Yup, things are changing! Things that used to be essential services are now products, and sold to consumer markets! Thus basic the human right to shelter, became the housing market,education became an export product, the labour pool became the labour market and medical services became medical consumption. With the emphasis on management over the long term, trumping cures and or preventative medicine. No massive profit curve in the latter!

The stock market used to be a place where the producer/manufacturer used to be able to sell stock in their enterprise to share both risk ad reward. And single digit PE ratios, meant that the dividend and growth were the things that made the difference between a good investment and long odds gambling.

With gambling holding sway, once most of the natural growth had been achieved. With words like acquisitions, diversification etc replacing productivity!

And market manipulation etc, to create very short term gains as capital gains.

Gambling has also entered the holy grail of sport and some rather dubious results that invariably create massive windfalls for bookies.

I mean have you seen as many dropped catches in schoolboy cricket, let alone by so called professionals? And not only allowed England back into the game but all but guaranteed a really remarkable result!

And no doubt gave maximum coverage to the sponsor's products!

I used to love cricket! Now I switch off or put on a DVD, given ethics, integrity and fun, seems to been lost to rampant consumerism, obesity, BS, the almighty dollar and extreme capitalism!?

Think, cricket used to be the very measure of decency, sportsmanship and fair play! Now its just a combative spectacle in the Colosseum, replete with a conga line of injured players?
Alan B.

Thanks, Glyn, for a perceptive review of modern sports marketing trends.

Although you do not present as a cricket 'tragic', doubtless you did observe, as did Alan B, that cricket used to be the very measure of decency, sportsmanship and fair play! Now its just a combative spectacle in the Colosseum.

There is a distinct shift in mass involvement in most sports away from one of personal striving to play and accomplish well, or for the sheer joy of participation with players of equal ability, to that of today's passive mob spectatorship.

Alan's concept of sportsmanship has been lost in the swell of easy gratification by the lowest common denominator mass who seek personal identification with game-playing 'greats' in some kind of attempt to balance out their lack of educational, social, or workplace status.

In my TV direction of live wrestling, I remember once being asked on the talkback system by my floor manager who was typically techno and culturally savvy as the majority of TV crews were at the time, whether it was OK to "let the sub-humans into the studio, now".

That remark, though cruelly humiliating, reflected his disdain of entertainment consumer branding as a status positioner with its implication of being seen as connected to a popular sport despite any achievement on the part of the spectator.

Glyn's article points to a need to swing back to a point where the commodification of sport (or any other social activity) is balanced by an awareness of what is being watched and why.

Yeah true, its actually difficult to think of any aspect of society that wasn't more fun before modernity sunk in its vicious claws I guess...arts, entertainment and architecture being the most obvious.

Look at it this way.
The less people know how to do the more in demand are those that can.
Instinctive ability is rewarded more than those who need to contrive.
Now if you have a son who is ten cents short of a dollar but can catch and hit a ball, his future is guaranteed, no David Murrays.
He may have the conversational abilities of an amoeba on holidays but everyone at the bank knows him.

Smug-Wendy’s Home Page…..

Dancer Quartz to Smug Wendy….“Can you find me the nearest McDonalds?

Smug Wendy, stuffing a soft-serve into a void designed for “Mao”, points to the wheelie bin overflowing with maggots, circled by pregnant blow flies.

What time d’a game finish?

Smug Wendy:

Game over….!

Meanwhile….at a “clearinghouse” across the filthy depressed town, on the rolling hills overlooking the green and fertile meadows, a red neon sign blinks in lazy time, the message of hope:

*… Participation in physical activity, particularly among children, supports a number of life-long benefits, including: (1) development of fundamental motor skills, (2) improvement of current health and fitness, (3) contribution to long-term health and the prevention of chronic disease, and (4) promotion of more inclusive and engaged communities through social interaction.
Regular physical activity, including organised sport and active recreational pursuits, has many known benefits. Increasing the level of physical activity among the population is one of three key elements (along with improved nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices) in the overall preventive health strategy adopted by governments. Improved population health produces immediate and long-term social and economic benefits…*