Giulianotti-Chapter 8
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Sporting Places and Spaces: Fields of Affection, Commerce and Fantasy On one of his numerous comeback albums, Frank Sinatra crooned a poignant and nostalgic tribute to his old baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and to their Ebbets Field stadium in Brooklyn, New York. The song — written by Joe Raposo and entitled “There used to be a ballpark right here’ — recalled the sounds and smells, the crowds and occasion, of sunny summer days at the stadium. All of that came to an end in 1958 when the owner of the Dodgers, in search of bigger revenues, relocated the club to the other side of the United States: the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the vacated Ebbets Field was demolished two years later. Sinatra’s song and the wider story of Ebbets Field demonstrate how we generate particular emotional and popular cultural ties to recreational landscapes. The story also underscores how, in capitalist societies, sport and leisure spaces are commercial entities where, in most circumstances, money may be used to trump sentiment and community. Thus, in the context of American sport, and unlike Sinatra’s own career, there was to be no comeback for Brooklyn’s baseball team. In this chapter, I examine the major sociological questions sur- rounding sport’s spatial dimensions. First, with particular reference to the work of John Bale, I discuss the emotional attachments and special meanings that people give to specific sporting spaces. Second, I assess the political economy of sporting landscapes, notably with regard to processes of ‘hypercommodification’, the construction of stadiums in North America using public money, the hosting of sport mega-events, and the relationship of sport to environmental issues. Third, I explore the postmodern aspects of sport arenas, with refer- ence to processes of rationalization and commercialization and the rise of ¥irtual culture. Fourth, I turn to discuss the social control of
136 Sporting Places and Spaces sporting spaces — a subject that has gained greater significance for social scientists since the late 1990s. I conclude by interrelating these different arguments to consider the balance between political eco- nomic and socio-cultural factors in shaping sporting spaces. Sport places and emotional attachments Sport places often possess strong social and cultural meanings for dif- ferent publics. John Bale, who pioneered the field of sport geography within the social sciences, has made a major contribution to explain- ing these forms of popular attachment.® Drawing on the work of Tuan (1974), Bale (1994: 120) used the concept of ‘topophilia’ to capture the ‘love of place’ that different publics may have for specific sport settings. In the same vein, Bale (1991a) applied five metaphors, with strong Durkheimian overtones, to capture the heightened public meanings that sport settings (in this case, football stadiums) may have for different people. First, the stadium appears as a sacred place with heightened spir- itual meanings for its ‘congregation’. Quasi-religious ceremonies are enacted in stadiums, such as the scattering of the ashes of deceased fans or turning some sections into ‘shrines’ in memory of people who have recently died. For example, following the 1989 Hillsborough stadium disaster in Sheffield, at which ninety-six Liverpool fans were fatally injured, football supporters covered many sections of the stadiums in both cities with wreaths, flowers and diverse football memorabilia.?® » Second, the stadium may have scenic qualities that provide athletes and spectators with distinctive visual pleasures, particularly when ‘complex landscape ensembles’ are evident, such as the local cathe- drals, old trees, and nearby hillsides that may be viewed from some English cricket grounds (Bale 1995: 81). e Third, the stadium is a kome to players and fans, reflecting deep senses of familiarity and attachment while promoting collective psychological advantages for the ‘home’ club over visiting oppo- nents during games. e Fourth, the stadium may be a tourist place or heritage site that offers visitors guided tours. Fifth, the stadium may engender deep local pride; the team which plays at home may be ‘a focus for community bonding and the source of “reconstruction” of some former Gemeinschaf' (Bale Sporting Places and Spaces 137 1991a: 135). Strong examples here are old, inner-city stadiums ~-which are still attended by large groups of fans who previously lived in the local area. To add to this fivefold model, I would suggest that sport stadiums acquire further symbolic meaning through their ‘patina’ — in other words, the signs of age that they might carry which, nevertheless, point to their distinctive identity and community history (Ritzer and Stillman 2001). Illustrations of this patina might include discol- oured brickwork, frayed signs, worn seating, and faded graffiti in and around the stadium. Viewed in this way, the stadium emerges as a critical site for the construction and expression of particular kinds of personal and col- lective identity. Spectators may have favourite standing positions or seats from which to watch their favoured team, and where they may meet with friends, family or acquaintances. Different parts of the stadium may have their own habitus in Bourdieu’s sense (see chapter 10), in terms of attracting spectators who have particular social back- grounds (as regards age and class), cultural tastes and predisposi- tions. Distinctive spectator subcultures may congregate in some parts of the stadium; for example, in many sports we find long-standing supporters who have identified strongly with particular ground sec- tions, claiming these places as ‘their own’, where they ‘belong’, and from where they generate loud, expressive, and often raucous and spectacular displays of support for their team. Football stadiums typ- ically accommodate these intense forms of identification within the ground ‘ends’ (or curvas in Italy). Similar fan groups tend to gather in specific sections in other football codes, such as Gaelic football, Australian Rules football and American football — for example, fans in the ‘bleacher’ seats at college level or supporters in the old ‘Dawg Pound’ section in the Cleveland Browns stadium. Not every social group or community may accord positive mean- ings to specific sport places. In some instances, the stadium may inspire ‘topophobia’ — that is, negative emotional meanings such as fear or hostility (Bale 1994: 145-6). For example, residents or busi- nesses located near to stadiums may be badly affected by ‘spillover’ problems or ‘negative externalities’ such as raucous singing, drinking, urinating, vandalism and fighting among fans (Bale 1990; Mason and Roberts 1991). Topophobia may be associated particularly with vulnerable social groups, who are, perhaps, more likely to fear any crime and disorder that might be linked potentially to a specific place of’'sport.
138 Sporting Places and Spaces Yet, as a whole, the themes of topophilia rather than topopho- bia tend to resonate more within other sociological perspectives on places of sport and leisure. Wearing (1998: 134-5), for example, has employed the concept of chora, initially advanced by Grosz (1995), to describe how people (or ‘chorasters’) engage fully and informally with popular recreational areas, using the example of an old salt- water swimming pool in Manly, Sydney. Extending this concept, it might be argued that sports fans act as chorasters when they develop distinctive ties with stadiums. On sport in Argentina, Archetti (1998: 180-1) discussed the symbolic significance of potreros (undeveloped urban wastelands) where, according to popular folklore, young boys (pibes) learn to play football in the Argentinian way, with an emphasis on dribbling skills and a style rooted in ‘freshness, spontaneity and freedom’. In this way, the topophilic meaning of porreros is closely associated with the making of masculine national identities through sport. ) Overall, emotional investments in sport places are complex and multi-faceted; they may be negative as well as positive and may inten- sify over time. For fans in particular, sporting places are also impor- tant reference points in the production and reproduction of strong social solidarities through sport. Yet, as I discuss in the next section, these socio-cultural meanings and qualities of sporting places are apt to be reshaped or challenged by powerful political economic forces. Political economy and sport arenas In this section, I explore the political economic aspects of sport with reference to four critical issues that affect sporting publics: the hypercommodification of sport spaces, stadium building in North America, the hosting of sport mega-events, and environmental issues. The hypercommodification of sport spaces In most societies, nearly all sport venues are what Reiss (1991: 4) calls ‘semipublic sports facilities’ — in other words, they are privately owned (whether by individuals, private associations or local authori- ties), and the public are charged fees in order to enter and to use these facilities. At the elite level, modern sport stadiums have been developed largely to maximize their commercial value. In much of Europe and North America during the nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries, large stadiums were constructed in order to stage and Sporting Places and Spaces 139 to-enclose popular sport events, ensuring that spectators would need ~ to pay admission charges to watch. In turn, in sports such as baseball and football, stadium gate~money played the critical role in financing the professionalization of athletes. The stadium quickly mirrored the wider spatial division of city populations into class-based ‘segments’ or ‘molecules’: more expen- sive, prime-viewing seated areas were reserved for the bourgeoisie; more distant stands (such as the ‘bleacher’ seats in North American stadiums) or larger standing terraces were dominated by working- class spectators (see Sennett 1977: 135). Since the 1970s, the socio-economic structure of advanced modern societies has become more varied, and so the class composition and price differentiation of stadium sections has tended to become more complex. Thus, professional sport arenas are increasingly filled with commercial sec- tions and facilities, such as executive boxes primarily for corporate groups and sponsors; specific ‘member’ stands that offer exclusive lounge areas inside the ground and other perks; more space for national and international media; and ‘family stands’, offering cut- price seating but aiming to secure the long-term reproduction of spectator numbers. I noted in chapter 3 that elite professional sport has undergone processes of hypercommodification. Two critical socio-spatial issues have arisen from this process. First, in many elite professional sports, the commercialization of stadiums has raised issues regarding the politics of access. In this sense, we have a classic sociological problem to consider: how insufficient resources (in this instance, tickets to gain access to sport events) should be distributed across different social groups. For elite sport events, those resources have become increasingly scarce and have tended to be distributed along the lines of market criteria (that is, who can afford and is willing to pay for tickets) rather than other principles (such as who has longest-standing commitment to sup- porting the relevant team). Hypercommodification of access to elite sport is reflected in escalating ticket prices. In the English Premier League, over the period 1990 to 2010, season ticket prices at clubs rose by many times more (in some cases, ten times more) than the rate of infla- tion (The Guardian, 16 August 2011). Prices for international cricket in Australia have also been criticized as high, as dedicated fans are required to spend a greater proportion of their disposable income on match attendance (Sydney Morning Herald, 26 December 2011). In Atnerican football, average ticket prices rose over the 2003-13 period
140 Sporting Places and Spaces by more than 5 per cent and parking costs more than doubled, while in recent times stadium attendance figures have declined (CNN, 7 September 2013). In San Francisco, some of the oldest fans of the 49ers football team were unable to maintain their season tickets after the club moved to a new stadium, resulting in a tripling of admission prices and demands for ‘seat licence’ payments of US$30,000 (San Francisco Chronicle, 18 April 2012). The distribution of tickets to elite events such as ‘Cup Finals’ or sport mega-events is also heavily premised upon market principles: thus, priority access tends to be accorded to corporate sponsors or those-with high-price ‘membership’ packages, as well as political elites, particularly within the sport system. A further, murkier layer of commodification has been added by the vast ‘secondary market’ which has mushroomed since the 1990s, involving the de facto ‘touting’ or ‘scalping’ of elite. sport event tickets, notably through the corruption of officials in sport governing bodies. For example, Brazilian police at the 2014 World Cup finals found initial evidence of a US$90 million scam for the illegal reselling of match tickets involving a gang with high connections among football officials and thought to have been active also at three earlier tournaments (The Guardian, 8 July 2014). The overall result is that, ceteris paribus, non-corporate long-term supporters of different clubs or national sport teams have found it increasingly difficult and expensive to gain tickets to attend these prestige events. Thus, for the London 2012 Olympics, large proportions of tickets were allocated to Olympic sponsors and to members and associates of the ‘Olympic family’, while UK citizens often had access to relatively few seats for the most important occasions: for example, only 44 per cent of tickets for the opening ceremony, 43 per cent for some cycling finals, 3 per cent for some tennis fixtures, and a measly 0.12 per cent for one sailing final went on sale to the general public (Giulianotti et al. 2014b). A second issue arising from hypercommodification relates to the politics of stadium identirtes. For example, we may explore how, as sta- diums become more corporate and expensive, there is relatively less capacity to accommodate comparatively younger and working-class supporter subcultures. Ironically, marginalization of these groups may impact negatively on stadium atmosphere, which otherwise makes the sport ‘product’ more appealing to television viewers. Thus, we have the famous comment by Roy Keane, then captain of Manchester United, that too many spectators were focused more on consuming ‘prawn sandwiches’ and other corporate hospitality than on events on the field of play. Intensified stadium security, dis- Sporting Places and Spaces 141 cussed later in this chapter, may also undermine these fan identities by restricting more boisterous or spectacular supporter activities; in European football, these restrictions have included prohibitions on fireworks, which had otherwise become integral to the spectacles mounted by fan subcultures. At the same time, we find occasions when sport clubs appropriate the spatially specific identities of sup- porter subcultures for commercial ends. For instance, in American football, the Cleveland Browns have been criticized by some fan groups for the commodification of the ‘Dawg Pound’ section, where more raucous, ‘blue-collar’ supporters gathered, in terms of higher ticket prices and a more corporate atmosphere, and through ‘trade- marking’ of this particular fan identity, leading to the marketing of ‘Dawg Pound’ ‘official’ apparel. A further issue concerns the widespread practice of commodifying the ‘naming rights’ of stadiums. To select but a few examples, among sport grounds with corporate names are the Allianz Arena (home to Bayern Munich football club), Allianz Parque (Palmeiras of Sao Paulo football club), ANZ Stadium (Sydney), Red Bull Arena thome to-Red Bull Salzburg), Rogers Centre (Toronto Blue Jays base- ball team, Toronto Argonauts Canadian football team), BIDVest Wanderers Stadium (Johannesburg), Emirates Stadium (home to Arsenal of London), Lincoln Financial Field (Philadelphia Eagles) and Mall of America Field at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (Minnesota Vikings). While generating substantial revenues for the relevant sport clubs, the selling of naming rights may undermine the extent to which stadiums generate topophilia among spectators or encapsulate the distinctive identities of the wider community of fans. Overall, the hypercommodification of stadiums provides us with many case studies in how the free-market political economy of sport may serve to challenge or to undermine its ‘bottom-up’ socio-cultural aspects. As I have indicated here, the key cultural political issues centre on stadium access and identities. North American sports: the politics of stadium construction A second set of critical issues on the political economy of sport spaces relates to public subsidies for stadium construction, primarily in the North American context. In major North American sports leagues such as the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA, each competing team is in effect a privately owned ‘franchise’; if they so wish, franchise owners are largely free to relocate their team to a new ‘home’ city. The Brooklyn Dodgers, mentioned at the start of this chapter, is only
142 Sporting Places and Spaces one of more than sixty such relocations that have occurred in the leading four North American sports since the 1900s. Sport leagues are also free to grant new memberships (or ‘expansion’ franchises) to cities and club owners in locations which offer strong commercial opportunities. Many civic authorities in North America have built expensive new sport stadiums over the years in order to attract or to retain major league clubs. Some argue that these sport teams have commercial benefits for host cities in terms of offering employment and associ- ated revenues such as consumer spending when games are staged (see Euchner 1993: 68-70); sport teams are portrayed as ‘civic flag- ..ships’, particularly for post-industrial cities seeking new investment, tourism and leisure spending (see Bélanger 2000); and sport teams " are seen as powerful vehicles for building social capital and civic iden- tification in host cities. However, powerful critiques may be advanced on the politics and economics of stadium construction in North America. In effect, stadium subsidies constitute a form of ‘corporate welfarism’, wherein public money is actually directed towards protecting the commercial interests or ‘welfare’ of the billionaires who privately own and control these sport clubs. Sports economists argue that the public costs of stadium building tend far to outweigh the financial benefits (Noll and Zimbalist 1997; Rosentraub 1999). Indeed, such spending inevitably means that hundreds of millions of dollars of public money cannot go towards key public services such as education, health, policing and transport (see Delaney and Eckstein 2003; deMause and Cagan 2008). Moreover, civic authorities lose some US$4billion in the tax exemptions that they grant to club owners (Bloomberg, 5 September 2012). In addition, the real costs of stadium construction are usually far higher than initial estimates; the difference here totalled some US$10 billion for all major sport arenas in use in 2010 (Long 2012). New sport facilities often lead to higher ticket prices for support- ers; thus, poorer spectators may be priced out of attendance or be required to forgo more of their limited disposable income in order to gain admission. We may also query whether even a winning local team will by itself redefine the public image or commercial status of a host city (Rowe and McGuirk 1999). Overall, the evidence indicates that North American cities lose rather than gain financially from hosting sport teams, although there are clear commercial benefits for the “franchise’ owners and the sport leagues. Sporting Places and Spaces 143 The politics of hosting sport mega-events A third set of political economic issues surrounding sport spaces relates to the hosting of mega-events such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup finals. Cities and nations bidding to host these events need to win public support for such massive projects. Thus, the bidding committees and their backers argue that these events will create new jobs, business and tourism opportunities; new or enhanced sport facilities; improved infrastructure in roads, railways and airports; better public health through more sport participa- tion and physical activity among the host population; and major urban transformations, such as the gentrification and regeneration of declining inner-city areas (Hall 2006; Malfas, Theodoraki and Houlihan 2004; Preuss 2006). The 1992 Barcelona Olympics is often presented as the ideal role model here in generating many of these benefits while transforming the hosts into a ‘global city’ (Degen 2004). Yet critical social research tends to point to other, less posi- tive impacts of event hosting. Many mega-events produce ‘white elephants’ — extremely expensive sport facilities that are grossly under-utilized afterwards; examples here are the Olympic stadiums in Montreal (1976), Seoul (1988), Sydney (2000), Athens (2004) and Beijing (2008). Clear evidence that these events have provided host cities and nations with significant economic boosts is also dif- ficult to identify, Meanwhile, international governing bodies such as FIFA require the hosts, first, to bear the multi-billion-dollar costs of staging the event and, second, to grant these bodies and their corpo- rate partners a full exemption from taxes on any profits — for the 2014 Brazil World Cup, this entailed an estimated loss of US$250 million in revenues for the Brazilian government (Forbes, 16 June 2014). Sport mega-events may serve to disempower the poorer members of host communities, with wealrhier parts of the city or nation being the main beneficiaries. For example, at the London 2012 Olympics, most events were staged at venues in the Olympic Park, located in the poor East End. Yet many residents, business people and politicians reported that few job opportunities were available locally in regard to building or working in the venues. Due in large part to the transport system imposed on the area, many local businesses suffered losses in trade during the games; conversely, the large shopping mall next to Olympic Park, privately owned by an Australian corporation and filled with leading transnational companies, enjoyed unprecedented ! numbers of visitors (Giulianotti et al. 2014a, 2014b). East London
144 Sporting Places and Spaces also lost its best opportunity to reach global television audiences when the Olympic organizers relocated the marathon events from the Olympic Park area to central London. After the Olympics, the privately owned local football team West Ham United won the right to move into the Olympic stadium; the local council agreed to borrow £40 million to help fund the stadium’s conversion for football pur- poses — at the same time, the council, representing one of the UK’s poorest areas, was set to suffer overall budget cuts of £100 million (Giulianotti et al. 2014b). The most disempowering social impacts of sport mega-events may relate to the redevelopment and privatization of land. In some instances, unwanted poor populations are evicted to make way for the construction of sanitized, neoliberal spaces for new, wealthier res- idenfs and businesses. Prior to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, an estimated 250,000 poor people were evicted (The Hindu, 13 October 2010); other'such social clearing occurred at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver (US4 Today, 5 June 2007; The Guardian, 3 February 2010, 1 April 2010). Corruption is also a concern, notably misappropriation of public funds for the event; for example; the budget for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics multiplied from US$12 billion to US$51 billion, ,with an alleged US$30 billion going on corrupt ‘kickbacks and “ embezzlement’ (The Guardian, 9 October 2013). Further criticisms have been directed towards human rights abuses by event hosts. Western media and politicians have accused Russia, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 football World Cup finals, of state- backed abuse of the LGBT community. The Gulf state of Qatar, which won the right to host the 2022 football World Cup finals, was widely criticized in the West for the abuse and mistreatment of migrant workers; one international trade union report estimated that up to 4,000 workers would die during the country’s preparations for the event (The Guardian, 26 September 2013). In this context, we might consider the position of the host cities and nations vis-a- vis international society. These hosts aim to use the event in part to strengthen their civic or national ‘brands’ and to increase their ‘soft power’ (that is, their attractiveness and influence) among global audiences. However, such events also place host cities and nations in the international spotlight, so that critical media reports and human rights campaigns may serve to ‘disempower’ them in terms of reputa- tion or ‘brand’ identity (Brannagan and Giulianotti 2014), Sporting Places and Spaces 145 Environmental issues A fourth set of issues, commonly underpinned by substantial political economic influences, relates to the environmental impacts of sport. To begin we may note that environmentalism has become embedded in the official ideologies of many sport organizations, tournaments and associated sponsors. For example, after the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics in Norway, the IOC added the environment as the ‘third dimension of Olympism’ (sport and culture being the other two), so that future games should have a clear environmental agenda and secure a ‘green legacy’ (cf. Klausen 1999: 34). Yet elite sport tends to be environmentally problematic in four main senses. First, major sport events leave a huge ‘ecological foot- print’, notably through the air travel of athletes, coaches, officials, media, VIPs and spectators. Second, commercial sport invariably puts economic interests ahead of environmental and community con- cerns. For example, environmental campaigners criticize the global golf industry for harming delicate eco-systems, as well as for its high use of water and pesticides (Wilson and Millington 2015). Third, the ‘green’ ideals and statements of sport event organizers may jar with local community experiences. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, ‘green’ criteria were said to have influenced stadium planning, yet many locals complained about local environmental impacts, such as the erection of a temporary beach volleyball stadium on Bondi Beach (Prasad 1999: 92; Lenskyj 2002). The London 2012 Olympics organ- izers highlighted the creation of the green 500-acre Olympic Park as a lasting environmental legacy. Yet several community groups pro- tested against the imposition of Olympic events and facilities on local green spaces. Fourth, green messages from sport governing bodies and event organizers may be contrasted with the environmental records of corporate sponsors and ‘partners’. Environmental groups protested at the 2012 London Olympics against several event spon- sors, including the oil company BP (which had caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), the mining company Rio Tinto (accused of various human rights and environmental abuses, particularly in the Global South) and Dow Chemical (one of whose subsidiaries is the Union Carbide company, which had caused the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster in India, estimated to have fatally injured over 16,000 people). Thus, overall, notwithstanding the initial recognition of ‘green’ issues, sport tends to have a highly prob- lematic relationship to the environment, particularly when political "economic factors are taken fully into account.
146 Sporting Places and Spaces Political criticism and opposition These political economic issues surrounding sporting spaces have attracted diverse criticisms and opposition. Some social movements within sport — notably football fan organizations in Europe and South Ametrica —have mobilized against rising ticket prices alongside the broader commercialization of sport culture (cf. Gaffney 2013; Giulianotti 2011a; Kennedy and Kennedy 2012). Critics of excessive admission prices may point also to alternative models for organizing sport; in the UK media, for example, there is regular reference to German football stadiums, which attract more spectators and have much lower admission prices. The renaming of sport stadiums represents a prioritization of commercial interests over the socio-cultural identity of the club and its ‘home’. In some circumstances, supporters resist by using the stadium’s old name, directly ignoring the new commercial title, as occurred among baseball and American football fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Elsewhere, in north-east England in 2011, the unpopular owner of the Newcastle United football club temporarily renamed the home stadium, St James’ Park, after his main company, to become the ‘Sport Direct Arena’; the move drew widespread criti~ cism by fans, media and politicians and was subsequently reversed. In regard to the public costs of hosting sport stadiums and sport events, significant forms of popular opposition have emerged in dif- ferent social contexts. In the United States, various political figures, journalists, academics and social movements have opposed the vast expenditures of public money on building stadiums for privately owned clubs (The Atlantic, 18 September 2013; deMause and Cagan 2008). Opposition groups also surface in cities that are hosting, or seeking to host, sport mega-events. A notable example was the ‘Bread Not Circuses’ movement opposing Toronto’s 2008 Olympics bid (Lenskyj 2008). The largest mass opposition movements in recent years emerged in Brazil in 2013, when hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets during football’s ‘Confederations Cup’ tournament; initially focused on rising public transportation costs, the mass protests soon embraced many popular issues, including corruption, rising living costs, and the multi-billion-dollar spend- ing on hosting the 2014 football World Cup finals and the 2016 Olympics. At London 2012, diverse public criticisms, complaints and forms of opposition were directed at the event in terms of high costs, security measures (such as positioning surface-to-air missiles on tower blocks), the local environment, civil rights (such as legal Sporting Places and Spaces 147 restrictions on freedom of expression), Olympic transport strategies, the practices of event sponsors (such as the treatment of workers in Adidas production factories), and human rights campaigns against competing nations such as Russia and Sri Lanka. Finally, some cities organize public votes to decide if they will bid to host mega-events, and at this point popular opposition may be successful; for example, in 2013, Munich’s citizens voted against bidding to host the 2022 Winter Olympics on the grounds of high costs and environmental concerns, Overall, political economic forces play a pivotal role in shaping sport spaces; in so doing, they may have significant negative impacts on popular cultures within sport, which in turn may resist aspects of the commercialization of these settings. Political economic forces are also highly influential in the making of ‘postmodern’ sport stadiums, to'which I now turn. Postmodern sport stadiums Postmodern sport stadiums may be understood as having significant differences from modern sport settings. Three aspects of the sport stadium are relevant here — their rationalization and commodification, association with ‘fantasy cities’, and privileging of virtual culture — which I consider in turn. These arguments anticipate some of the key points on ‘postmodern sport’ that are discussed in chapter 11. Rationalized stadiums Postmodern stadiums have a complex relationship to processes of rationalization in sport. This is illuminated when considering base- ball stadiums in North America. Drawing on the ‘McDonaldization thesis’ (discussed in chapter 2), Ritzer and Stillman (2001) have argued that baseball stadiums fall into three historical categories. First, early modern stadiums — such as Boston’s Fenway Park or Chicago’s Wrigley Field — were built in the early twentieth century and are usually associated with strongly topophilic qualities for five main reasons: their small size, allowing good views and intimacy; their quirky individual features, such as unusual wind channels that influence play; more iconic features, such as distinctive walls or veg- etation that inspire fan affection; their urban location; and having played host to epic moments in baseball history, thereby inspiring ' nostalgia.
148 Sporting Places and Spaces Second, late modern ballparks, such as Houston’s Astrodome, were built in the mid-1960s through to the late 1980s and are largely functional in four particular ways (Ritzer 1993): their efficiency, such as in multi-use design; predictability, such as through fixed roofs, to control playing conditions, and consistent artificial turf; quantity over quality, thus prioritizing stadium capacity over the viewing angles from different seats; and use of automation instead of workers, such as with electronic ticketing machines. Late modern stadiums are relatively charmless and ‘lose the magical qualities that attract con- sumers’ (Ritzer and Stillman 2001: 100); during the heyday of these stadiums, baseball attendances declined significantly. -“Third, postmodern ballparks, such as Baltimore’s Camden Yards and Atlanta’s Turner Field, have been constructed since the early 1990s. Postmodern stadiums feature ‘simulated de-McDonaldiza- tion’; in effect, this softens the visibility and impact of stadium rationalization and-seeks to re-enchant supporters in subtle ways. For example, some park owners stage ‘extravaganzas’ that have little relevance to the game in order to attract and distract supporters, such as by using high-tech and entertaining scoreboards or by putting on firework displays. Postmodern stadiums host other major businesses and commercial leisure activities — such as shopping malls, museums, video arcades and food courts — that increase spectacle and ballpark profitability. I note in chapter 11 how postmodern culture is marked in part by playful cultural pastiche and by breaking down taken- for-granted categories and boundaries. In this vein, postmodern ballparks simulate some features of early modern stadiums — such as downtown locations, old-fashioned facades, stylized old technol- ogy (beer pumps and mini-trains) and monuments to former players — that confuse time and space categories, playing on nostalgia, and giving the arena ‘the aura of the old’. Re-enchantment is also sought through associating the stadium with distinctive local cultural symbols, such as through special backdrops or selling products with local themes. Yet, beneath these attempts to re-enchant the stadium, we find much bigger processes of rationalization (McDonaldization) and commercialization still holding court: thus, for instance, the sta- dium’s layout is carefully designed to maximize the sale of products and profitability. Arguably, this model of the postmodern stadium might be extended to explain other sporting spaces. Sporting Places and Spaces 149 Fantasy stadiums ccording to Hannigan (1998), North America is producing post- modern “fantasy cities’ in which the middle classes are able to enjoy new experiences while having minimal interaction with the lower social classes. Hannigan identifies six key characteristics of the fantasy city, and these may be applied to explain the ‘fantasy sport stadium’. The fantasy city is: theme-o-centric, in advancing a scripted theme or themes. For example, in some cities there may be a strong focus on the theme of popular culture, which includes references to specific sport sta- diums, music venues, and nightclubs. aggressively branded, often involving ‘synergy’ partnerships with transnational corporations. In sport, as noted earlier, numerous stadiums have sold their naming rights to major corporations. a.-24/7 enterprise, running day and night, offering flexible con- sumption outlets to fit with new, varied employment routines. The fantasy stadium might be part of a wider multiplex facility comprising restaurants, shops, cinema houses, bars, bowling alleys, hotels and car parks. modular, mixing many standardized consumer outlets. Fantasy sport stadiums might have food and merchandise outlets in modu- larized sale points. solipsistic, emphasizing illusion and disregarding social problems and injustices in local neighbourhoods. The fantasy stadium might be located within a poor residential area, but its internal themes will entirely ighore outside civic issues and social problems. o postmodern as a cultural form, in terms of emphasizing archi- tectural pastiche, virtual reality and the ‘pure entertainment’ of theme parks (Rojek 1993; Baudrillard 1996a). Contemporary sport spaces may be experienced as theme parks, where the old differences between fantasy and reality, past and present, local and global, are increasingly blurred. Inside the fantasy stadium, specta- tors may encounter life-size cartoon characters, play at interactive exhibits in the stadium museum, spend more time buying products or watching giant screens rather than the field of play, and exit at the end through faux art-deco gates. For Hannigan, the fantasy city promotes three types of consumer activity which are largely self-explanatory: ‘shopertainment’, ‘eater- * tainment’ and ‘edutainment’, In effect, according to the logic of this
150 Sporting Places and Spaces model, the postmodern stadium is rooted in the entertainment-based intersection of fantasy environments and consumerism. In broad terms, this analysis also chimes strongly with Ritzer and Stillman, in producing fantasy locations that are heavily focused on profitable consumerism. Virtual sport stadiums and settings A third perspective explores how postmodern sport settings intercon- nect with the rise of wirtual, mediated cultures and social experiences. The French social theorist Jean Baudrillard considered the virtual world to be the ‘fourth dimension’ (la guatriéme dimension) for human life (Liberation, 4 March 1996). In sport, Baudrillard would encour- age us to examine how the virtual world has taken precedence over the real; thus, for example, football stadiums may come to be filled with television cameras rather than ‘live’ spectators (Baudrillard 1993: 79). For Eichberg (1995), the rise of virtual culture is reflected in the zapping model of contemporary sport; thus, in the stadium, we find spectators constantly switching their attention from events on the field of play to the giant screens that constantly replay key moments, to their radios that provide running commentaries, and to their various electronic devices (smart phones, tablets, laptops, and so on) which provide links with countless other social environments and realities. These observations underline how sport is experienced in multi- farious virtual ways. Sport games are an important constituent of the global video-game industry, which is predicted to be valued at US§82 billion by 2017 (Forbes, 7 August 2012). Video games represent the principal ways in which many sport fans ‘play’ sport. Moreover, in most nations, sport events soak up a large proportion of the content of television networks, particularly on subscription-based channels. During sport mega-events, such as the World Cup finals, millions of fans congregate in public squares and parks to watch the events on giant television screens. Overall, these different analyses and premonitions of the postmod- ern help to reveal the influences of advanced rationalization, com- mercialization and virtual culture in contemporary and future sport spaces. Several of these approaches advance theoretical models that may be used to assess how close current stadiums are to these par- ticular visions of postmodern sport spaces. We may also note that the postmodern aspects of sport settings intermingle with other, modern and, indeed, pre-modern aspects of Sporting Places and Spaces 151 _sport culture. For example, watching live sport in public squares on giant screens appears initially to be a virtual, postmodern experience. Presmodern folk culture is also evident here, for instance through _ heavy drinking and partisan support for a specific team, and perhaps __in the setting for the giant screen, such as a historic park or piazza that has old topophilic significance for local publics. In modern terms, the event may be rationally organized, with alcohol outlets, portable toilets and public transport, and commodified, such as through cor- porate sponsorship, advertising and VIP sections for corporate guests (cf. Bale 1998; Giulianotti 2011a; Hagemann 2010). In chapter 11, 1 explore more fully the postmodern aspects of contemporary sport and their interplay with modern and postmodern culture. In the next section, I turn to a subject of growing importance for sport stadiums: security and social control. Sport stadiums, security and social control Since the turn of the millennium, social scientists have directed greater attention to the regulation, surveillance and social control of sport stadiums and other sporting spaces.?! An early inspiration for this research was provided by Foucault’s (1977) theory of ‘panopti- cism’, which pointed to how populations undergo modern forms of spatial surveillance, discipline and regulation. Foucault drew his theory from Bentham’s ([1791] 2010) model of the Panopticon, in which, in a prison context, a central watchtower is positioned to view and to monitor a surrounding ring of cells; prisoners in these cells must assume that they are under constant surveillance, and so they are more likely to follow prison rules and regulations. More broadly, we may consider that the logic of the Panopticon has become central to everyday life, as reflected in the design of public spaces to maxi- mize the monitoring and surveillance of diverse populations. Sport has played a significant role in advancing the public Panopticon. In the UK during the 1980s, CCTV systems were installed in most football stadiums, primarily as an anti-hooligan measure, in order to monitor crowds. In effect, these stadiums became social laboratories for testing CCTV systems, which were then installed in urban centres in many towns and cities, as well as in most elite-level sport stadiums throughout the world (Armstrong and Giulianotti 1998). Panoptical surveillance and control are achieved inside stadiums in other ways. For example, all-seated stands provide preater comfort than standing areas and are often presented as
152 Sporting Places and Spaces appealing to broader audiences, including more women, young fans and older spectators; however, seating also restricts the movement of fans and serves to differentiate sport crowds into individual specta- tors. Thus, security personnel may better observe spectator activities and may identify and remove those deemed to be misbehaving. Since the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001, there has been a substantial expansion in the surveillance and social control of sport-related spaces, as reflected in much greater spending on secu- rity. Thus, for summer Olympic Games before 9/11, official security spending was estimated at US$66.3 million (Barcelona, 1992), $108.2 million (Atlanta, 1996), and $180 million (Sydney, 2000); after 9/11, spending multiplied to $1.5 billion (Athens, 2004), $6.5 billion (Beijing, 2008) and an estimated $2 billion (London, 2012) (Houlihan and Giulianotti 2012). In addition, if their bids are to be successful, cities seeking to host major events such as the NFL Super Bowl must demonstrate to the relevant sport governing bodies that they are ‘terrorist-ready’ in terms of security personnel, technology and overall spending (Schimmel 2011). The security and surveillance technologies at sport mega-events go on to become part of the security legacy from these events (Giulianotti and Klauser 2010). For example, for the Beijing Olympics, among new security technologies were CCTV systems, surveillance systems that registered unusual crowd patterns and movements, two-wheeled electric scooters, and event tickets containing RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips to monitor ticket-holder movements. In Delhi, around 2,000 CCTV cameras were installed during the build-up to the Commonwealth Games. In Germany, for the 2006 World Cup finals, the first national use of CCTV cameras with facial-recognition software occurred, allowing images of those being filmed to be checked against ‘hooligan databases’. Some cities such as Sruttgart and Munich also installed hundreds of new public CCTV systems. Other new security technologies were RFID chips, bar codes and holographic images for match tickets (Eick 2011; Klauser 2008). The common expectation is that these technologies will stay in place after iche ;nega—event in order to monitor ordinary citizens at the everyday evel. Sport events also provide the basis for the sharing and transfer of security knowledge and expertise. Further partnerships arise within the security system, for example through new links between private and public security providers, or between the police, the armed forces and the intelligence services. Moreover, these events produce a trans- national shadow industry, involving nation-states, security companies Sporting Places and Spaces 153 and sport governing bodies: for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, almost all of the spending on security technology was directed towards business ith foreign corporations such as Honeywell, GE, IBM, Siemens and anasonic (Giulianotti and Klauser 2010). Overall, many of these security technologies and strategies extend _ beyond the Foucauldian model of the Panopticon, in terms of being orientated towards anticipating potential breaches in security, while also routinely gathering data and intelligence on individuals that may be stored for future use. For some scholars, the security legacies at ~ some sport mega-events have anti-democratic impacts and longer- term effects, in terms of eroding civil liberties, while erecting and normalizing systems of surveillance without gaining public approval or establishing sufficient legal safeguards (Eick 2011; Samatas 2011). We should also underline the deep interconnections between these ~ ‘surveillant assemblages’ and dominant, neoliberal political eco- nomic influences within sport (cf. Haggerty and Ericson 2000). The _ establishment of relatively controlled, sanitized and pacified spaces inside and outside sport arenas contributes strongly to the neoliberal project of commercializing sport in order to attract wealthier, more bourgeois audiences (Giulianotti 2011b). Do significant forms of opposition or protest arise with regard to these processes? In the context of social control at sports, we might identify aspects of transgression (if not explicit resistance) as lurking in any rowdy or disorderly behaviour that occurs in stadiums and which is deemed to be offensive to ‘respectable’ or corporate spec- tators. For example, at the Sydney Cricket Ground, until the late 1980s, the ‘Hill’> was a large, undeveloped grassy area, with strong topophilic associations, and populated mainly by working-class fans given to raucous conduct (Lynch 1992). After its redevelopment as a more expensive seated area, disorderly and unruly incidents occurred which might be interpreted as ‘reactions’ against the ‘sanitization’ and ‘corporatization’ of sport and ‘against being placed in a plastic seat and enclosed’ (ibid.: 44). Elsewhere, since at least the 1960s, different subcultures of young male football supporters have sought to evade security measures in order to engage in violent clashes with their rival peers (Giulianotti and Armstrong 2002). More routine forms of resistance may occur when, at football fixtures in different nations, spectators refuse to sit in allocated seats and instead stand to watch the game. Finally, explicit protests sometimes take place against constrictive security measures at sport events, for example among football supporters in the UK, Germany and Italy and for ! the Olympics in Beijing, Vancouver and London. However, security
154 Sporting Places and Spaces ‘lockdowns’ at sport mega-events may be such that the scope for protest is substantially curtailed. Overall, given these political eco- nomic and technological drivers, elite-level sport will continue to experience intensified and more elaborate forms of securitization in and around stadiums. Concluding comments The critical academic study of sport spaces is a highly vibrant inter- disciplinary field for sociologists of sport. The socio-cultural mean- ings and identities of sport arenas may be underpinned by strong forms of topophilia and social solidarity. These deep attachments are potentially threatened by political economic processes, notably the hypercommodification of sporting spaces, which in turn has direct impact on public access to, and cultural identities within, sport sta- diums; local publics are further squeezed by the political economy of stadium relocations and the hosting of sport mega-events. Theories of postmodern sport settings help us to recognize both the social impacts of the rise of virtual culture and how commercialization and rationalization shape fantasy sporting environments. Finally, through their rapid expansion in sport, security and surveillance systems have had wider societal influences and lasting social legacies, particularly at mega-events, while also creating more orderly, commercialized stadium environments. Ironically, in line with Ritzer’s thesis, such processes may serve to de-humanize the stadium by marginalizing the raucous, participatory atmospheres that otherwise appeal to live and television audiences. Diverse forms of public opposition and criticism have at times sprung up — in episodes of transgression and resistance in stadiums and in popular campaigns and mass demonstrations by social move- ments. Mirroring the position of some oppositional movements, a critical sociological standpoint would point towards alternative models for the socio-spatial organization of sport. However, as the fate of the Brooklyn Dodgers might remind us, the cultural politics of sport settings seem to boil down to an uneven contest: on the one hand, there are dominant political economic forces of commodifica- tion, rationalization and securitization; on the other, we find sport’s subordinate grassroots folk cultures that celebrate forms of topo- philia, social solidarity and the carnivalesque expression. To protect the latter, sport settings would require forms of political, social and cultural intervention to override purely commercial interests. Such Sporting Places and Spaces 155 ieasures would have clear social benefits, although admittedly uld come too late to save great former clubs such as the Brooklyn dgers. Questions for discussion 1 In what ways do different sport places inspire particular kinds of love and affection? . What impacts do commercial interests and factors have on sport stadiums _and their wider communities? How are postmodern stadiums designed? What impacts do they have on the experiences of sport audiences? How are sport stadiums and their wider environs designed to allow for the surveillance and social control of sport audiences? 5 How might we change our use and design of sport stadiums and other sporting spaces to ensure wider public participation and inclusion?