Does Digitalization Accelerate the Winner-Takes-All Effect in the Sports Industry?

IF 1.2 Q3 HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM

Physical Culture and Sport Studies and Research Pub Date : 2023-07-26 DOI:10.2478/pcssr-2023-0021

Ekaterina A. Glebova, M. Terrien, Michel Desbordes

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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Abstract Today media and sports are indivisible, having a kind of inseparable, mutually influential relationship. Media attracts audiences and generates profit through sports. In its turn, sports content is disseminated, transmitted, and popularized through the media. Thus, theoretically, sports and media exist in symbiosis. However, practically, this relationship is complex and includes many factors. First of all, in recent decades, the process of overall digitalization (and digital transformation) of all fields of life has had a crucial impact on sport, media, and their interrelationship. This paper aims to conceptualize and analyze the possible impact of digitalization on “winner-takes-all” (WTA) (winner-takes-most, WTM) dynamics in the professional sports industry, notably for spectating audiences, and answer the question: “Can digitalization be seen as a driver of ecosystem change and how it should be tested?” This conceptual model paper seeks to construct and develop a theoretical framework that can explain and predict relationships between concepts of digitalization and key sport spectating variables: audience, TV rights, and revenue through a prism of WTA. We found that the technological change in the sports media market and the greater global-orientated strategy of leading sports organizations have re-sorted and compressed many market shares, but the effect of technological disruption has been significantly less pronounced for the most powerful digital leaders in the industry. To this end, we represent digitalization as the main accelerating factor of the WTA effect (along with other auxiliary effects) in the sports industry and propose future research directions and perspectives.

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数字化是否加速了体育产业的赢者通吃效应?

在今天，媒体与体育是不可分割的，有着一种不可分割、相互影响的关系。媒体通过体育吸引观众并产生利润。反过来，体育内容通过媒体传播、传播和普及。因此，从理论上讲，体育和媒体是共生的。然而，实际上，这种关系是复杂的，包括许多因素。首先，近几十年来，生活各个领域的全面数字化(和数字化转型)进程对体育、媒体及其相互关系产生了至关重要的影响。本文旨在概念化和分析数字化对职业体育产业中“赢者通吃”(WTA)(赢者通吃，WTM)动态的可能影响，特别是对观众的影响，并回答这个问题:“数字化可以被视为生态系统变化的驱动因素吗?应该如何进行测试?”这篇概念模型论文试图构建和发展一个理论框架，通过WTA的棱镜来解释和预测数字化概念与关键体育观众变量(观众、电视转播权和收入)之间的关系。我们发现，体育媒体市场的技术变革和领先体育组织的更大的全球导向战略已经重新整理和压缩了许多市场份额，但技术破坏的影响对于行业中最强大的数字领导者来说却不那么明显。为此，我们认为数字化是WTA效应(以及其他辅助效应)在体育产业中的主要加速因素，并提出了未来的研究方向和展望。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Physical Culture and Sport Studies and Research HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM-

CiteScore

2.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

4 weeks

期刊介绍： Physical Culture and Sport. Studies and Research is directed to the representatives of the social sciences of sport (philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, pedagogues, managers of sport, and theoreticians of sport from particular or general point of view). The main goal of the journal is to present the most current (and only the best) papers from European, Western and Eastern countries of the world. It focuses on symbolic, axiological, and comparative aspects of contemporary sport. We dedicated this journal to humanists, social researchers, students, and practitioners.