The higher class workers probably wont work as long as some one from a lower class as their jobs are paid well enough for them only to work 4 to 5 days a week, and have the rest of the time to play their sport. It would also be very difficult for a lower class person to even fit into playing golf or crocket, as such a large amount of higher class people play it and have certain teams and people that are aloud to play.
It would be the same for a higher class person who wanted to start playing football or rugby it would not be as hard for them to get involved but it would still be seen as them playing with the wrong sort of social class and this is why there is such a big divide in the sort of class of people that play certain sports.
At the sametime people that are in full-time work are committed to responsibilities and therefore cant play sport all of the time, the people that play most of the sport are actually students even though they aren’t included in the social class standings, they still have more time and less responsibilities so that they can enjoy and play more sports with their time. Social class is often the problem with people wanting to take part in certain sports in the UK as many hidden problems are such as status, where you live, what school you went to and who you socialise with.
In the USA things are abit different as they don’t have a social class structure, it has a system that is dominated by race and ethnicity, as whites hold majority of the power with Latin and black/African holding little power although in time this is changing. Examples of racial divides in the USA is very clear to see as black baseball players once had to play in their own leagues, and whites had their own leagues.
Baseball also shows us that there is a huge divide as only black players will play in certain positions such as fielders with the whites only playing batsmen and catchers with the rest of the positions being taken up by Latin Americans. It’s the same with American football normally the quarter back is the only white player in the team because the quarter back is the player that controls the game and chooses when to attack, as this is seen that this position isn’t given to a black person as it is to important this shows that whites still have power over everyone else in American sports.
Some people may not be able to play sports as they have not enough money to do so, or their work life could get in the way of things, they could have very busy social life’s, their ability as a performer might not be good enough, social standings, gender, educational barriers, sexuality, religion, medical conditions, or where they come from. Most people will play sport because they excel in a certain sport, they find it enjoyable playing, or they play for the social side of sport, or they could just play because they like to win and get the good feeling after playing sport.
When you are placed into a social class you can normally be stuck in it for the rest of your life but there is a way in which people can move up or down and it is called social mobility and is a relatively new phenomena and it could not have happened back in the 1970s. One of the main reasons that social mobility can take place is because of education, this allows people to better themselves and therefore get batter jobs with better pay.
The education system in the UK allows everyone to leave at an appropriate level to join the world of full-time work, therefore if your family was in a lower group of class when you where a child saying that your father was a labourer then you could move up out of that class and go into a top class standing through your education e. g. qualifications such as G. C. S. Es, A-levels, PhDs which would get you a higher paying job with a better standing. Media in Sport Some different types of media used in sport would be such things as television, radio, internet, newspapers, and magazines.
It is also important to realise that when a sport is reported on the media professionals will give their own opinion and interpretation of a certain event, as this will sometimes differ from someone else’s views of the event it depends how the person saw the event e. g. live, on television with aid of replays. Sports events are always open to lots of interpretations and sometimes not all facts are reported on and a lot can be missed and some over focused on it depends on the reporter and the company they are reporting for.
Some sports can and have been promoted heavily by the media which can help them guarantee success. You will notice that sports that are more exciting which will normally need high levels of skill are more heavily published and some sports like American football is made for television as hey have advertisement breaks every five minutes so the sport is played around the adverts. Some sports such as cricket have even come up with new games for television to make it more exciting and that is where 20-20 cricket came into play to boost ratings and to get people more interested in cricket.
A lot of sports which are very good high skilled sports aren’t given a lot of time on television and are rarely seen for example table tennis it’s a very good game but television companies aren’t interested in showing the events. Some sports like snooker are only really shown when big events are being played and the television company showing the event will hype the event up with advertising before the event has even begun.
They will devote a lot of air time to the event therefore the viewers sometimes don’t have a choice but to get involved in a certain sport as the event is shown all the time for 3 weeks and normal broadcasts are over taken. Sometimes the media can focus to much on a performer in question and not the event, as this is often seen in such sports as marathon running only the best runners will really get the attention like Paula Radcliff because she’s good at the event and is also of English nationality so viewers will want to see how she is getting on as England is a very patriotic country.
Now on Sky sports you can rather than watch the football game you can watch a certain player with player cam which allows you to watch and see the certain athlete’s game from start to finish. Some athletes like Anna Kornacova in tennis don’t always seem to finish in finals or semi-finals but they are still watched and hyped up as players because of their good looks and some what celebrity standing, the same thing can be seen with David Beckham he is always in the newspapers but most of the time its not for his sport its to do with his private life which the media is really interested in.
Some good things to come out of coverage of sport on television are it creates publicity and marketing for sports, raises interest in sport, encourages participation in sport, gives extras about events e. g. replays and analysis, helps minor sport out now and again and can also increase the popularity of a certain team or individual. Some bad points about television covering sport are that it can sometimes result in a loss of interest in a certain sport, controversies can be created deliberately, errors by officials can be over analysed and also unsporting and bad behaviour can be over hyped and shown too much in a certain sport.
Television channels will also only normally show the best and most popular teams like Manchester United and Chelsea in football are always on television where as teams who stand lower in the division won’t normally get a lot of air time. Also they will always show the events at prime time to beat off any competition from rival channels and will force people to watch game at times when they would normally be watching their favourite soaps etc.
Sport is also a major part of national and local newspapers and sports news is often the first thing that people turn over to after buying their paper, or it will depend on which paper they buy based on how much sports coverage it has. The papers will normally have big sport stories on the front pages to get the reader interested, most papers will have a separate sport section and will normally take up at least a quarter of the papers content. Newspaper will normally fit into three different categories such as:
Popular Tabloids such as The Sun, The Mirror and The Star with their Sunday papers being The News of The World, The Sunday People and The Sunday Times. They mainly focus on only a small selected number of sports and will use sensational stories to help sell their newspapers. They are interested in transfers of players between clubs and these papers are mainly aimed at male readers with The Sun having the highest circulation figures of any paper.
Tabloids such as The Mail and The Daily Express, with their Sunday papers being The Mail on Sunday and The Sunday Express. Theses papers are also highly interested in sport and again will only focus on a small number of sports; they cover a broader report on topics and are aimed at female readers. Broadsheets are printed on bigger sets of paper and they include such papers as The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent and The Times, their Sunday papers are The Observer, The Sunday Telegraph.
They tend to focus on a much broader range of sports and will go into more serious sporting issues; they have more interviews with sports people and don’t build stories on as much speculation. Broadsheet papers are aimed more at intellectual people and doesn’t contain as many celebrates, has a lot more writing, less pictures, no celebrity gossip, humour is a lot more intellectual, aimed at higher class of people, deals with a lot of politics, more logical information, a lot more expensive to buy, a lot of text on the front pages.
Where as the tabloid newspapers tend to have a lot of slang language, a lot to do with celebrates, made for working class people, no business sections, huge sport section, humour easier to understand, less to do with politics, a lot more eye catching, cheaper to buy, a lot of useless information, aimed at male readers with women in paper and not as much text on front pages mainly pictures.
Sensationalism is when a story is over built and dramatised, or an incident can be sensationalised to make it sound and look better or worse than it really is, highlight programmes of sporting events can sometimes sensationalise incidents and can be very biased in what they want to show on their air time.