Introduction
The popularity and development of the football industry is a result of multiple factors and events which had an impact on football fans and proliferation of facts. In general, the popularity of football has a “historical” factor dealing with changes that have taken place in global football fans culture and social changes on the American continent at the present time. Football now reflects the basic, cultural changes of contemporary society. Modernization of the global football industry is a current trend influenced by globalization processes and the Internet which changed the understanding of football as sport only. Modern football is complex, specialized, aggressive and violence, entertaining and amusing (Banks 2002). Modern football is televised well. In all these respects it reflects values and impulses that are now dominant. It is now even more American than baseball and other sports. The modernization of the global football industry is a direct result the emergence of Sky Sports TV rather than the Heysel Stadium Disaster, 1985; the Hillsborough Disaster, 1989.
Causes of Modernization
Sky Sports TV is the main cause of modernization of football and its target audience. In football industry, facts has always been the poor relation of facts technology. Sky Sports TV joins diverse target audience and makes it available to football funs to view football matches in real time. Sport has always been seen as a mere representation of something else — news about football is recycled facts about something. Over time, the amount of news and real-time football matches real-timeable has increased. This is true both of the increasingly complex news and real-time the football viewers hold about simple entities (a cable television organization knows not just where it has laid its cables, but also details about the type of cable) and of ability to change more complex entities into data (Hamil et al 2000). Sky Sports TV is the most important insight today in thinking about the proliferation of football news, but it is only just being accepted and is even more rarely exploited. Facts can be manipulated in ways that are impossible with physical objects, giving them enormous value. A simple example is the use of computer-aided design techniques that now form a fundamental part of the football game process and entertainment (Boyle & Haynes 2004).
Role of Global Media and the Internet
Football news is seen as the new product developed within a computer system so that a virtual replica of the product can be tested, altered, and sent around the world without the expense and time involved in building a physical mock-up. Of course, physical prototypes still play an important role, but their part is much reduced in the overall process (Koranteng, 1998). This is a quintessential example of how facts have been used as a substitute for something else — the new product — in this case, to reduce development costs and time to market. The value of the facts comes about not just because it is a representation of the physical object, but also because it can be manipulated in ways that cannot occur in the physical world. Facts are substituted for the physical object, to the benefit of all concerned including football players and fans (Hamil et al 2000).
The Disasters
In contrast to Sky Sports TV, the Heysel Stadium Disaster (1985) resulted in the deaths of 39 football fans did not have a great impact on the modernization of football but stipulated strict norms of behavior and police control during matches. In the late 1980s, football was best known globally for the occurrence of aggression associated with a proportion of its funs. during this time, the global media slowly developed an agreement about the ‘disappearance’ of football-related fighting which was based on conventional reporting almost as grotesque as the social fear which had proclaimed and continued, the ‘golden ages of football. Critics admit that the Hillsborough Disaster (1989) was a result of inadequate policies and lack of police control rather than a new era of football. During this football match, 96 people died because of hooliganism and uncontrolled violence. Economic, political, and, especially, legal rule are involved in this redefinition of the area of the ‘social’, as most aspects of the football industry find themselves being reshaped for the new era that beckoned in the single market. Both of the disasters led to new football legislation and the all-seat policy applied to all stadiums. These events changed the understanding of hooliganism and police control demanding strict social organization and protection of facts (Banks 2002).
Sky Sports TV
Through Sky Sports TV, funs adopted football culture and values, borrowed its traditions and games. When news came that the pro football strike of 1970 was settled, it was a source of great relief for millions of fans. For a while, it looked as if there would be no season. Sports pundits were predicting a season of re-runs, replays, computer games, and other absurdities, and football owners and television networks were going crazy, having withdrawal of revenue nightmares. Finally, accommodation was reached and the pros were to play for us again. This great scare phenomenon is extremely interesting. Since the fans would still have had college football to watch, they would not have been deprived of all television football. The reason the threatened strike seemed calamitous is that professional football is more than a mere sport — it is a religion of sorts that expresses a philosophy that orients viewers to the world and explains how it “runs.” Modern football, in this respect, is like a lay church. It functions the same way, but without a professional clergy, it is not quite as satisfying (Garland et al 2000). Football, one of the most popular games around the world, is still unpopular in the USA. Its position in this country is explained by social and political reasons which involve a fear of communism and independence from Britain (Koranteng, 1998).
Created in Britain and penetrated other continents during the imperial period, football was rejected by the global community as a foreign and anti-national game. The state and private companie4s invested and supported other kinds of sport seeing football as a foreign game. The origins of workers’ sports, as an explicitly class-conscious movement, were traced to Europe (Hamil et al 1999). Socialist and communist groups and trade unions formed football associations, usually as an alternative to upper-class clubs from which they were excluded, but occasionally as a cover for otherwise illegal political activity. Workers’ Sports Association (WSA) encouraged a diversity of activity, but the staple was the mass drills, acrobatics, and stunts of gymnastics. The great majority of WSA members were eastern European immigrants for whom these were familiar, if not favorite, activities. At the beginning of the 21st century, lack of culture and professional players lead to low interest and low popularity of football in the USA (Hamil et al 1999).
Sky Sports TV changes the audience of football games and opens new opportunities for football fans to understand the sport. However, the value generated by the online media is not the only conclusion sports fans should draw from this example. The other key lesson is that the Internet is needed to bring it together and make sense of it. The data that is of value here is not facts that can be handled by human beings alone: it requires a computer to examine and then act on the huge amount of facts available (Boyle & Haynes 2004). For example, the tracking funds now prevalent on all the major stock exchanges require vast amounts of facts on the movements of shares and financial derivatives to mimic the behavior required. A subset of such the Internet would be meaningless: it only becomes valuable when all of it can be evaluated simultaneously, something which is beyond the ability of unaided football fun. The modernized model of the dealer outperforms its human rivals at least in part because it can monitor movements in prices at a more detailed level, allowing it to exploit opportunities that would, quite simply, be invisible to its human equal (Koranteng, 1998).
Football development and modernization are closely connected with the popularity of this sport on the global scale. The European countries that joined the first Football associations were the Netherlands and Denmark (1889), New Zealand (1891), Argentina (1893), Chile (1895), Belgium (1895), Italy (1898), Germany, and Uruguay (1900), Hungary (1901) and Finland (1907) (Football History and Facts 2008). The International Football Association was founded in 1904 and marked the global development of the football culture. Today, FIFA includes 204 states from all continents (Expert Football 2008). Critics admit that the proliferation of football to other countries was caused by the increased influence of England and the English language. “The expansion of football was fostered by British imperialism, and the game was adopted by locals who relished in beating the colonialists at their own game” (Briley 2006, p. 134). To stop the proliferation and popularity of football, some fans and interest groups provide campaigns against football games and events. They create anti-football websites publishing controversial facts and facts about football and its impact on youth. These campaigns aim to low the image of football in America and portraying it as a British and anti-American kind of sport in contrast to baseball and golf (Koranteng 2001).
Asian countries and Africa joined FIFA during the post-war period (after WWII). Thanks to the miracle of television (which has made football – professional and college – so much a part of the way of life) fans are treated from time to time to real-life dramas of great passion and poignancy. These countries are given of professional football coaches pacing along the sidelines, giving frantic orders to various lesser coaches and other millions. When their teams are doing poorly, their agonies tear at the heartstrings. Furthermore, coaches pass from one “identity” to another, eventually, except for a few geniuses who do not experience the agony along the sidelines (Maguire 1999). During the 1950-the 1960s, football became a part of the Chinese and Japanese culture. “However, when Iran–lead by a foreign, non-Muslim coach–beat Australia in World Cup qualifying in 1997, things would change. Iranians ran into the streets celebrating. Some women threw off their head-coverings and celebrated right next to the men” (Levendis 2006, p. 85). Football penetrated the American continent at the end of the 19th century and was brought by English immigrants. The first league champions took place in 1894 (Banks 2002).
Sky Sports TV levels geographical boundaries and makes football a global sport without limits. Technology and the Internet have both meant that the amount of facts available to individuals is increasing exponentially: if football leagues are not sure what football leagues are buying from one manufacturer, football leagues can check out the rival products quickly and cheaply. Real-time TV is empowering football fans. In the future, they will need to rely far less on the high-level image created by a brand but will be able to make far more informed purchase decisions. Already on the Internet, organizations are acting as ‘infomediaries’ who help potential purchasers find the best deal around, whether this applies to used cars or airline tickets. Giving football fans facts changes the balance of power from the corporate manufacturer to the individual purchaser. It means that football fans will be able to specify what they want more precisely rather than accept what the sport and funs offers (Boyle & Haynes 2004).
As home viewing for foodstuff takes off, we predict that the existing supermarket chains, whose brands at the moment are linked to choice, quality, freshness, and so on, will develop facts-based brands that will emphasize different qualities — the number of facts they have on a football fan’s previous purchases, being able to recommend recipes based on an individual’s preferences and so on. In other words, the supermarket’s brand will be orientated around being able to deliver to an individual the items which that individual wants. This is a trend that will not be confined to football leagues and clubs that have given not only escalating football fans’ expectations middle-class and, working-class but also the highly automated mass media production of news and just-in-time events of most mass media channels available for all global sports fans (Banks 2002).
One of the key areas of competition in football during the 1980s was over access to distribution channels to ensure that products could be brought to market. Financial service organizations invested millions in building up their branch networks; organizations vied for the rights to new television channels or wavelengths; retailers built massive distribution hubs and spent millions in identifying and then purchasing the best sites for outlets. Power lay in the hands of those who could take a product and deliver it to a football fan — hence the increasing strength of retailers over the last decade (Maguire, 1999).
However, with telephones, computers, and the Internet, the obstacles that meant that manufacturers could rarely contact their football fans s directly have largely disappeared: it is as easy now to buy a ticket direct from an airline as it is to go through a travel agent; it is simpler — and much more convenient — to arrange for a direct debit from football leagues r bank account via telephone banking service than it is to visit a branch in person. Intermediaries — whether they take the form of people (such as insurance brokers) who sell on to us the products or services of others, or are simply a processing function (a teller in a bank) — are becoming rapidly redundant (Boyle & Haynes 2004). This trend of ‘disintermediation’ will undoubtedly continue as the growing ease of access to technology enables a wider football fans base to be reached. The introduction of computer-based shopping via the Internet provides manufacturers with a cheap and effective way of reaching their football fans directly. As the technical problems are overcome, and the issues about the security of transactions and money transfers are resolved, it seems likely that direct selling from the manufacturer will grow exponentially. In this new battleground, the fight is therefore not about how to access football fans but about who football fans are. The better football leagues can identify football fans (and the more football leagues know about them), the less dependent football leagues will be on traditional channels to market and intermediaries (Fynn and Guest 1984).
As youth adopted the American practices, the ethnic clubs, which were denied the steady flow of European recruits by the restrictive immigration laws, lost their appeal. At the same time, native middle class athletic clubs induced some of the best ethnic and working class athletes to compete for them with offers of membership, sponsorship in international events, use of outstanding facilities, and tutelage under professional coaches (Rowe 1999). During the period of the Cold War a fear of communism and its global proliferation influenced Americans’ attitudes towards football. There are clearly a host of political, macro-economic and social factors that account for this radical shift, not least the idea that the state should pull back out of areas in which it has traditionally intervened. However, one of the strongest factors has to be the shift of balance that appears to be taking place from national governments to international football clubs and associations (Gantz and Wenner 1995).
Sky Sports TV does not recognize national boundaries but walks unquestioned through accepted checkpoints and customs halls. Similarly, it crosses the traditional divide between industries without a backward glance, just as it can flow around an organization without regard to the niceties of departmental responsibilities. It is therefore inevitable that the more that organizations and economies become virtual, the less will they be able to maintain the internal distinctions to which they are accustomed. A supermarket can become a bank because it does not need to invest in a physical network of branches or cash machines to do so; it just needs to have a license and a means to process football fans’ transactions. A hospital can set up a mail-order organization for young mothers because it has access to a football fans base of pregnant women. Facts are a currency that is accepted everywhere (Banks 2002).
Conclusion
In sum, Sky Sports TV, providing facts on elevator efficiency is the key to enhancing football sport in its funs’’ eyes, Up and Down should also consider linking itself to other organizations that could provide related facts. An engineering consultancy, for example, might be able to offer benchmarking facts on building efficiency; sports specialists might be able to provide facts on the costs of employee inefficiency, which Up and Down could use to bolster its case to the market. More than anything else, the notion of increasing returns involves a change in the way we think about how we run our businesses. The dramatic performance improvements envisaged providing a compelling argument for looking at our organizations from a fresh perspective, distinguishing their physical and virtual attributes, and developing strategies that maximize their visual uniqueness. The modernization of the football industry is a result of changes in the TV industry and the globalization of mass media. For football fans, Sky Sports TV offers a world in which the physical constraints of traditional industries (and economics) have no relevance. It follows that an organization that relies on its facts environment (as opposed to its traditional physical one) is more adaptable, and it is more probable that this organization will experience increasing returns. All mass media organizations rely on a combination of the physical and facts environments, although the exact combination. What the idea of increasing returns offers to business is a new way of thinking about strategy. No business is either wholly physical or wholly profitable. In every football club and increasing returns co-exist.
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