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Floodlights and Touchlines: A History of Spectator Sport
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2014
Spectator sport is living, breathing, non-stop theatre for all.
Focusing on spectator sports and their accompanying issues, tracing their origins, evolution and impact, inside the lines and beyond the boundary, this book offers a thematic history of professional sport and the ingredients that magnetise millions around the globe.
It tells the stories that matter: from the gladiators of Rome to the runners of Rift Valley via the innovator-missionaries of Rugby School; from multi-faceted British exports to the Americanisation of professionalism and the Indianisation of cricket. Rob Steen traces the development of these sports which captivate the turnstile millions and the mouse-clicking masses, addressing their key themes and commonalities, from creation myths to match fixing via race, politics, sexuality and internationalism.
Insightful and revelatory, this is an entertaining exploration of spectator sports' intrinsic place in culture and how sport imitates life – and life imitates sport.
Spectator sport is living, breathing, non-stop theatre for all.
Focusing on spectator sports and their accompanying issues, tracing their origins, evolution and impact, inside the lines and beyond the boundary, this book offers a thematic history of professional sport and the ingredients that magnetise millions around the globe.
It tells the stories that matter: from the gladiators of Rome to the runners of Rift Valley via the innovator-missionaries of Rugby School; from multi-faceted British exports to the Americanisation of professionalism and the Indianisation of cricket. Rob Steen traces the development of these sports which captivate the turnstile millions and the mouse-clicking masses, addressing their key themes and commonalities, from creation myths to match fixing via race, politics, sexuality and internationalism.
Insightful and revelatory, this is an entertaining exploration of spectator sports' intrinsic place in culture and how sport imitates life – and life imitates sport.
- GenresSports
544 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
2 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 12, 2019
While the topic was kind of interesting, I found it’s just too big a topic to be covered. There is just too much sport to be covered and as result, this was a real slog of a read.
I didn’t really take much pleasure in reading it, despite finding a lot of the topics covered interesting.
I didn’t really take much pleasure in reading it, despite finding a lot of the topics covered interesting.
October 14, 2015
Review Title: How the games we play became the games we watch
Spectator sports are world wide businesses worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue, salaries, TV contracts, TV and internet advertising, gate receipts, equipment sales, betting and fantasy leagues, and logo apparel sales. Their direct and indirect impact on economies, cultures, educational systems, and governments are immense and out of proportion to any reasonable expectation of the worth and value of those impacts. How did we get here?
Steen, despite focusing on just major incidents of the major sports (world and American football, rugby, cricket, baseball, tennis, and golf) takes 725 pages plus footnotes and index to give us a starting sketch. This isn't a history of sports, although there is some discussion of origin myths of the major sports. The organizing bodies of the major sports (think NFL and MLB in the US, FIFA for international football as examples) document and celebrate these founding stories with tight control and specific purpose, as Steen describes.
It is a history of the transition of sports from participation to watching, and the way that transition was both shaped by the times and irrevocably reshaped the times that they arose. The "Floodlights" in the title are of more than passing interest in the story because of the cultural and economic impact of allowing sports to be consumed as spectators after the working day. Another major cultural touch point is the transition from amateur to professional sports which takes up a large chunk of the center of the book and the topic. "Amateur" sports were for the wealthy who had time to devote to leisure, and to represent the peak of racial, moral, and athletic purity unattainable by mere "professional" athletes who were lower class and tainted by playing for the pay they needed to earn to survive and provide for their families.
As a British writer his times and places include an imperial scope: England beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries, Australia, South Africa, India, and the US in the 19th century, the Caribbean and the world wide spread to the rest of the continents in the 20th. The breadth, for an American steeped in the four major team sports that dominate the US sports media, is both stunning and sometimes overwhelming, as Steen uses unfamiliar acronyms and sometimes assumes knowledge not likely to be in the vocabulary of the average American sports fan. But the education, despite those occasional gaps, is mind broadening and worth the effort. Cricket, for example, is hardly on the radar for American sports fans, but has played a surprisingly central role in so many of the historical, cultural, political, and economic dividing lines Steen documents here. And despite his origin, he does a good job of covering American sports, although his description of the USC of Reggie Bush as the University of South Carolina would have been quickly caught by an American editor or proofreader.
Perhaps the most powerful sections of the book are Steen's examination of the role of spectator sport in both strengthening and battling racism and international animosity. In Steen's capable hands, no matter which dimension of time, place, sport, and political leaning he slices the topic, the heroes and villains, the followers and leaders, the winners and losers, and the right and the wrong, are not as clear cut and clean (or dirty) as we would like.
To recap, if you are looking for season by season accounts of matches, games or events, this isn't the book you want. If you want to understand how those seasons came about and why they matter outside the lines and the box scores, then the book you have in your hands is the place to start.
Spectator sports are world wide businesses worth multiple billions of dollars in revenue, salaries, TV contracts, TV and internet advertising, gate receipts, equipment sales, betting and fantasy leagues, and logo apparel sales. Their direct and indirect impact on economies, cultures, educational systems, and governments are immense and out of proportion to any reasonable expectation of the worth and value of those impacts. How did we get here?
Steen, despite focusing on just major incidents of the major sports (world and American football, rugby, cricket, baseball, tennis, and golf) takes 725 pages plus footnotes and index to give us a starting sketch. This isn't a history of sports, although there is some discussion of origin myths of the major sports. The organizing bodies of the major sports (think NFL and MLB in the US, FIFA for international football as examples) document and celebrate these founding stories with tight control and specific purpose, as Steen describes.
It is a history of the transition of sports from participation to watching, and the way that transition was both shaped by the times and irrevocably reshaped the times that they arose. The "Floodlights" in the title are of more than passing interest in the story because of the cultural and economic impact of allowing sports to be consumed as spectators after the working day. Another major cultural touch point is the transition from amateur to professional sports which takes up a large chunk of the center of the book and the topic. "Amateur" sports were for the wealthy who had time to devote to leisure, and to represent the peak of racial, moral, and athletic purity unattainable by mere "professional" athletes who were lower class and tainted by playing for the pay they needed to earn to survive and provide for their families.
As a British writer his times and places include an imperial scope: England beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries, Australia, South Africa, India, and the US in the 19th century, the Caribbean and the world wide spread to the rest of the continents in the 20th. The breadth, for an American steeped in the four major team sports that dominate the US sports media, is both stunning and sometimes overwhelming, as Steen uses unfamiliar acronyms and sometimes assumes knowledge not likely to be in the vocabulary of the average American sports fan. But the education, despite those occasional gaps, is mind broadening and worth the effort. Cricket, for example, is hardly on the radar for American sports fans, but has played a surprisingly central role in so many of the historical, cultural, political, and economic dividing lines Steen documents here. And despite his origin, he does a good job of covering American sports, although his description of the USC of Reggie Bush as the University of South Carolina would have been quickly caught by an American editor or proofreader.
Perhaps the most powerful sections of the book are Steen's examination of the role of spectator sport in both strengthening and battling racism and international animosity. In Steen's capable hands, no matter which dimension of time, place, sport, and political leaning he slices the topic, the heroes and villains, the followers and leaders, the winners and losers, and the right and the wrong, are not as clear cut and clean (or dirty) as we would like.
To recap, if you are looking for season by season accounts of matches, games or events, this isn't the book you want. If you want to understand how those seasons came about and why they matter outside the lines and the box scores, then the book you have in your hands is the place to start.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews