¶ … media has taken on a whole new role in sports. Once assumed to be mainly for broadcasting and journalistic purposes, the sports media actively engages in production and programming. The relationship between actual athletics and the media is now thoroughly symbiotic. Sports depends on the media for exposure and the accrual of corporate sponsorships. The media depends on sports for practically the same reasons: to boost interest in the network brand and to stimulate advertising revenues. As a result, the nature of sports has changed considerably. Spectator sports have provided entertainment to viewers since Greco-Roman culture, but now sports is big business too.
As Moragas (1996) points out, sports has changed the media as much as media has changed sports. Moreover, the "media-sport" phenomenon has led to discernible cultural changes (Moragas 1996). Value systems and social norms shift according to the way media-sport is presented. Gender and race issues arise in the sports arena. Moragas (1996) also points out the way identity construction partly depends on media-sport. For instance, team allegiances and celebrity athletes may affect personal identity construction. Fans of a team often organize their social lives around sporting events. The Olympics is a special example of how media-sport is used to promote cross-cultural awareness or in some cases as a political tool.
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