The spectacle of sport

transforming research
culture
London 2012: Olympic stadium (aerial view)
© 2008 The London Organising Committee of
the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Ltd
The spectacle
Leisure studies has been
dominated by sport to its
detriment, according to Alan
Tomlinson, Professor of Leisure
Studies. “The dominance of
sport ignores the importance
of other areas of leisure studies
– the less formal side of leisure
activities, things like reading
and community groups that
bring people together, the way
we choose different activities
at different times in our lives
and issues of citizenship and
voluntarism.
“Sport is not the be all and end all of leisure
studies.” He added that even in sport the focus
is on the higher end of performance such as
Premier League football and the economic
interests vested in it. He pointed out that a lot of
sports are suffering due to a lack of resources,
for instance, there is an acute lack of referees
in smaller-scale sport. “High level competitive
performance gets too much attention,” said
Alan. Although he admitted that the Lottery
has been successful in bolstering infrastructure
and in giving smaller sports a marginally higher
profile, it has not broadened its base of support.
Some minority sports emerge every few years,
but interest often dies down shortly afterwards.
It is difficult, however, to ignore the impact of big
scale sporting events, and Professor Tomlinson’s
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of sport
research focuses more on the social and cultural
effects of events such as the World Cup and
the Olympics. His work has brought him to
international media attention in the Olympic
year. He has spoken, for instance, on Austrian
radio, New York public radio and to a Japanese
newspaper. All this experience is grist for his
research: a recent journal article looked at the
changing nature of media reporting of sport.
Professor Tomlinson said that the internet age
means it is harder to know who the audience for
sport is. “If you look at web coverage,” he said,
“you see a lot of laddish and anorak chit chat,
what Umberto Eco refers to as ‘sports chatter’.”
While he added a lot of the web content is
insubstantial gossip and reflection on particular
sporting events, some of it allows fans to be
involved much more directly with each other,
for example, by swapping clips of matches.
“There are different ways people are consuming
sport nowadays so it is difficult to pin down,” he
commented.
Professor Tomlinson describes himself as
“not an orthodox mainstream academic as
interdisciplinary work on new fields can open up
new directions in research”. His investigations
have focused on issues such as the economic
basis of football, the money behind the big
matches and the sense of exploitation fans
might feel if they are not getting a good deal
for their money. Although, he noted many are
interested in these issues, they get forgotten
when the big events like the World Cup and
Olympics come along. “Fans become taken
over by the spectacle.” Much of Professor
Tomlinson’s work has focused on the wider
meaning of spectacle – how it affects people’s
identities, how it is constructed and how people
feel a part of it. He cited issues of national and
regional identity, for instance, a Melbourne
resident dismissing the Australian Olympics in
2000 as a Sydney event.
“There are lots of stakes and
interests,” he said. He expects the
London Olympics to throw up very
similar issues about national and
local identity.
Professor Tomlinson addressed the House of
Commons Select Committee on the Olympics.
“There are a lot of serious issues such as the
cost. These are predictable, but what is not
predictable is how people are going to feel part
of the event.” He thinks Barcelona’s Olympics in
1992 were one of the most successful in terms
of economic regeneration and regional identity,
but added that China’s were hugely politically
significant. “The aspiration was to become
symbolically the most successful country in the
world.”
Part of the success of big events is down
to the party element. In Australia there were
parties everywhere the Olympic flame went; a
convention continued in Athens in 2004. There
were huge public screenings on a scale not
seen before at the World Cup in Germany in
2006. Where over a million people gathered at
the Brandenburg Gate. “It was a remarkable,
unthreatening expression of public spirit,” said
Professor Tomlinson. “When Germany got
knocked out in the semi-finals people were
singing thank you to [coach] Jurgen Klinsman.
They weren’t upset. They were enjoying
themselves.”
Despite his interest in the big event, though,
Professor Tomlinson said one of the most
interesting books he has read in the area is by a
social anthropologist writing about music making
in Milton Keynes. “It looked at how active,
creative subcultures show the different ways
people express their identities. Leisure is not
just about huge expensive matches, but about
where people get their sense of satisfaction and
contentment and how they fulfil their sense of
selfhood.”
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