At the Buzzer: Parting Shots on Communication and Sport

In his final editorial essay, founding Editor-in-Chief Lawrence Wenner speaks to the successes of the Communication & Sport project as a disciplinary endeavor over its first 10 years. In handing over the editor’s baton to Andrew Billings and Marie Hardin, Communication & Sport is in good hands with the continued support of SAGE Publishing, the sponsorship of a set of scholarly societies, and a growing global scholarly community. Still, communication and sport, as an interdisciplinary scholarly endeavor, has been challenged by competing epistemological perspectives from pragmatic to critical. There is much evidence of implicit and explicit endorsement of a “received” view of sport in line with Coakley’s notion of the “Great Sports Myth.” Caution is advised as research from this vantage point often too eagerly receives sport as a naturalized state-of-affairs worthy of supporting and growing in an agenda focused on advancing the effectiveness and reception of sport communication in the marketplace. The essay closes with the need for a reckoning about the objectives of communication and sport as a scholarly space by reiterating reminder that today’s mediated world is ultimately “all about power.”

Media Coverage of the Paralympics: Recommendations for Sport Journalism Practice and Education

Researchers have extensively documented the issues in quantity and quality of media coverage of the Paralympic Games. The lack of coverage and stereotypical representations can be attributed to a variety of structural and cultural factors, notably including journalistic norms and values. This scholarly commentary proposes a reconsideration of journalistic values in order to argue that sports journalists have a professional responsibility to cover the Paralympics and issues of disability for at least three reasons: (a) The Paralympics are an elite-level, international sporting event and thus merit sport-focused coverage, (b) sport journalists have an ethical obligation to include diverse perspectives in reporting and to challenge stereotypes, and (c) sport is intertwined with social issues and requires contextualized reporting. The commentary concludes with recommendations for sport communication and journalism education.

Relationship Marketing: Revisiting the Scholarship in Sport Management and Sport Communication

Relational perspectives have influenced marketing theory and practice over the past 40 years, with a volume of relationship marketing (RM) research accumulating over this time. In sport management specifically, a number of RM research articles have been published since the late 1990s. Although an influx has been seen, a review of said literature informs us that RM is a diverse field with no single best explanation, no clear domain and scope, and no universally accepted definition and that, most particularly, the literature is a melting pot of various concepts. This circumstance creates frustration and confusion among new researchers. Additionally, as strategic communication strategies rely on clear and consistent messaging, it is pivotal to holistically address the issue. Therefore, adopting an integrative literature review approach, this commentary revisits the RM scholarship to present, brings attention to the complex nature of the RM literature, and identifies a point of departure for researchers attempting to find a fitting “home” for their research.

Football Without Football: Creativity in German Football Coverage by TV Broadcasters and Clubs During the Coronavirus Crisis

During the COVID-19 pandemic, TV broadcasters and clubs were challenged to provide alternative formats and content for fans of Germany’s favorite sport, football [soccer]. Thus, they emulated matchdays and created a Bundesliga feeling in new ways. The authors focus on this alternative creative sports coverage during the Coronavirus crisis and consider the effect on the audience. TV broadcasters, for instance, recreated Bundesliga matchdays through broadcasting historical matches, sticking with the original fixtures from before the crisis, while offering renewed commentary. Clubs conducted the Bundesliga Home Challenge, that is, FIFA20 videogame matches with their professional and eSport players, covering these matches on Twitter and their website. The authors argue that these efforts of keeping up the beloved structure of daily sports events satisfy social and entertaining belongings that are normally continually recreated through watching and talking about live sports events. Moreover, they discuss the possible sustainability of these innovative ways of sport communication.

Towards a Social Justice Disposition in Communication and Sport Scholarship

In this introduction to a special issue on sport communication and social justice, we offer some reflections on the state of the discipline as it relates to social justice. We bring attention to the role of sport communication scholars in the advancement of social justice goals and articulate a set of dispositions for researchers to bring to their practice, predicated on internalizing and centralizing morality, ethics, and the political. Identifying the epistemological (under)currents in the meaningful study of communication and sport, we offer a set of challenges for researchers in the contemporary critique of the communication industries based on “sensibilities” or dispositions of the research to those studied. We then introduce and frame the 13 articles that make up this double special issue of Communication & Sport. Collectively, these articles begin to demonstrate such dispositions in their interrogation of some of the most important and spectacularized acts of social justice campaigns and activism in recent decades alongside investigations of everyday forms of marginalization, resistance, and collective action that underpin social change—both progressive and regressive. We hope this special issue provides a vehicle for continued work in the area of sports communication and social justice.