I am going to choose 2 sports and explain the affect they have both locally and nationally with the affects it has on the environment. The first sport I am going to talk about is Football. Football is played in many countries over the world and is one of the most popular sports around. It also holds one of the biggest competitions in the sporting world, the ‘World Cup’. At the start of the competition 32 teams enter and it boils down to one Winner over 31 days and 64 games. In this period of time the world cup captures billions of people world wide to watch the games take place on T.V or by going to the venue itself and supporting them in the stadium’s.
The host for each coming world cup spend millions of pounds on building new multi-complex-stadiums for world cup games and hotels in which tourists or visitors in the country can stay. By building new stadiums, hotels and possibly more pubs and clubs it will offer more job vacancies for the local community, improving massively on a finance base. Some of the job vacancies available offer a wide option for people in the area, such as managers, secretaries to run the businesses, bar staff, caterers, bouncers, and receptionist’s along with lots more.
Stadiums will require grounds men, stewards and police officers to make sure there is no trouble going on between fans, ticket inspectors for the gates, cleaners, caterers for refreshments and so on. Fans will need to get to the games so improvement and regularity of transport is required, supplying more jobs to people. By hosting a massive competition like the World cup the economy will grow largely, supplying thousands more jobs for people in the country. In relation to the world cup and local clubs other industries are going to benefit greatly. This includes Merchandise, retail, media and advertising/sponsorships.
Cooperation’s like Adidas, Nike and Umbro who produce shirts for the represent countries such as Umbro who sponsor England, make a massive profit on shirt sales. Each time a replica shirt is sold, the company will get a percentage of the price it is bought for. For example, England launched a new away shirt before the world cup; thousands upon thousands of England fans would have purchased the shirt in time for the competition to show their support, allowing Umbro to make a lot of money. In addition to this Umbro also produce replica England training gear, many people who see certain players like John Terry and Frank Lampard, who are huge icons in English football, wearing the gear in training or travelling to games, advertise it to people making them want to buy the clothing.
These company’s also make Football boots and produce massive sales in doing so, the way they will advertise boots is by making contracts with professional athletes to wear their product. For example Thierry Henry who is now sponsored by Reebok football boots has just signed a �9 million deal. Signing high profiled players to promote the logo, helps the company to produce more sales not only in their football boots, but with other merchandise such as shirts, tracksuit, shorts etc. The chart above is taken from the B-Tec national sport, Ray Barker, Rob Snaipe, Louise Sutton and Lee Tucker, page 39; it shows the amount the UK has been spending on sporting goods alone in the past decade. As you can see in sports clothing and footwear the amount increases each year.
Locally, teams like Crystal Palace also have their own gift shops, one which is based in Croydon and the other is outside the ground at Selhurst Park. These create jobs for people in the area and increase the sales of merchandise such as mugs, key rings, flags, toys. Crystal Palace can also set their ticket prices which range from around10-20 for adults and kids, this also depends on who their playing. These ticket prices are reasonable for young kids as it can attract them to take an interest in football, it gives the community good well being by giving the chance for families to go out and watch a match together for a reasonable price. This boils down to producing more money for the club, in comparison to one of the biggest clubs in the world Chelsea, they will charge anything ranging from 20-60 a huge difference with our local club Crystal Palace.
Media will rise dramatically in sport due to the build up of story headlines of competitions like the world cup or the European championships. People will want to hear the latest news about certain teams or players, for example the previous world cup; Wayne Rooney was a huge focus point in the build up of the competition about his broken metatarsal and wither or not he will play. This story was broadcasted in many ways such as newspapers, radio and T.V. In relation to media, all matches that were played in the previous world cup were broadcasted on live television. An average international England game attracts on average an astounding 9.2 billion viewers, each time there shown. By showing the games on T.V it will boost the ratings for that particular channel it is shown on.
Another example are Champions league games, they are spread throughout the whole week and are specifically shown at peak times of the day. It is set out this way so millions more people getting home from work or school/college are able to watch the whole game live. T.V companies like Sky sports able a viewer to go interactive on the game, this means they can catch up on the games highlights and view the action from different angles, including special features like player cam. This attracts more viewers creating more ratings and money for the broadcaster. Some statistics show that a game of premier league Football shown on television can scoop up around 1.5 million viewers.