The biggest indirect bet is made by marketing and advertising. On
the never- ending table of Olympic records, the most spectacular
performances are dollar signs preceding figures into the
billions. Within the general shift from manufacturing to service
economy characteristic of the civilization of illiteracy, sport
becomes a form of entertainment. New media, replacing the
printed word as the dominant means of communication, makes
possible international viewing of competitions as they happen.
In the past, we were satisfied with the image of the winner. Now
we can own the tape of the game and can retrieve each moment of
any event. More broadband, and soon we will download the running
athlete directly onto our monitors. For a price, of course.
People consume sports. They are able to fly to the Olympics,
wherever the best bid takes them (Barcelona, Atlanta, or
Sydney), even able to pay for forty-five minutes or a whole week
of shaping up with the very best trainers. Facts in the world of
sports, as much as in the rest of our activities, are less
important than the image. The authority and self-discipline, on
which physical education was built, are replaced by the freedom
and opportunity to choose from among many sports events, and by
an attitude of permissiveness and self-indulgence which many
times results in considering the whole world as a sports show.
Sports are used to further many causes and support many
interest groups. On the stage of the events they sponsor, the
world's largest companies compete with feminism, equal
opportunity, AIDS, and various disabilities for the attention
and dollars of the audience. Sponsorship is a highly selective
experience. Nevertheless, it frequently contradicts the slogans
it sets before the public. These are important because the
indirect bet on sports takes into consideration the huge market
of entertainment, and defines within this market the segments it
will address.
Product endorsements, advertising, and public relations are the
media through which marketing places its bets. No less than
500,000 brands were traded in Atlanta. Only to keep track of
them was a major task, described officially as "protecting the
integrity of the Olympic Games and the rights of official
sponsors," but also "detecting attempts at parasitic
marketing." Every square inch on the body of a tennis player or a
track and field athlete can be rented. And is. The better the
manager (not necessarily a player's game), the higher the
endorsement contract. The minute detail picked up by the camera
allows us to see the name of the maker on the watch, the
manufacturer's logo on the socks, a sponsor company's name on
the shirts and headgear, the brand of glucose or mineral water,
the maker of ice or snow for winter games. It seems that the
competition on the court and the competition among those who buy
the space available on cyclists' ware, football players'
uniforms, skiers, swimmers, runners, and chess players are
feeding off one another. When the Canon company chose as its
prime-time advertising actor a tennis player who did not make it
beyond the preliminary games, the bet continued on the waves, on
the screens, on the videotapes, and on any other imaginable
display.
Marshall McLuhan plays year after year in the Superbowl. The
world indeed becomes a village. Moreover, the world has almost
decided that the outcome is less important than the new
commercials, the new thirty-second drama, followed by the
numbers telling us all how much more a second of prime time
costs, and what benefits it might bring. But the message is
actually lost. Here McLuhan was still somehow captive to
literacy, believing there was a message, as we are used to when
writing or reading a text. The message is the sneaker, or
whatever will take over, for its own short turn in the glory of
consumption, the world. The day the object is acknowledged,
between New York and Zambia, Paris and the tribes in the
Brazilian rain forests, Frankfurt and the starving populations
of Africa or Asia, there will be a trade in the original and its
many substitutes, reaching sheer madness. Sports entrusted with
the marketing image are equalled in their persuasive power only
by the entertainment stars, of similar illiterate condition,
singing for the world's hungriest only in order to add one more
marketing craze to their torment.
In these and in other characteristics mentioned, the unnatural
aspect of sports takes over their original, natural component.
It seems almost as though the sports experience is falling into
itself, is imploding, leaving room for the many machines and
gadgets we use at home in order to salvage our degenerating
bodies. Now we still bicycle, ski, climb stairs, and row in the
privacy of our rooms, with our eyes glued to the images of the
very few who still do the real thing, but for reasons less and
less connected with excellence. Soon we will swim in the pools
and ski on the slopes of virtual reality. Some are already
timing their performance. Little do they know that they are
pioneering one of the many Olympic games of the future.