Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

As even a casual observer may recognize, the phenomenon of contemporary sports bears little resemblance to that of the fairly recent past. At the turn of the twentieth century, sports were occasional and unregulated events played by members of local sports clubs. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, an individual's association with sport might have been limited to participant, spectator, or consumer of sport news mainly through radio or newspaper. However, as sports became meaningful to more than just the people who played them, the emergence of crowds at local sport club contests provided the opportunity for risk-taking entrepreneurs to turn games into profit-making ventures. In a relatively short time, traditional agrarian pastimes became today's urban commercial spectacles. Voluntary participation was replaced by binding contractual arrangements, and small hometown rivalries gave way to regional and international urban mega-events produced for global television audiences. Historians agree that the urbanizing landscapes and expanding capitalist economic system that transformed the societies of Europe and North America fueled the evolution of contemporary sport. The mass production of agricultural and material goods necessary to sustain and stimulate urban growth disrupted traditional patterns of work, leisure, and land use. In large cites such as London and New York, immigrants ... log in or subscribe to read full text