Global Media Sport: Flows, Forms and Futures
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Rowe, David. "Tactical Manoeuvres, Public Relations Disasters and the Global Sport Scandal." Global Media Sport: Flows, Forms and Futures. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. 115–143. Globalizing Sport Studies. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 24 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849661577.ch-006>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 24 September 2021, 23:48 UTC. Copyright © David Rowe 2011. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 6 Tactical Manoeuvres, Public Relations Disasters and the Global Sport Scandal Publicity: the good, the bad and the spaces between Sport, from its inception in modernity, has been intimately connected to international relations and trade. It has been especially effective in this regard because, despite being suffused with politics and signifi cantly commodifi ed, sport somehow still manages to present itself and to be seen by many as somehow above and beyond the mundane world of political and economic conduct. Developing international relationships through sport – so-called sport diplomacy – is viewed as a reasonably safe, benign way of making friends and managing confl icts (Levermore and Budd 2004). There are several historical examples, ranging from the so-called ping-pong diplomacy that brought the United States and Communist China into contact in the early 1970s (Xu 2008) to the attempted use of the Olympics to improve relations between North and South Korea (Merkel 2008). When, for example, in 2006 Australia left the Oceania Football Confederation for the larger Asian Football Confederation, the non-sporting justifi cation was that of ‘football diplomacy’: Sport … provides a common point of conversation between societies. Sport fans undoubtedly follow their teams passionately, but they also tend to share an appreciation for the game and its players that often crosses national and cultural boundaries, illustrated by the immense popularity of Australian cricketers Adam Gilchrist and Steve Waugh in India. Whether in football stadiums in Asia or Australia, or via media coverage of the sport, football will provide a much broader and more grass-roots engagement which has largely been absent in the past. Given the centrality of sport in the Australian psyche, the development of a sporting relationship with regional neighbours as enthusiastic about their sport as Australians could transform local perceptions – and preconceptions – of what individual Asian societies are really like. (Bubalo 2005: 6–7) On occasions, nations may cooperate in introducing sports boycotts in the interests of political change, as in the case of apartheid-era South Africa and, more recently, in the isolation of Zimbabwe in sports such as cricket (although there can also be political bloc and unilateral boycotts, as in the case of the 1980 and 1984 Olympics). Sport may also function as a vehicle for national chauvinism, aggression and violence towards other nations, or at least as an opportunity for hostile stereotypes in the press, as in the case of encounters between the England football team and those from Germany or Argentina (Poulton 2004) or between the United States and nations with which it is in confl ict (Miller et al. 2001). This chapter, though, will not attempt to cover comprehensively 115 RRowe.indbowe.indb 111515 331/10/111/10/11 44:44:44 PPMM 116 GLOBAL MEDIA SPORT the political uses and abuses of sport in the international sphere but instead will concentrate on the global politics of hosting sports mega events. Such events are particularly important because they are also inherently ‘media events’ (Dayan and Katz 1992) whose very rationale depends on extensive, favourable global media coverage. Their profound mediatization is most conspicuous when they go wrong and rebound on the country that has spent billions of dollars in staging them with the intention of enhancing the global image of host cities and nations. These scandals of nation, though, do not monopolize communicative zones of negative publicity, as both sports and athletes are regularly brought into disrepute. For example, corruption within sport (sometimes linked to the bidding process for mega events) and the crimes and misdemeanours of athletes (many involving widely circulated salacious details) are also capable of producing extraordinary levels of media coverage without a sports mega event in sight. In investigating these various modes of sporting scandal, their place in global media sport will be assessed, with a particular emphasis on the power to control and explode carefully cultivated images. Images of sport and nation Bidding to host a sports mega event, despite the substantial risks and staggering costs, remains a compelling goal for cities and nations that range from the most affl uent to the still developing (as noted in Chapter 5). For example, the most common estimate of the cost to South Africa of hosting the 2010 World Cup of Association Football is US$3.5 billion (with FIFA gaining an equivalent amount as broadcast and marketing revenue). The justifi cation for this expenditure is grandiose indeed, but the outcome is uncertain. As one commentator (among many) has noted, Danny Jordaan, head of the 2010 World Cup Local Organising Committee described the world’s largest sporting event as a ‘rebranding of South Africa’. 700 million people were watching on TV and millions more were reading online or talking about it via social media. With this in mind, national and local governments (through their taxpayers) forked out billions of Rands on much- needed infrastructure spending, as well as the construction of mega stadia that now threaten to become ‘white elephants’ … [I]ndustry stakeholders claim it is not necessarily traffi c during the tournament but the long-term investment in the South African brand that is key. When asked whether he believed South Africa’s brand expectations were met by the World Cup, Marc Hershowitz, formerly of the University of Cape Town Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing, says, ‘FIFA commissioned a six wave study of South African residents post World Cup and the fi ndings were glowing. The study showed a marked upswing in national confi dence – both local and abroad … of the 75% of all visitors who toured South Africa for the fi rst time, 83% stated their intention to return and a staggering 94% expressed they would gladly recommend South Africa to friends and family’ … RRowe.indbowe.indb 111616 331/10/111/10/11 44:44:44 PPMM TACTICAL MANOEUVRES, PUBLIC RELATIONS DISASTERS AND THE GLOBAL SPORT SCANDAL 117 Whether the World Cup showed global business that South Africa can tackle crime and rally resources to achieve its goals; or whether it was merely a cover up of socio-economic weaknesses that will persist long after June–July 2010, will be a key factor when transnational corporations weigh-up South Africa’s stability for their investment. (Schneider 2010a) Thus, suggestions that this large sum of money could be better spent on social services and other infrastructure, or that newly built stadia would become ‘white elephants’ after the event had fi nished, were subordinated to the goals of the national rebranding of South Africa as an attractive, safe place for international tourists and as a profi table location for foreign direct investment and the raising of national morale and self-esteem (Schneider 2010b). As is represented in the 2009 fi lm Invictus , the recently elected president of the Republic of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, had previously used the country’s hosting of the 1995 World Cup of Rugby Union for reasons of national cohesion and international prestige. Both events were successful in this respect, particularly in that they succeeded in avoiding major controversies or sudden, negative occurrences (such as a terrorist attack or violence towards international visitors). This risk calculation is especially pressing given that all mega sports events attract large numbers of foreign journalists whose brief includes much more than coverage of sport contests and which correspondingly concentrate global attention on a nation for a brief period of time, but with possible long-lasting consequences. Thus, for example, there was considerable sensitivity about not just the incidence but also the media coverage of violent crime during the World Cup (given that South African cities and townships have some of the highest violence and homicide rates in the world), which in turn led to additional costs of saturation policing and security. As David Smith (2010) noted as the World Cup ended, Sceptics predicted the World Cup would be a boom time for criminals in South Africa. In fact, the football appears to have led to a dramatic fall in violent offences. A report by ADT, a private security fi rm, said crime was down by 70% in western Johannesburg, while the east of the city saw a 60% decline in the past month. No offi cial police fi gures are yet available, but the fi ndings support anecdotal evidence that the World Cup has reduced crime. Only 100 people have been found guilty of offences related to the tournament in special courts, where staff have spent many hours idle. There have been no murders or stabbings despite international fears about the event. It also appears that more conventional crimes, such as house break-ins, have dropped because of visible policing, ADT said … Facing unprecedented global attention, South Africa dedicated more than 40,000 police offi cers to World Cup security. But many have been paid overtime, which will be unsustainable in the long term … South Africa has one of the world’s highest crime rates with an average of 50 murders per day. There have been some high profi le incidents during the RRowe.indbowe.indb 111717 331/10/111/10/11 44:44:44 PPMM 118 GLOBAL MEDIA SPORT World Cup, with hotel staff arrested for stealing and foreign journalists targeted by muggers.