Role of Media and Commercialisation/Advertising Assignment

REPORT
'AUSTRALIAN OPEN 2018'

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Critically analysing 'Australian Open 2018'...........................................................................1
Theories and concepts to interpret event relating to demographics.......................................2
Trends in Contemporary Global Sport...................................................................................4
Role of media and commercialisation/advertising.................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
This report is based on a sport's event known as Australian Open 2018, which will be
analysed critically by using theories and concepts related to demographics. It will cover a brief
description about this event, its concepts and theories to support events. In addition, trends in
contemporary global sport and role of media and commercialisation/advertising will also be
discussed.
Event Name - 'Australian Open 2018'
Critically analysing 'Australian Open 2018'
This event is a tennis tournament conducted every year at Melbourne Park; this was
conducted between 15 to 28 January 2018. It was the first Grand Slam tournament of the tennis
season of 2018. This tournament is for professional players in singles, doubles and mixed
doubles (Biddle, Taylor and Yap, 2018). It was run by International Tennis Federation and was
also a part of ATP World Tour 2018 and WTA tour 2018 under Grand Slam category. The prize
money is 5.5 crores AUD.
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Illustration 1: The AO International Tennis
(Source: Rossingh, 2018)

The tournament comprised of both boys’ and girls’(below 18 years) as well as men and
women singles and doubles events. This event held the record of getting the highest attendance at
a Grand Slam event with 743,667 people. It was the first event to feature Indoor Play during
extreme heat and wet weather along with three primary courts like refurbished Margaret Court
Arena equipped with retractable, Rod Laver Arena and Hisense Arena.
The first Australian Open was played at Warehouseman's Cricket Ground in St Kilda
Road, Melbourne in 1905. The game was played on a ground consisted of grass but this
tournament was made the first change by introducing hard court. Mats Wilander was the only
person who has won championship on both hard and grass court.
Tennis is a sport of racket that can be played effectively and individually against a single
opponent or between two players or teams each, where each player has a racket that is strung
with cord in order to strike a rubber ball that passes throughout the court. Players require a lot of
stamina and strength to complete the game as they mostly like to strike hard. The original name
of Tennis is Lawn Tennis. It is a game in which points are awarded whenever the opponent
player is unable to return the ball correctly within the prescribed dimension of court effectively.
It is a sport event with people from multiple ethnic backgrounds to participate (Jewbali and
Dimitrakopoulos, 2018). Roger Federer was the winner of 2018 Australian Open tournament in
singles. It was his 20th single title and 6th Australian Open.
On the other hand, Caroline Wozniacki was the winner in singles 2018 women's title and it
was her 1st single Grand Slam title. Oliver Marach and Mate Pavic was part of winning men's
doubles and it was also Marach 1st Grand Slam. Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic was part
of winning women's doubles in 2018. Gabriela Dabrowski and Mate Pavic are the winners of
mixed doubles.
Theories and concepts to interpret event relating to demographics
There is a relationship between sports and social inequalities, race, nation, gender and
mobility. In addition to this, sports are related to demographics that different people from various
nations participate in events who are different in terms of gender, class, ethnicity, behaviour and
sporting spectacle of their own.
Sport is one of the most effective event that helps to address all these demographics at
one place and also enhance the relationship to build effective relationship between people as well
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as countries. Cultural and gender diversity are powerful and has strong presence in sports, overall
performance and exercises settings. It can be said that cultural identity influence the behaviour
and interaction of a person with another. Although, the participation of women and girls has
increased dramatically from past few years. But, media and stereotypical representation still
convey that this sport is a masculine activity.
In addition to this, the demographic transition theory is a general description about
changing patterns in fertility, morality and growth rates as societies are moving from one
demographic regime to other. The perception of people is changing and sport events are playing
a major role in this.
Empowerment is a multi-dimensional social procedure that helps normal people to
increase control over their own lives. Moreover, this can be described as a measure which is
designed to enhance degree of self-determination and autonomy in people as well as in
communities that enable them to show their interests in a self-determined and responsible
manner (Le and Nguyen, 2018). Empowerment in sports is based on various assumptions such as
giving authority, motivation, resources or opportunity to hold them accountable and responsible
for outcomes of their performances as it will also contribute to their satisfaction and competence.
The concept of positional consumption advised that people seeks to position themselves once
their material needs are met relative to others effectively. There are several benefits of playing
sport as it helps people to live a healthy life including effective functioning of heart, proper
management of weight, lower cholesterol level for improved blood circulation, control diabetes,
reduce stress level and many more.
One of the most important benefits of adding sport in daily life is that it brings positive
energy, build self-esteem and mutual discipline. There are many people who plays sports in their
daily lives all around the world to have some fun, joy and freshens of mind. It is very crucial for
children to play sport in their growing age to grow them faster and also improve their body
language. It is recommended by many athletes to stay healthy by including sport in daily lives or
activities to survive better and wealthy in own life.
Events such as Australian Open 2018, FIFA World Cup, Cricket World cup etc. assist in
increasing motivation in children and youngsters to get indulged in sports. Apart from this,
media in terms of advertising helps to provide information regarding the mega events played in
nations. There are many athletes and players who suggests that playing any particular sport helps
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to enhance self-esteem and soft skills the one feels great about it. Sport is an event that helps to
build mutual respect in people even if any person has negative attitude.
Functionalist theory, also known as Macro Sociology Theory is based on social
characteristics structures, patterns, social systems and institutions such as education, politics,
economy, media, religion and leisure (Rowe, 2018). This theory assumes that the social
institutions must cooperate with each other around a set of core values to manage entire
functions of social systems properly and effectively.
The Talcott Parsons tradition and conception of imperative functions argue that the four
basic social needs for society in sports are adaption, goal attainment, integration and latency.
Here are the four principles:
Adaption: It is important for a person to adapt social changes to survive in the society regarding
social culture and structure effectively. In addition to this, another survival crucial element in the
emphasis is that being physically fit is important for most of the sport events.
Goal attainment: It can be described as a motivation for people to achieve society goals with
accepted means of societies (Stragier, Evens and Merchant, 2015). It can be said that sports,
which is preoccupied with success and failure of participants also provides them a reason to
work hard and lead to victory that means success.
Integration: It is analysed that sport helps to promote social connection between people and also
give them opportunity to cooperate with each other in group or community. It is also a source of
personal social identification that people must keep itself together.
Latency: There are many forms of maintenance patterns which are primarily given with the help
of participants who are taught to accept the authority structure. This is well defined to athletes
about features of game that referees have authority over them to make sure that rules are
followed in any kind of sport event.
In sports, the functionalist theory generally leads to conclusion which is popular in
societies because it is able to manage characteristic values that help to preserve stability in social
life. This theory also supports policies in sports to recommend growth and development of
competitive sport effectively.
Trends in Contemporary Global Sport
There is a report released by Nielsen Holding on the top five global sports trends that are
impacting the entire sport industry (Pfister and Bandy 2015). New technologies, media
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consumption shifts, fast evolvement of the sponsorship businesses are causing some main
disruption in the sport industry.
Distribution and Disruption: One of the biggest single questions for the business of sports today
is whether rights of media revenues will hold up as traditional TV business or not. Markets that
are developed such as paying television is the engine of revenue growth of media for some more
decades. Regular changes in customer habits with new technology are at one hand for business
to get along with greater uncertainties.
E-sports evolution: This report states that commercialise efforts of e-sport and harness its
audience engagement power are intensifying and this sector is also primed for the future strong
development and growth. Publishers of the game are playing a more effective role in building
business around the e-sport related to their titles. In the future, e-sport will adopt same revenues
with the help of traditional sports.
Sponsorship to partnership: The market is already trending in this direction as sponsorships are
regular involving into two ways relationships. In today's world, a successful sponsorship is true
and proper partnership. Right holder must have a set of broader skills to become successful in
today's competitive world.
Sports in changing society: It can be said that race, gender, equality, diversity sexuality and the
environment of sport among other issues are dominating the media and have a significant impact
on each part of sport business. Brands are demanding while offering sponsorship and sports
associations do not have any control over ambassadors and athletes. It is analysed that in the
future, the need of sponsorship campaigns will increase along with spending.
Role of media and commercialisation/advertising
Media and sport is linked to each other and can be said that media affects sport itself as
well as individual and team in terms of delivering their image towards public. Media includes
promotional activities for sports such as Radio, show and TV competitions and matches.
In addition to this, commercialisation is a process in which a new service or product is
introduced in the market. It is analysed that commercialisation is broken into phases from the
product introduction to its adoption and mass production (Billings and Wenner, 2017).
Businesses pay a sum of money to gain access to huge consumers’ audience that helps to view
sport events media such as magazines, newspapers, television, radio and sponsorship of internet.
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In order to support an organisation, person or an activity is able to provide encouragement,
money or any kind of help for exchange of favourable publicity.
Apart from this, sponsorship is also a way from which a firm provides funds, services,
resources to a club in return for some form of association or rights with the same club. It may be
used commercially for the business itself. This could be in the form of a logo on Tennis ball or
racket that advertise the newsletter. Media related to sport is known as sporting media which is
known as a process of communication within the world of sport. The media helps to build a
foundation based on sporting event, writing, broadcasting, online media, video production and
advertising. This helps to determine the differences between content rooted in business
communication and rooted in journalism. The sports marketing is divided into three sectors used
to promote products and services that are associated with various channels such as sponsorship
of television, athletes, radio advertisement etc. during the various broadcast sport events on
sporting venues. Advertising and marketing is a critical part of overall team and stadium support
that they know that they have a trapped audience.
The Seven Network which is an Australian commercial free to air television network
owned by Seven West Media limited served as the host broadcaster for the Australian Open from
1973 to 2018. The broadcast rights are lucrative within nation as it always occurs at the end of
Summer season so that they have opportunity to promote their upcoming programs and other
line-ups effectively. Media plays a very important roles even after the matches are over that live
telecast of presentation ceremony and award moments are also covered by them in order to
capture the best moments for players as well as for public. The tournament is one of the biggest
tennis event and a lot of people came to watch matches.
In addition to this, mass media is a function of enhancing sport interest and increases the
attention of audience towards mass media like magazines, newspapers and other coverages.
Guidance and leadership within sport business is the second major role and responsibility of
mass media.
In addition to this, advertising also plays an important role to enhance interest of people
for watching the event for an effective gathering of crowd. Australian Open 2018 is one of the
most famous and known Tennis tournaments. Moreover, mega events such as Australian Open
2018 are monitored by media to deliver regular live updates to audience (Spaaij, Farquharson
and Marjoribanks, 2015). There are number of people in this year who attended it which was the
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largest turnover up till now compared to the previous event. Advertising has its own importance
that signs at sport events. Sponsorship and advertising helps to pay for the cost of stadium, teams
and also keeps the price of the ticket of the event for each of the fan at lower rates.
Thus, marketing and advertising is a critical part of overall team and sports . Sport
marketing can be described as a subdivision of marketing that helps to focus on promotion of
sport event and team along with products and services It is analysed that advertising in sport
events has helped the world of sports to grow into one of the most effective and efficient
profitable industries of the world. Media and advertising is also a way from which people gets
information about their favourite players t to stay connected with them.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report that sport is a very important era of today's
world includes all forms of physical activities. Australian Open is one of the most significant and
known Tennis tournaments of 2018, which consisted of singles and doubles events. It is analysed
that there are different people came from various countries in order to participate in such bigger
events who are also different in class, gender, behaviour, attitude and ethnicity. Adding sport in
daily life have a lot of benefits to an individual in terms of having positive energy, self-esteem
and mutual discipline effectively. Media and advertising also plays a major role in sports as it
builds a foundation based on sports' event, writing, broadcasting, online media, video production.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Biddle, N., Taylor, J. and Yap, M., 2018. Indigenous participation in regional labour markets,
2001-06. Canberra, ACT: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR),
The Australian National University.
Billings, A. and Wenner, L. 2017. ‘The curious case of the megasporting event: Routledge,
Abingdon and New York, pp. 3-18 (chapter 1).
Jewbali, A. and Dimitrakopoulos, R., 2018. Integrating long-and short-term mine planning
through simulated grade control, Sunrise Dam, Western Australia. In Advances in
Applied Strategic Mine Planning (pp. 173-189). Springer, Cham.
Le, H.T. and Nguyen, H.T., 2018. The evolution of the gender test score gap through seventh
grade: New insights from Australia using unconditional quantile regression and
decomposition. IZA Journal of Labor Economics 7(1) p.2.
Pfister, G. and Bandy. S. 2015. Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Sport, Routledge,
London and New York, pp. 220-230 (chapter 23).
Rowe, D., 2018. Cultural citizenship, media and sport in contemporary Australia. International
Review for the Sociology of Sport 53(1) pp.11-29.
Spaaij, R., Farquharson, K. and Marjoribanks, T. 2015. 'Sport and social inequalities', Sociology
Compass, (5) pp. 400-411.
Stragier, J., Evens, T. and Merchant, P. 2015. An exploratory study of sharing physical activity
on social networking sites', Media International Australia, (155) pp. 120-129.
Online
Rossingh, 2018. The AO international Tennis. [Online]. Available through:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daniellerossingh/2018/04/12/rafael-nadal-headlines-in
2018s-hottest-tennis-video-game-release/#90551573220e
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