Introduction

Since 2000 the European market in sports sponsorship has risen by 40 per cent to be valued in 2008 as worth in the region of £5 billion (Sport Business International, January 2008). This growth is all the more remarkable given that a European Union Directive in 2005 signalled an end to tobacco advertising and sponsorship of sport and, as we note below, the tobacco industry had been one of the key sectors driving sports sponsorship since the 1960s. However, the escalation in value of sports-related sponsorship is indicative of other trends that have been shaping media sport in the new century. One has been the expansion in sports content on television across primarily pay-TV platforms, fuelled by a more commercially orientated broadcasting industry; the other has been the continuing commercialization and commodification of sports content that has occurred in the last decade as the sports industry has consolidated its position by entrenching elite sport within the entertainment and corporate sectors of the economy.