David ROWE

　　David ROWE

　　Professor, Director of the Centre for Cultural Research (CCR), University of Western Sydney, Australia

　　Main Publications：Globalization and Sport: Playing the World

　　Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity

　　Sport, Culture and the Media

　　The East-West Balance in 21st Century Media Sport

　　David ROWE

　　This paper sets out to analyze the dynamic circumstances of contemporary global media sports culture. Professional sport – politically, economically, technologically, culturally – originates in, and has been dominated by, the West, but this balance of forces is currently in question for a range of reasons. These include economic development in the ‘powerhouse’ economies of the Asia Pacific; the ‘exhaustion’ of media sport markets in the West; the potential of emerging markets and consumption patterns in the East; and the strategic use of media sport events and facilities in the Asia Pacific to signal the elevated status of its major sporting nations.

　　The 2008 Beijing Olympics has been suggested as a watershed moment in the development of global sport. Indeed, it has been suggested that we are witnessing a ‘changing of the guard’ in the world of sport, with Western domination being replaced by a new order in which sport will be controlled from the Orient. The evidence for this profound change is, though, rather mixed, and such claims may reflect nationalist aspiration and marketing-led ‘boosterism’ rather than a consistent, clear trend. In contrast, it may also be proposed that entrenched Western power in what I call the ‘media sports cultural complex’ is resilient. For example, if the main role of sport in the East is to provide new audiences for Western sport and its media – even where it involves watching sport stars such as Chinese basketballer Yao Ming or South Korean footballer Park Ji-Sung participating in overseas sport competitions – then the outcome could be seen as a much more familiar one of postcolonial labour export and market exploitation. Indeed, even if the East did come to dominate sport, it could be argued that, if it only replicates Western sport cultural forms, then it might be subject to cultural imperialism rather than the appropriation of media sport power. This paper, then, will attempt to assess the current state of global media sports cultural complex under conditions of considerable change and complexity.

　　Key words: media sport culture globalization power