The Formation and Development of Modern Sports: Between Play and the Cultural Industry

Abstract

The transformation of modern sports has contributed to its transformation into an industry that includes numerous organizations of various orientations of its activity. This new reality has been out of the field of interest of sociologists, as evidenced by the lack of scientific works devoted to the analysis of the causes of this transformation. The purpose of this article is to conduct a sociocultural analysis of the dynamics of formation and development of modern sports from the game to the mass cultural industry. In the process of working on the problem methods of content analysis, comparative study and secondary interpretation of sociological research were used. In the process of research it was established that the transformation of modern sports was influenced by the change of the game paradigm in society to a sports paradigm, as a result of which sport turns into a profession and a phenomenon of mass culture and industry. Sociocultural factors that contributed to the transformation of sport into an industry were identified and characterized: standardization of norms and rules of competitions and sports equipment, specialization of sports activities, differentiation of sports, the rapidly increasing number of international competitions in all sports, the spread of sports mass communication media, a significant increase in the number of sports fans. The role of the media in the formation and development of modern sports is analyzed.