Media Outsmart Sports!

Float like butterfly, taste like chocolate while talking to the media

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee “, a quote popularized by a famous boxer, Muhammad Ali. This quote perfectly suites the writing style of journalists today. There is no limit to the amount of publicity and attention the news today creates. In today’s society the media has a profound impact on sports and the majority of the time the impact is negative.

According to AC NIELSEN a research website, sports is the most read about and watched event in terms of newspapers and television. Whether one is a sports fan or not, the scores, highlights, and rivalries within a particular sport for example football will be ever present within our minds whether it is good or bad. An example would be the world famous rivalries of the Barclay’s English Premier League, The Red Devils, The Blues, and The Gunners.

For instance, the majority of people globally are fans of football yet there are some who do not know the processes of the game. Regardless of this fact almost everybody knows who David Beckham is. This is because of the influence the media has over us. However if an incident occurred may it be positive or negative like for example a scandal revolving around ‘Becks’ than we and the rest of society will be aware of it because he is such a public figure.

A good example in football would be FIFA’s European Championships in 2004 when Portugal was playing Greece in an intense final until an intruder ran into the pitch naked focusing all the attention on him from then onwards. To ardent football fans, the incident was an atrocity but for the rest of the non-football fans, it was such interesting news to read compared to the result of the match.

Many athletes are targets of media prey. Win or lose, their performance and life is publicly dissected by the media. Winning brings about glorification and expectation, and losing results in mockery or criticism by the media and therefore the public.

These examples support the premise that the media does have a profound impact on athletic performance and who does the public deem favorable in terms of sports celebrities. The athletes have two choices whereby they can succumb to the challenges of media distractions, or they can meet the challenges of media.