paper Not playing around: global capitalism, modern sport and consumer culture.
"Without doubt, the growth of a global sport network has been very closely articulated with the pursuit of economic interests and the promotion of consumer culture."
It's enough to make you feel for art critic Hamish Keith, whose TV series setting New Zealand art in its cultural context The Big Picture screens late on Sundays on TV One.
In a promotional interview, Keith linked the timeslot to the under-valuing of our art, history and culture compared to sport.
"Isn't it exciting we've run out of any sport that we can possibly be world champions in?" he said. "Does this mean sport will be relegated to 10.25 on a Sunday night and art will get the 6.45pm slot on all the news bulletins? I don't think so."
He's right - but a series linking our sporting and social history: now there's a prime time winner.
The link between sporting success and national identity can be overplayed but, be it boules or the Booker Prize, most New Zealanders gain pride from a win on the international stage - in a mouse-that-roared way. After a year which promised much reflected glory but delivered several over-hyped flops, it's worth considering why and how sport gained its lofty perch in society.
It's the public's own fault, to an extent: many people like sport with a passion. They identify with a team, or with particular players, and their wellbeing ebbs and flows with the players' fortunes. But this makes them vulnerable to commercial and media exploitation.
Smart quotes an analyst who described professional sport, the media and corporate sponsorship as constituting a "golden triangle" from which each of the parties derived substantial profits.
The hype can, of course, backfire. Smart was in Wellington after the All Blacks bowed out of the Rugby World Cup and "when the post-mortem began and stuff about psychotherapy for players, grief counselling, etc, was coming out in the press. I found that astonishing, totally out of perspective, and itself perhaps indicative of the pressure the players play under."
To understand this mass adulation, Smart says you have to place sport in the context of wider social, cultural and economic changes: communities have been disrupted, people are more mobile, there is a rootlessness about contemporary life and sporting affiliations can perform a compensatory function. "You have to ask: What meaning is there in people's lives? From where do people derive a sense of purpose?"
He says the rituals of games give fans something in common. Sporting success promotes positive feelings of shared experience and helps to explain our hero worship.
Smart is Professor of Sociology at Portsmouth University and his research interests include consumerism and the economic and cultural factors involved in social change. His published works include the opening essay for Resisting McDonaldization, which he edited, and The Sport Star - Modern Sport and the Cultural Economy of Sporting Celebrity. His career includes visiting professorships in Japan and Spain and seven years, from 1988-1995, as an associate professor at Auckland University.
He has always played sport, still runs and plays tennis and cricket - but football comes first for this lifelong Arsenal supporter.
"My earliest memories are going to Highbury on Boxing Day and Easter Monday to watch Arsenal with my father, grandfather and uncles - quite simply it was a family tradition and non-negotiable."
He's still coming to terms with his team's move to Emirates Stadium. "Now that is corporate intrusion."
While sport is his passion, it only recently became a research interest - when it dawned just how pivotal sport has become to cultural and economic life.
"Our economic system needs consumers to continually consume, to be never contented. The one choice consumers cannot be allowed to make is the choice to refrain from consuming - hence the increasing financial resources devoted to marketing and the importance of iconic sporting figures to front campaigns and be seen to ostentatiously display their consumer lifestyles. "Beckham, Woods, Sharapova, the Williams Sisters, Lewis Hamilton - it is a long list."
He says the transformation of sporting heroes into larger than life celebrities can be traced to the golden age of American sport, the 1920s, and figures such as Babe Ruth (baseball), Jack Dempsey (boxing) and Bobby Jones (golf).
With increased media coverage and an expanding sports goods industry, corporations outside sport recognised the potential of linking their products to sports stars who "combined popular cultural appeal with an unrivalled aura of authenticity."
"As the 20th century unfolded, commercial corporations were increasingly recognising that there are few if any cultural forms that have the potential of modern sport to be cosmopolitan, to travel across borders, to rise above differences of politics, culture and religion."
But it was the media - and the advent of satellite television in particular - which significantly raised sponsored sport's global profile. TV coverage of the 2004 Athens Olympics was available to 3.9 billion people. The 2002 football World Cup in Japan and Korea drew cumulative audiences of 28.8 billion.
For Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which bankrolls rugby's Super 14 and TriNations competitions, broadcasting rights serve as a "battering ram to enter new markets" through subscriptions.
But globalisation has also given broadcasters and corporate sponsors the power to transform sports - as in cricket where the traditional game (in New Zealand in particular) is struggling to cope with the shorter (one-day and Twenty20) formats favoured by broadcasters and advertisers.
Rugby, a significant contributor to our economy, faces problems on and off the field. The News Corp deal has failed to safeguard the grassroots domestic game and fans are turning off at all levels. The New Zealand Rugby Union's strategy to expand the All Blacks brand overseas is not helped by the All Blacks becoming rugby's equivalent of the England soccer team at World Cup level.
There's the spectre of our best players such as Dan Carter forsaking even franchise rugby for the higher rewards which British and French clubs can offer.
This week's IRB talkfest hopes to sort out the clash between club and country but it's a fair bet player (and fan) concerns about too much rugby won't wash with the corporate stakeholders.
But the impacts of globalisation of the sporting labour market vary, says Smart. The Ivory Coast football team has benefited from most of its players playing for European clubs (just as Samoa might be a rugby superpower if its best players couldn't become All Blacks).
The corporate intrusion into team sports can mean that fewer teams are successful - the English Premiership being a good example. But how much is sport the victim of corporate takeover and how much is down to the fans?
For the case against consumers, witness the pulling power of Beckham - whose celebrity status has long exceeded his playing ability. A crowd of 80,000 turned out for LA Galaxy's exhibition match in Sydney - which Beckham fitted around sponsors' commitments, including the launch of a new fragrance. Tonight's friendly against the Phoenix (average gate 11,700) in Wellington is expected to draw a sell-out 34,000 crowd and will be broadcast live on TV One and beamed to the Pacific. The Wellington City Council contributed $300,000 to the $2 million needed to bring Beckham here - an investment more than recouped through ticket sales starting at $82.50.
Routinely injured as his career winds down, he is nevertheless maximising his brand value in the US despite hardly playing. His signing boosted US Major Soccer League TV ratings and stadium crowds for the season.
As for Beckham Inc (estimated worth $215 million) his earnings from endorsements slumped 28 per cent last year after Gillette and Vodafone dropped him from global campaigns, the Independent Financial Review reported. But a $16 million a year (plus royalties) deal modelling underwear for Giorgio Armani in the US is expected to revive his fortunes.
Why do many fans identify so closely with teams and their stars that they feel compelled to buy the gear and accessories and their endless variations?
Smart says one factor is our changed sense of identity. " Sports teams provide an exciting, visible, communal focus - a public display of who one is." So we make a statement by donning a replica shirt. "This year's model shows one is now a fan, but wearing the kit from the past also sends out a message that one has long been a follower."
"The lengths fans go to - my son was a [Denis] Bergkamp [of Arsenal] fan so he had the name and the number on his shirt and you pay per letter ...
"It's interesting to watch news of riots in Gaza or really anywhere around the world and before too long you'll see some replica shirts in shot - it's a global cultural form."
