Sport in society

P3

I am going to choose 2 sports and explain the affect they have both locally and nationally with the affects it has on the environment.

The first sport I am going to talk about is Football. Football is played in many countries over the world and is one of the most popular sports around. It also holds one of the biggest competitions in the sporting world, the ‘World Cup’. At the start of the competition 32 teams enter and it boils down to one Winner over 31 days and 64 games. In this period of time the world cup captures billions of people world wide to watch the games take place on T.V or by going to the venue itself and supporting them in the stadium’s.

The host for each coming world cup spend millions of pounds on building new multi-complex-stadiums for world cup games and hotels in which tourists or visitors in the country can stay. By building new stadiums, hotels and possibly more pubs and clubs it will offer more job vacancies for the local community, improving massively on a finance base. Some of the job vacancies available offer a wide option for people in the area, such as managers, secretaries to run the businesses, bar staff, caterers, bouncers, and receptionist’s along with lots more. Stadiums will require grounds men, stewards and police officers to make sure there is no trouble going on between fans, ticket inspectors for the gates, cleaners, caterers for refreshments and so on. Fans will need to get to the games so improvement and regularity of transport is required, supplying more jobs to people.  By hosting a massive competition like the World cup the economy will grow largely, supplying thousands more jobs for people in the country.

In relation to the world cup and local clubs other industries are going to benefit greatly. This includes Merchandise, retail, media and advertising/sponsorships.

Cooperation’s like Adidas, Nike and Umbro who produce shirts for the represent countries such as Umbro who sponsor England, make a massive profit on shirt sales. Each time a replica shirt is sold, the company will get a percentage of the price it is bought for. For example, England launched a new away shirt before the world cup; thousands upon thousands of England fans would have purchased the shirt in time for the competition to show their support, allowing Umbro to make a lot of money. In addition to this Umbro also produce replica England training gear, many people who see certain players like John Terry and Frank Lampard, who are huge icons in English football, wearing the gear in training or travelling to games, advertise it to people making them want to buy the clothing.

These company’s also make Football boots and produce massive sales in doing so, the way they will advertise boots is by making contracts with professional athletes to wear their product. For example Thierry Henry who is now sponsored by Reebok football boots has just signed a £9 million deal. Signing high profiled players to promote the logo, helps the company to produce more sales not only in their football boots, but with other merchandise such as shirts, tracksuit, shorts etc.

The chart above is taken from the B-Tec national sport, Ray Barker, Rob Snaipe, Louise Sutton and Lee Tucker, page 39; it shows the amount the UK has been spending on sporting goods alone in the past decade. As you can see in sports clothing and footwear the amount increases each year.

Locally, teams like Crystal Palace also have their own gift shops, one which is based in Croydon and the other is outside the ground at Selhurst Park. These create jobs for people in the area and increase the sales of merchandise such as mugs, key rings, flags, toys.

Crystal Palace can also set their ticket prices which range from around £10-£40 for adults and kids, this also depends on who their playing. These ticket prices are reasonable for young kids as it can attract them to take an interest in football, it gives the community good well being by giving the chance for families to go out and watch a match together for a reasonable price. This boils down to producing more money for the club, in comparison to one of the biggest clubs in the world Chelsea, they will charge anything ranging from £20-£60 a huge difference with our local club Crystal Palace.

Media will rise dramatically in sport due to the build up of story headlines of competitions like the world cup or the European championships. People will want to hear the latest news about certain teams or players, for example the previous world cup; Wayne Rooney was a huge focus point in the build up of the competition about his broken metatarsal and wither or not he will play. This story was broadcasted in many ways such as newspapers, radio and T.V. In relation to media, all matches that were played in the previous world cup were broadcasted on live television. An average international England game attracts on average an astounding 9.2 billion viewers, each time there shown. By showing the games on T.V it will boost the ratings for that particular channel it is shown on.  Another example are Champions league games, they are spread throughout the whole week and are specifically shown at peak times of the day. It is set out this way so millions more people getting home from work or school/college are able to watch the whole game live. T.V companies like Sky sports able a viewer to go interactive on the game, this means they can catch up on the games highlights and view the action from different angles, including special features like player cam. This attracts more viewers creating more ratings and money for the broadcaster.

Some statistics show that a game of premier league Football shown on television can scoop up around 1.5 million viewers.

(http://www.satworld.gr/sky_news1.htm)

Now relating this to a local area, taking for instance Crystal Palace, each time they are shown on Sky sports or terrestrial T.V they get paid a large sum of money to be broadcasted, equalling in helping them out on a financial matter.

Advertising company’s through football is an effective way of getting more business both on a local and national scale. Our local side Crystal Palace offer businesses to advertise there company name on a board in the stadium. Both will benefit from this as Crystal Palace make money out of advertising the board and the local company will create more business resulting in a good knock on effect in the area.

Nationally and Internationally Football helps larger business companies like Coca-cola, Budweiser, Gillette, Fuji Film and Philips along with lots more. All these companies were part sponsors of the Football 2006 world cup. As there were millions of viewers world wide they would have excelled on a finance level by selling more of their product.

Here are some of the jobs Football can offer on a local base such as a club like Crystal palace. They need Grounds men to maintain a pitch and give it treatment, stewards to keep a look on any un-sociable behaviour, problems between fans, commentators to deliver a match report and talk through the action in the game and lastly catering companies to supply food and drink for fans. Hundreds of people are employed for these jobs and most will go to people living in the area, this will help the economy hugely by making more money and attracting more people.

Some of the biggest clubs in the world are teams like Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester United and Barcelona. Reasons for this are that they are some of the richest clubs in the world and have high profiled players.  Chelsea, in 2003 was bought for 140million and at the start of the 2004/2005 season they went on a spending spree of buying some of the world’s best players totalling to over £100million. At the start of the 2006/2007 season they decided to buy more high quality players one of which cost £30million in Andriy Shevchenko. Not only are these players worth millions of pounds but their wages are major high as well. For example John Terry, Arjen Robben, Joe Cole and Ashley Cole are all on a near £100,000 a week, after tax. Michael Ballack earns the most, earning a staggering £130,000 a week. There are 24 players in Chelsea 1st team squad and the lowest paid player is around £15,000 a week.

At Chelsea FC, the management team involves 8 people, this range from the mangers and assistants, first team coaches, goalkeeper coach, fitness coach, reserve team and scout/assistant coach. The highest paid out of these is of course the head manager Jose Mourinho with an annual wage of £5.2million. Chelsea FC in 2003-2004 had a wage bill of £115m and is the highest ever total pay in world football. The previous season they only had to fork out £54.5m this is an increase of 110%.

Each time a player moves from club to club an agent gets 10% of the price in the transfer fee and 10% of his wages, information from a website called:-

Showed,’ that the biggest agent acting in football, first cooperation, turns over £8.9m a year.’  This is just from Football.

The priciest player in world football to date is Zinedine Zidane with an incredible price tag of £46million when he transferred from Juventus to Real Madrid; his wages come in at an estimated £84,600 a week. However this is not the highest paid player, Frank Lampard had renewed his contract at Chelsea after the 2006 World cup and is now earning £140,000 per week, making him the highest paid player on the planet.

The other sport I will be talking about is Athletics. A major event is going to occur in the year 2012 for this country as London is holding the Olympics. This event is going to attract millions of people world-wide. As result of this, new stadiums are going to need constructing and building; this will require thousands of jobs such as builders, designers, architects, surveyors etc. It will offer jobs to people within the area helping the growth of the economy. As well as new stadiums, new villagers are essential for country teams, commentators, camera crew, event organisers etc, which need to be designed and built, again this will supply thousands more jobs to construction workers and builders. It is also going to help major and local companies who supply bricks, cement, poles, scaffolding and roofing to help construct the building. In addition to this point it will help the companies produce large profits, excelling their businesses on a whole. Information from a website says ‘The Olympic stadium will host the athletics competition and seat 80,000 people.’ It also talks about how many people the new villagers will provide accommodation for ‘within walking distance the Olympic and Paralympic Villages will provide accommodation for 17,800 athletes and officials.’

Join now!

After the Olympics have finished these villages will become hosing places with environmentally friendly waste treatment and renewable energy. The site will be made up of 3,600 units and become half of this will be homes which people in the area can rent or buy.

The Olympics will have such a big effect on the area of London the site also quotes "We are working towards not only delivery of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012 but also a legacy for East London for the next 50 years."

(http://www.designbuild-network.com/projects/2012olympic-park/)

Something which London is well-known for is its transport, ...

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