Abstract
In telling the story, what is the value of history? C. Wright Mills (1959) tells the budding sociologist that the value of history, that knowing the historical moment is essential to the questions we develop and the answers we seek. Rob Steen’s book (2014), Floodlights and Touchlines: A History of Spectator Sport, shares a wealth of historical moments. By shaping some of the most challenging topics of our time through the lens of a century and half, Steen has provided his reader with a deeper understanding of why questions matter. As I read Steen’s work, echoed throughout is the ideal that history, through all its faults, narrates and shapes the social scientist’s work. Through examples ranging from the life of Ayrton Senna or the European notion of leisure, Steen walks the reader through history and the sociological limitations of sport.
Steen starts with a candid confession – something I believe many of us too can claim – a love of “sticks and balls,” a love of the game; clearly stating that “the book is more concerned with competition and consumption than participation” (p. 24), Steen highlights the challenges resulting from commoditized sport. He illustrates not only the challenges of making a profit, but also in showing sport in a positive light as an equitable place. Floodlights and Touchlines chronicles the challenges of sport from a number of angles, most notably the role of the spectator, class wars, gambling, governance, the professionalism of sport, player’s rights, internationalism, politics, race, and sexuality.
Starting first with the spectator, Steen asks the reader to think about the experience of watching sport – be it at the stadium or from the living room. Chronicling the major enhancements (or degradations) of the spectating experience, Steen outlines the major changes facing the watching experience. The ease of travel and technology allows the fan to follow their team far and wide, in some ways solidifying allegiances and in others downgrading the venue as the preferred experience. Steen notes that “the world has shrunk” (p. 27) and we run the risk of the home-field advantage disappearing. Throughout his critique of the spectator experience, Steen asks the reader to consider how the experience of the spectator has become a small portion of the sporting world. No longer are profits made by attendance, but through a number of contact points, including social media. All of these contact points factor into a change in how the fan views and interacts with the game, regardless of what the game may be.
Throughout the book, Steen brings to the surface questions of sport as a field for social warfare; be it class, sexuality, race, or nationalism, sport often serves as the battlefield demanding change, while simultaneously reproducing these same social inequities. By bringing to light questions of “class,” Steen argues that sport is the field of class warfare. Asking the reader to think about the creation stories of individual sports followed by the question “who doesn’t love a good creation myth?” (p. 70) – Steen highlights the clashes of fame, fortune and the other. Both the fact and fiction of a sport’s origins are to be considered. Who claims cricket – the British or the French? Who claims baseball – the United States, Germany, Britain?; or the even more popular argument – who claims hockey? Our history is shaped by the victor, and class is at the heart of the victory. Moreover, Steen reminds the reader of sport’s role in conquest, leaving us to reflect that sport and its myths are culturally shaped and remembered.
Conquest is a broad term, one that evokes visions of the “exploring” conqueror. However, sport has been used as a tool of conquest in a number of ways, including economic conquest. Steen brings the reader to the deep connection of the power of sport and gambling. This reminded me of the stories of the European settlers’ moves to the Americas, and their disapproval of many First Nations’ love of sport and games. Betting was a significant part of many US indigenous sporting cultures. Its presence was used to justify the systematic eradication of sport from many indigenous US communities (Oxendine, 1995). Sport was indeed used as part of conquest as Steen notes in chapter two, but it was a multifaceted tool. Chapter three connected me with both the past and present ties of gambling to sport, even for the self-defined “most civilized” cultures. From players shaving points and throwing games to organized crime tightening margins, the pockets of sport run deeper than most consciously realize.
Moving to the governing structure of sport, Steen notes that the weight of governing sport falls to a number of individuals, from coaches and boards to commissioners and foundations. Not only do these individuals enforce the rules of “the game,” but in many instances they write the rules. Steen provides the reader with a number of examples of how those governing have used their role for personal gain by reminding the reader that the IOC, FIFA, and IAAF all have had histories of mis-governance that have impacted the outcome of sport.
Steen then turns to the question: what is professional, what is amateur? Highlighting the longstanding debate within and beyond the Olympic movement over where to draw that line, Steen asks if the IOC should be drawing that line. Noting recent comments from past Olympians, Steen points out the monetary gain achieved by the athlete’s labor; who receives that monetary gain? the IOC, the host city, the country, or the Olympian? With the IOC arguing that the privilege and honor of serving one’s country should be payment enough, does that make the Olympics half professional, half amateur, or entirely honorable? Steen returns to the age-old question: does being paid to play change the game? This question brings to mind the debate in the skateboarding community regarding the potential of participating in the 2020 Olympics. The chapter continues by chronicling the professionalization of a number of sports, including rugby and cricket – highlighting very different pathways. He shows the reader the conflict that faced sport in the first half of the 20th century – that being a professional athlete was almost an unforgivable sin. To demonstrate this, he points out Jim Thorpe. Thorpe, a victim of time and racial inequity, had to return his Olympic medals after he was found playing semi-professional baseball. In short, the crux of Steen’s chapter revolves around who is really getting paid: the athlete, the manager, the governing body, or the media mogul?
In the words of Steen, is the athlete just a “well paid slave?” Providing a number of examples, he walks the reader down the fine line between compensation and ownership created in the professionalization in sport, stating “Imagine if your employer was not only empowered to slash your salary but they could prevent you from seeking another job in the same field” (p. 243). The main examples of the chapter showcase what can be accomplished when the persistent athlete stands in solidarity with his fellow competitor. Examples that elucidate these points include safety and compensation stories of Formula 1 and a before and after the Bosman ruling comparison of European football, particularly free agency.
These questions of compensation and commodification continue to a deeper conversation of international compared to national play. Starting with the Olympics then moving to other sports, Steen notes the importance of nationalism through sport. Drawing on examples throughout history, he provides the reader with ample moments of national pride, asserting that “[S]port and nationality are at once inextricably entwined and mutually oblivious” (p. 283). He then moves to explain that the US has its own brand of sport, one that he decidedly considers un-international, asserting that “What matters in American sport, in short, is American sport” (p. 307). A sporting space laden with self-importance, the US focuses on the “us” in team and sport in particular. This is in comparison to stories of Australia’s cricketing history, in particular the unintentional creation of the term “Bodyline” by Hugh Buggy (p. 313). Of course, as with many critiques of sport, Steen walks the reader through British imperialism and sport, relaying to the reader a number of stories of post-colonial sporting conflict, most significantly cricket.
The reader is left with the unsettling and “reluctant” relationship between sport and politics. Noting that, “Sport is about people, which makes it inherently political” (p. 335), Steen reminds the reader that sport has been used as the site of propaganda and war throughout the 20th century (if not before). Specifically, he chronicles the journey of East Germany from Nazism to Communism, with sport as a central player. Followed by a brief description of the “Workers’ Olympiad” (p. 344) held as a socialist alternative throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Steen concludes with the chronicling of sport as a political platform from Hitler to Pakistan, demonstrating that sport is a transnational power.
With regard to power, Steen notes that politics, race, and sexuality are entwined and overlap heavily, which is evident in the stories he uses as part of a larger story of sport and social change. However, it is early in chapter nine that Steen makes a claim, that sport was not alone in “offering a means by which prejudice could be defeated…” (p. 388). He briefly discusses other means, citing music in particular. This line, consequently, struck me as somewhat heavy with content, but missing the key argument he had been offering throughout the whole book. Sport may offer a means or platform to defeat prejudice, but it is equally responsible for continuing to reproduce those very prejudices. And indeed the remainder of the chapter presented timeless examples of how sport was a mechanism to bring inequity to light, and at the same time the examples highlighted the continued struggle between replicating inequity. Thus, his comment was oddly incomplete.
It is in Steen’s final chapter that the role of inequity hits full stride – sport, gender, and sexuality in what he entitled “The Grass Ceiling” (p. 444). Starting with Emily Wilding Davison and the Suffragette Derby, and ending with Danica Patrick’s joining NASCAR and the 2012 Olympics requiring at least one female entrant from each competing country, Steen spotlights the role of sports as a site in the promotion of equity. He sees women’s tennis as leading the sports world. “[N]o sport has seen women move further from that intimidating male shadow than tennis” (p. 461), from Billie Jean King to Martina Navratilova to Serena Williams. This was followed by the reminder that in sport, in particular, men’s bodies have not been subjected to the intense scrutiny or governing that female bodies face – particularly if the female body is ambiguous in any way, noting Caster Semenya’s testosterone testing at the 2012 Olympics. Moving beyond gender to sexuality, Steen tells the story of Justin Fashanu, the first openly gay footballer. He concludes with the legislation enacted by Russia prior to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, all to illustrate the larger stakes beyond wins and loses.
Overall, Steen brings the reader through a journey of a century and half of inequity, power, and challenge. The book’s greatest strength lies in the examples. Clearly having spent a career of enjoying, chronicling, and studying sport, Steen provides the reader with a number of exemplary tales demonstrating the story of consumed sport. Each chapter is full of detailed accounts, some popular, some obscure, from a number of sports. A reader would be hard-pressed to find any claim without a clear historical moment to connect with. At the same time this can be the book’s greatest weakness: because it is detail heavy and in some ways arduous to navigate one could review each chapter individually.