Rapidly Advancing Technology and Policy Choice: Transforming the Economic Landscape of Sport Communication

The development of digital technology, coupled with the distribution of media products over the Internet through high-speed broadband networks, has greatly increased the amount of sport broadcast channels available to sport media consumers. Consequently, the demand for the rights to sports broadcasting content has significantly increased and this has caused substantial increases in total sports media revenues. In this evolving market communication policy is crucial to the welfare of sports media producers and consumers. Who wins or loses as the evolution of the sports media technological progress remains ambiguous. Consumers will have greater options as to when and where they can watch sports programming. Meanwhile the escalating fees and long term contracts for sports broadcast rights indicate that sports programming is expected to remain highly valuable and whoever controls the property rights to that programming can expect to extract those values. This paper concludes that the policy decisions will prove more important to the final outcomes than the technological advances.