The impact of Covid-19 on sport – challenges, changes and lessons learned

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Britt-Marie Ringfjord
Linnæus University, Växjö, Sweden


Andrew C. Billings, Lawrence A, Wenner & Marie Hardin (eds.)
American Sport in the Shadow of a Pandemic: Communicative Insights
327 pages, paperback
Oxford, Oxon: Peter Lang Publishing 2022 (Communication, Sport, and Society)
ISBN 978-1-4331-9191-6

The pandemic affected various areas of society. In this book, media scholars with an interest in sports examine how the COVID 19 pandemic affected the media sports industry, major sports organizations, and sports audiences. This book is written from an American perspective and discusses what knowledge and lessons can be learned in a post-pandemic period. However, the reflections made are also useful outside an American sports media context, not least through the cases covered in this book that can relate to a common interest in sports as global events.

The book’s three editors are well established scholars within sport media research and noted editors of several books and journal articles. Andrew C. Billings is known for research involving sport media and issues of identity. He holds the Reagan chair of Broadcasting and is Executive Director for the Alabama Program in Sports Communication at the University of Alabama. Marie Hardin is known for focusing on diversity issues and ethics in sports journalism. She is dean of the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, Penn State. Lawrence A. Wenner’s solid reputation is based on extensive publishing over the years, as well as involvement in several sport media journals as founder and editor. Today, he is the Von der Ahe Professor of Communication and Ethics at Loyola Marymont University. Worth mentioning is that all three often appear in reviews of books and articles here on idrottsforum.org.

The editors’ introduction sets the book’s context in American sports and what happened when the principles for communication changed during the pandemic. How the effects also exposed difficulties in communication and power structures can then be further examined. This opening offers approaches to the complex intersections of communicative insights to be reconsidered, evaluated and eventually changed. Together, the 26 contributors cover four main areas important in Media Sport Studies, which, illustrated by current cases, bring theories, concepts and models into an interesting scholarly focus.

The book is divided into four sections that relate to the common research contexts of sports media and communication: socio-economic, health, intercollegiate and mediated contexts. The first section, “Socio-Political/Economic Contexts” comprises five chapters. In the first chapter, “Reimagining the Role of Local Sports Media During the Pandemic Pause”,Whiteside and Winemiller discuss the role of local sport media and the local sport journalists’ need to find new ways to practice journalism in local contexts. News media in local contexts has experience of competition, especially in sports, where sport organizations’ online news sites challenge sports journalists’ position of authority as news providers. During the pandemic, sports events were paused and the opportunity to present sports news was reduced, what other areas can sports journalists cover? How is it possible to uphold the established role and the local interest in news for local sports reporters? In this interesting field study seven reporters and editors working at small and medium-sized newspapers are interviewed about what the pandemic meant.

Using the metaphor of the cauldron, Black athletes were thrown together by public health crises and fired by racial injustice, and the shooting of Jacob Lake brought the cauldron to blazing temperatures.

In the second chapter, “Force Majeure: Pandemic Labor Insights within the Sport-Media Complex”, Cox uses the concept of force majeure to examine the labour conditions for athletes. The mediated context positioned athletes as labour, but at the same time also made the athletes responsible for their own safety during the pandemic. In this vein the erosion of labour rights for athletes is discussed, pointing to the paradox to both be an athlete and employed. Other professions related to sports also reveal that test protocols divided different professions based on power and position. The pandemic exposed the asymmetrical power relationships within the sport-media complex.

In the third chapter, “More Than Fun and Games: How the World Will Look at American Sports – and America – After COVID-19”, Ličen uses the international sport context to investigate US Sport and how the relation to the national and the international spheres shifted. National sports lost terrain and importance during the pandemic but gained popularity internationally by fans and strengthened the sport media conglomerates. In chapter four, Grano analyses labour strikes in basketball and Farred’s concept “Black athletic body as an event”. The basketball case illustrates how the Pandemic bubble not only contained COVID, but also activism by coordinating the strikes representing Black athletic bodies within the two interrelated spaces of sport and racist state violence.

Kahn, in the fifth chapter “Reading Against the Platform: Communicative Capitalism and the NBA Strike”, follows this thread examining activism in relation to the NBA Strike. The bubble offers Black athletes’ activism a site of empowerment and a potential for raising awareness to enact social changes outside the sport site. Drawing on Marx’ definition of consciousness as the outcome of social conditions, “the Covid bubble was designed to seal athletes off from the world, but it proved to be permeable.” Using the metaphor of the cauldron, Black athletes were thrown together by public health crises and fired by racial injustice, and the shooting of Jacob Lake brought the cauldron to blazing temperatures. This is indeed an illustrative case of observing how media narratives interact with the revival of sports activism, and where social conditions generate racial consciousness through the relationship of black athletes to sports as a capitalist institution.

The second section studies the “Health Contexts” in four chapters. The phenomenon of health as a norm and routine for sports is well known not only in major sports, but also has an influence on how groups in society plan their everyday activities. Parents with sports-active children and teenagers, recreational athletes and those active at club level outside established league sports or as sports spectators interested in various sports are also affected by the routinization of sports.

The workplace dangers and gendered ideologies are discussed by Serazio in chapter 6, “Hegemonic Masculinity on the Sidelines: Workplace Dangers, Gendered Ideologies, and Athletic Participation in the Pandemic Era”. In a modern society, sport offers the foundations of hegemonic masculinity linked to demands to preserve men’s position and value. Hence, the media representation of hegemonic masculinity is central to sports culture and the pandemic challenged the historical gender norms within sports discourses. “Sports today persists in grounding masculinity” that values qualities such as being brave, taking risks, exercising physical strength and heterosexuality which still dominates in mediated sports content. Through sports culture, hegemonic masculinity is reproduced in men’s relationship to their own bodies and socializes male athletes to ignore pain and mask weakness. Wearing a mask became the shameful sign of weakness, ridiculed in the sports world by those who saw themselves as ‘real men’. Sport as labour symbolizes a more authentic hegemonic masculinity linked to robust material and moral values in relation to softer feminine values of safety and caution. The analysis of how athletes’ decisions on whether or not to return to play are reported in sport media content and on social media, shows several ways of dealing with masculinity. The hard way of masking their fear and ignoring the disease, was met by other mediated narratives of male athletes who spoke openly about concerns for their own health and their family’s health. The mediated hegemonic masculinity displays a wide range of responses that might show hope for other masculine ideals that challenge the hegemonic masculine ideology; that is, if they persist in post-pandemic times.

(Image courtesy of Los Angelista)

In Chapter 7, “Big Risks, Big Rewards: Framing the NWSL Challenge Cup Amid a Pandemic”, Bell, Dotson-Pierson and Appelquist also uses content analysis to study how the National Women Soccer League (NWSL) and health issues were covered in news media. The return-to-play stories had more focus on rewards and the need for increased revenues in Women Soccer League than on health. Three quarters of the media content provided neutral frames and had a balanced focus on three main contexts, medicine, exposure, and sports. Accordingly, journalistic ideals of objectivity, this fact-oriented and neutral approach, were the frames that offered sport readers insights into the NWSL’s priorities and strategic planning that supported the return to the field. The gain frames appeared in the content in relation to potential exposure and covered in stories about favours through sponsorships, roster moves or expansion. In these frames, reaffirming quotes from players supported the safety and the positive spin to be the first professional league to return. The loss frames were almost non-existent after the first opening match. The opportunity to discuss health and safety risks for female athletes was missed. The opportunity to discuss health and safety risks for female athletes was missed. Also noted is that childcare was never offered but became a league concession to “understand our need” for mothers to attend. This confirms the gender codes that women in all professions face unique challenges while balancing work and home responsibilities. Narratives with a personal frame leaned heavily on the voluntary choices the players made about whether or not to play in the tournament. The need to expose female players to increased sponsorship deals and audience rates also supported the voluntary choice, but at the same time hides gendered problems. The NWSL was allowed to lead the way for other professional team sports leagues to follow when they returned to play. Journalism could have taken more responsibility during the pandemic to highlight the larger issue of public health early in these stories.

Chapter 8, “The Team’s Best Interest” COVID-19, Mental Health, and Neoliberalism in College Football”, by Lavelle continues the theme analysing male college athletes and their return to NCAA. Using neo-liberalism to discuss how the athletes’ mental health came in conflict with the universities policy and desire to minimise losses of revenue. College football students are unpaid, and their mental health and well-being is not a priority, in spite of generating millions of dollars in revenue for their universities. In the pandemic period, ethical sensitivities and risk considerations were neglected at the expense of neoliberal logic which seems to have guided the decision-making calculations, pragmatism and risk taking. The mental health policies, Lavelle argues, must be included if American colleges should show interest in the athletes’ health.

In chapter 9, “Sport Figures as Public Health Prompts: The Broadening Role of Celebrity Athletes in Health Communication”, Parrott, Towery and Billings uss four case studies to illustrate how sport celebrities’ responses to the pandemic influenced fans’ understanding of health issues. Studies in health communication derives from agenda setting, framing theory, and social cognitive theory, which together provide the starting point for examining how celebrity athletes influenced fans. Celebrity athletes can be a key source of information, advocacy and persuasion in their positions in the athletic community, but also to drive the public agenda by sending direct messages amongst fans. Four models of how influence worked are presented: The “Uniformed”, the “Expert Consultation”, the “False Prophet” and the “Philanthropic”, each case representing stories about the role and influence of celebrity athletes in pandemic health communication. This interesting study concludes that media-based agendas are also frames from which to act for those in positions within the world of sport. Key figures in the sports world played key roles – for better or worse – in setting the agenda for how to interpret the seriousness of Covid-19, and what steps could be taken to stay safe.

The third section, “Intercollegiate Contexts”, further develops intercollegiate sport and its major actors, the institutions, the athletes and the fans. Starting in chapter 10, “Socialization and Team Management in Post-COVID-19 Athletics”,Cranmer puts the limelight on young athletes’ socialization processes during the pandemic. The traditional pathways were interrupted and caused chain effects on successful integration into intercollegiate competition for young athletes. Uncertainties and stressors will always be a part of the socialization processes into sport culture for young student-athletes. Questions that remain unanswered are how Covid-19 has changed a generation’s experiences and what implications it has for their future as athletes.

Sport as labour symbolizes a more authentic hegemonic masculinity linked to robust material and moral values in relation to softer feminine values of safety and caution.

In the following chapter, “Coronavirus, College Football, and the Collapse of American Exceptionalism”, Butterworth and Lever uses the impact of COVID-19 on masculinity to examine the American psyche through college football. Masculinity as a rhetorical figure is important in the protection of American ideology, especially linked to football as a strong supporter of traditional masculine ideals. It begins with Tuberville’s campaign, as a telling example of how his former college football career as coach was used in his US Senate campaign, and its links to the history of sports moments. Thus, the sport’s historical values are also used to symbolize American exceptionalism as a taken-for-granted part of the American way of life. Despite Tuberville’s efforts to embody the epitome of American exceptionalism, this story reveals how college football’s was used to try to mask national health disaster. American exceptionalism was revealed by a collapse that was already underway, and revealed by Covid-19.

In chapter 12, “The NCAA Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Enjoyment”, Smith analyses fans’ responses to the NCAA’s decision to play during the pandemic. Presenting three phases of activity by the NCAA and how the fans responded this study comes to the conclusion that fans may be willing to overlook a great deal in regard to concerns about player health to satisfy their need of entertainment.

In the final chapter in this section, “COVID-19, the NCCAA and Title IX: A Time for Gender Equity”, Hartman focuses on how the influence of the pandemic opened up opportunities to weaken enforcement of Title IX’s gender protections, as colleges and universities sought to address their weak business models. However, some social justice came as a response to the Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 after the Floyd murder. The program cuts expose that lawsuits are the most effective way to get a university’s attention regarding Title IX. The lawsuits in the past year also demonstrate that this is the most successful way to force university compliance. Notable is that men can benefit from Title X as well, as in the example from a threatened legal case concerning male track athletes against Clemson University. The important conclusion of this chapter is to emphasize the responsibility of researchers to support NCAA policies that would signal a stronger commitment to gender equity.

The fourth and final section, “Mediated Contexts”, Gantz, in chapter 14, “What Missing Sports Really Means: Mediated Sports Consumption in the Post-Pandemic World”, examines the impact of the pandemic on sports fanship and how the fans themselves experienced their sport interest during the time when sports ordinary shedule was altered. Using a survey, questions were asked to 525 participants. Some fans were annoyed with what they saw as the intrusion of politics into sports. The results indicate that most respondents had not changed their sports interest, that fans are unwaveringly loyal audiences.

In chapter 15, “Managing the Unprecedented: How Sport Organizations’ Social Media Strategy Adapted and Evolved in the Midst of Global Pandemic”, Sanderson discusses sport, social media and changes in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in sport organizations’ management. The effects of Covid-19 necessitated efforts in social media to keep the fans and stakeholders engaged. The sport organizations also dealt with the wave of social justice activism in response to the Black Lives Matter movement where many of them took to social media to support and document efforts made to address systemic racial inequity. Social media and its effects in post pandemic times also offer space to more fruitful analyses related to CSR.

Rogers and Farquahar’s chapter 16, “Esports: A Pandemic-Proff Alternative to Traditional Sports?”, covers e-sports in articles collected from the popular press. This study shows interesting aspects of the e-sports function related to Covis-19 and the lockdown in many parts of society. In chapter 17, “Olympics in the Shadow of Pandemic: Communication, Empowerment and Concern through Crisis”, Tang, Mahoney and Spiker examine social media communication by Olympic organizations, teams, and athletes during Covid-19, before and after the postponement of the Tokyo Games. The result offers a nuanced understanding of social media and its use by sport organizations and athletes during a crisis through content analyses.

In the last chapter, “Keeping a Sense of Community: Women’s Sports Leagues and (Post-) Pandemic Communication”, Antunovic presents a content analysis comparing digital media communication strategies of two women’s sports teams: the NWLS’s and the WNBA’s during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic with a focus on digital media content. The author discusses how women’s sports leagues and teams used the site’s news feature to communicate about partnership and social justice. NWSL’s content on social justice issues seemed to be driven by individual players, certain teams, and Black Lives Matter. The WNBA team seemed to be collectively an extension of years of player activism. However, the initiatives show variation, which is explained by the connection to the team. This chapter concludes with a call for communication scholars to expand research on how women’s sports leagues and teams are affected by various resources.

Overall, the book is an interesting documentation of experiences that shows how contemporary sports and media research relates to the post-pandemic times. The main parts of this collection contain relevant case studies of sport and its nexus with communication and media. The theoretical parts could have been clearer in some chapters. It may have to do with taken-for-granted American research contexts where certain theories and concepts are self-evident and perhaps say more about the reviewer’s shortcomings. However, the impression is that this book provides knowledge in an entertaining way.

From a Swedish and Scandinavian perspective I see this book as useful in sport journalism and sport management classes, to open up discussions about similar experiences and (mediated) situations in the European and Scandinavian contexts. Similarities and differences between different areas related to Covid-19 can be used in a class where different chapters are assigned for oral presentations to stimulate a discussion on research design, theories, method and what case studie may bring forward. I agree with the editors and authors that the various cases covered in this book inspire us to do more studies about the impact of the pandemic on society, media, sports and fans.

Copyright © Britt-Marie Ringfjord 2023

Table of Content

Part I: Socio-Political/Economic Contexts

      1. Reimagining the Role of Local Sports Media During the Pandemic Pause
        Erin Whiteside and Sam Winemiller
      1. Force Majeure: Pandemic Labor Insights within the Sport-Media Complex
        Courtney M. Cox
      1. More Than Fun and Games: How the World Will Look at American Sports – and America – After COVID-19
        Simon Ličen
      1. “Tear of the Bubble”: The Black Athletic Body as Event, and the Politics of Subtraction
        Daniel A. Grano
      1. Reading Against the Platform: Communicative Capitalism and the NBA Strike
        Abraham Iqbal Khan

 Part II: Health Contexts

      1. Hegemonic Masculinity on the Sidelines: Workplace Dangers, Gendered Ideologies, and Athletic Participation in the Pandemic Era
        Michael Serazio
      1. Big Risks, Big Rewards: Framing the NWSL Challenge Cup Amid a Pandemic
        Travis R Bell, Christian Dotson-Pierson and Janelle Appelquist
      1. “The Team’s Best Interest” COVID-19, Mental Health, and Neoliberalism in College Football
        Katherine L. Lavelle
      1. Sport Figures as Public Health Prompts: The Bradening Role of Celebrity Athletes in Health Communication
        Scott Parrott, Nathan A. Towery, and Andrew C. Billings

 Part III: Intercollegiate Contexts

      1. Socialization and Team Management in Post-COVID-19 Athletics
        Gregory A. Cranmer
      1. Coronavirus, College Football, and the Collapse of American Exceptionalism
        Michael L. Butterworth and Katie Lever
      1. The NCCAA Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Enjoyment
        Lauren Reichart Smith
      1. COVID-19, the NCCAA and Title IX: A Time for Gender Equity
        Karen L. Hartman

Part IV: Mediated Contexts

      1. What Missing Sports Really Means: Mediated Sports Consumption in the Post-Pandemic World
        Walter Gantz
      1. Managing the Unprecedented: How Sport Organizations’ Social Media Strategy Adapted and Evolved in the Midst of Global Pandemic
        Jimmy Sanderson
      1. Esports: A Pandemic-Proff Alternative to Traditional Sports?
        Ryan Rogers and Lee K Farquhar
      1. Olympics in the Shadow of Pandemic Communication, Empowerment and Concern through Crisis
        Tang Tang, L. Meghan Mahoney, and Ashley Spiker
      1. Keeping a Sense of Community: Women’s Sports Leagues and (Post-) Pandemic Communication.
        Dunja Antunovic

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