Material and representational legacies of sports mega

Transcription

Material and representational
legacies of sports mega-events:
the case of the UEFA EURO™
Football Championships
John Horne, University of Central Lancashire,
Preston, U.K.
Introduction

The story of your course so far….
Mega-events - sporting and non-sporting
How should the UEFA EURO™ Football
Championships be conceptualized as a mega-event?
When did it start and how has it evolved?
What are the consequences of it for the (co-)hosts,
European identities and are there any negative
consequences or unwanted impacts?
spectacularization, commercialization, nationalism,
inequalities, resistance,…
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3 Key Questions Today

Sports Mega-Events - what are their general
features and particular impacts?
Is the UEFA EURO™ Football Championship a
part of the ‘European Ritual’?
Why do sports mega-events remain worthy of
investigation?
Offering more questions rather than
providing all the answers!
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Sports Mega-Events - general features
and particular impacts
Roche (2000): Multidimensional
Modern - non-modern
National - non-national
Local - non-local
Urban - mediated
Media audience size
Promotional opportunity (for hosts and corporations)
Transformations
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Expectations are running high:
Vienna Airport - June 2008
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Expect Mascots
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Expect Official Beer
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Expect official merchandise stores
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Sports Mega-Events = Media Events 1

2004 Athens Olympic Games - 3.9 billion people watched at
times (e.g. opening and closing ceremonies)

Cumulative TV audience estimate - 40 billion

35,000 hours of media coverage (increase of 27 per cent over the
Sydney Olympics held in 2000)

2002 FIFA World Cup (Japan and South Korea) 41,000 hours of
programming in 213 countries

Estimated cumulative audience of 28.8 billion viewers
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Sports Mega-Events = Media Events 2

UEFA EURO 2004™ - 7.9 billion cumulative TV
viewers

150 million live viewers for each of the 31 matches.

279 million TV viewers watched the final match (120
million of them outside Europe - 157 per cent increase
on UEFA EURO 2000™)

Each match in 2004 drew an average 74 million
viewers from outside Europe.
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Sports Mega-Events = Promotional
Opportunity 1
Hosts - cities, regions, nations
Sponsors
Sport (football labour market, skill exchange, etc.)
Scolari - Chelsea
Ronaldo - Real Madrid?
Who else?
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Expect Corporate Sponsors
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Expect Local Sponsors
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Sports Mega-Events =
Transformations

Transformations of material urban
infrastructure - stadiums, transportation,
technologies
Central to contemporary consumer culture
is the transformation “of lifestyle, living
space, relationships, identities, and, of
course, bodies” Featherstone (2007)
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Expect Tourists taking photos of
Large Boots
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Expect Fanzones
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Fanzone Wien - Heldenplatz
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Fanzone Wien - Burgtheater
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Fanzone Wien Central - Rathaus
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Fanzone Expect Big Screens
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Expect Pre-Match Build-up
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Expect Big Table Football
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Expect Espana…
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Expect Cut-price (but still
expensive) Drinks
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Fanzone - Without Fans…
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Expect Early Closing
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Expect more early closures
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Expect the need to go
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Euro 2008 Wien Expect
(Unofficial) Merchandise
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Expect High Heels
Wien June 2008
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Expect Restaurants…
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…and pubs to show Euro 2008
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The UEFA EURO™ Football
Championship and the ‘European Ritual’ 1

Institutional changes in European football since the
1990s create a challenge to the Euro‘s place in the
‘European Ritual’ (King 2003)
As a ritual football creates social solidarities in Europe
Big 5 ‘premier’ national leagues
‘G 14’ (18 clubs from 7 national leagues)
UEFA club tournaments - UEFA Cup and Champions’
League
Bosman (1995) and mobility of elite football talent ‘Europeanization’ of professional football
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Europe - from international to transnational space
club before country, not countrymen before club;
supporting ‘foreign’ clubs;
‘foreign’ teams represent the local club
Is the Euro now just “a minor, if distracting,
interlude” (Giulianotti inTHES 11.06.2004) ?
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Failure to qualify for the Euro and a national sense of cultural
marginalization - 3 broad responses in the U.K.:
1. Carry on regardless - Euro-related advertising of beer, chocolate, TV
equipment; gambling; TV coverage (all 31 matches live on BBC & ITV)
2. Make fun of the situation - ‘who shall we support?’ (BBC/The Guardian A = ‘Hup Holland!’); Poland (The Sun); Who do you dislike the most? (The
Times)
3. Schadenfreude - waiting for something to go wrong… Poland-Germany pre-match magazine cover and post-match fighting fans
Scotland hopes to be asked to step in to host Euro 2012 if Ukraine and
Poland cannot do it.
Wanting to be involved in the UEFA Euro shows the significance of it
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Sports Mega-Events = Promotional
Opportunity 2
And the price for missing out?
“…a £1bn hit for leisure industry” The Guardian 23.11.2007
“Home nations’ failures could cost economy £2bn” The
Guardian 07.06.2008
“’2008? Is that still happening?’” British advertising agency
executive in MediaGuardian 07.06.2008
“’…victory in a football tournament is a very significant factor
in political popularity’” Simon Chadwick in The Guardian
07.06.2008
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Why sports mega-events remain
worthy of investigation 1

The ‘unknown knowns’ of sports mega-events - stating the
obvious? Or not so obvious?

Structural level - entrepreneurial cities are a feature of
contemporary consumer capitalism:

either join in the competition to host “festivities of the global
spectacle” (Anderson 2007)

or be‘no-where’, ‘no-place’

Are these the only choices?
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Why sports mega-events remain
worthy of investigation 2

Phenomenological level - mega-events provide spaces for
sociability and play in cities (the ludic impulse).

Consider how people use these spaces for collective experiences,

to develop a sense of personal time and generation (identity),

and how these exchanges can pose questions of everyday life.
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Expect Nostalgia
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Wir sind Cordoba
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Football fan organisations

Football Supporters International
Streetkick tour of Switzerland and Austria
2008 (in Vienna MuseumsQuartier /
Mariahilferstrasse from 20-26 June)
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Bird’s Nest Stadium, Beijing,
under construction
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And later this summer another
Olympic ‘theme park’ is now ready
for use…
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…and the five 2008 Olympic Mascots Bei Jing Huan Ying Ni - are ready to say
"Welcome to Beijing“
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Things to Consider…

1. Name three positive and three negative factors
associated with being a sports mega-event host city. Is
there a positive or negative balance?
2. Would the people of Ireland have voted differently last
week in the referendum if UEFA membership was
connected to EU membership?
3. Who is the UEFA Euro tournament, the FIFA World
Cup or the Summer Olympic Games currently for? Who
should they be for?
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