Sports coverage in Mexico: the hegemony of soccer and the baseball resistance

Hugo León
Universidad Iberoamericana Puebla (Mexico)

Abstract:

During the past few years, mexican media outlets have developed a highly biased coverage
focused mainly on soccer. Certainly, this is the most popular sport in the country, but due to
corporate, economic and also political reasons, the media coverage of the rest of sports have
been overshadowed. This matter is particularly contradictory regarding the case of baseball,
since it has an historic high popularity throughout several states on the south, southeast and
northwest regions of Mexico.

Based on selected media and key sports events, the paper address the following issues:

1. Media ownership, monopolies and commercial interests

2. Media framing regarding programming and publishing
3. Lack of depth in the soccer analysis, in favor of gossip and common discourse.
4. The strength of baseball tradition and the dissonance of its media coverage.

The research, thus, highlights how the pervasive depiction of soccer in mexican media is
deviated from the social, cultural and historical sports traditions, in order to benefit
power-related entities. Also, the document emphasizes the resilience of baseball, both in its
real life groundwork and in the social media landscape. To accomplish the aforementioned, the
theoretical frameset of this analysis comprises authors as McCombs & Shaw (Agenda setting),
Entman (Framing bias), Kennedy & Hills (Sports and media), Wilson (sport-related activist
resistance), Castle (Baseball and media) and Szymanski & Zimbalist (Baseball and Soccer
sociological comparison).