This book focuses on the sport-media phenomenon and analyses such issues as new media technology, gender, ethnicity, collective identity and globalization, as well as aspects of the political economy of the media.

Sport and the media - the emergence of a major research field, Alina Bernstein and Neil Blain; the Olympic Games - 21st-century challenges as a global media event, Nancy K. Rivenburgh; what's in a name? Muhammad Ali and the politics of cultural identity, Amir Saeed; from pig's bladders to Ferraris - media discourses of masculinity and morality in obituaries of Stanley Matthews, Garry Whannel; new media sport, Raymond Boyle and Richard Haynes; meeting the industry - an interview with Alex Gilady, Alina Bernstein; attribution of failure - a German soccer story, Hans-Joerg Stiehler and Mirko Marr; witches of our age - women ultras, Italian football and the media, Rinella Cere; we got next - images of women in television commercials during the inaugural WNBA season, Stanley T. Wearden and Pamela J. Creedon; fitba crazy? Saturday super scoreboard and the dialectics of political debate, Hugh O'Donnell; beyond media culture - sport as dispersed symbolic activity, Neil Blain.