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SPED 2710
SOCIAL CLASS
DO MONEY & POWER MATTER
Sociology of IN SPORT?
Physical
Education &
Sports
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THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
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Learning Objectives

 Define social class, class ideology, and class relations, and explain how
they are related to sports today.
 Identify who has power in sports today, and the interests that are served
by that power.
 Critically assess the argument that professional sports arenas and stadia
benefit everyone and create jobs in a city.
 Explain how class, gender, race, and ethnic relations intersect and
influence sport participation patterns in society.
 Explain why sports in the future are likely to be less diverse in terms of
ethnicity and social class.
 Describe the ways in which social class impacts sport spectators today.
 Identify the conditions under which sport participation is most likely and
least likely to lead to upward mobility and occupational success.
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Social Class & Class Relations

 Social Class - refers to categories of people who share a

similar economic position in society based on a combination
of their
 Income
 Wealth (Saving & Assets)
 Education
 Occupation
 Social Connections (Social Capital)
 Class relations - ways that social class is incorporated into
the organization of our everyday lives
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MEDIA COVERAGE OF INSPIRING “RAGS TO RICHES” STORIES

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Social Stratification

 Refers to structured forms of economic inequalities that are part of

the organisation of everyday life
 e.g. upper, middle and lower class
 These inequalities influence life chances.
 Life chances (i.e., opportunities to achieve economic success and
gain economic power) vary from one social class to another in the
social stratification system.
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Sports and Economic Inequality

 Money and economic power exert significant influence on the

goals, purpose, and organization of sports in society
 Formally organized sports developed, scheduled, or maintained
with economic resources
 Those who control money and economic power use them to
organize and sponsor sports.
 Give preference to sport forms that reflect and maintain their
values and interests
 As a result, sports emerge out of a context in which inequality
shapes decisions and the allocation of resources.
 In the process, sports reproduce the very inequalities that so many
people think are absent in them.
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Class Relations and Power in Sports

 most powerful/influential people in sports

 top 8 most influential people in sports business*
Rank Name Position

1 American Sport Gambler will influence media ratings for mainstream sports

2 Adam Silver Commissioner, National Basketball Association

3 Roger Goodell Commissioner, National Football League

4 Eric Shanks CEO & Executive Producer, Fox Sports

5 Rob Manford Commissioner, Major League Baseball

6 David Levy President, Turner Broadcasting

7 Casey Wasserman Chairman & CEO, Wasserman, Chairman, LA 2028

8 Mark Parker Chairman, President & CEO, Nike

 Source: Sports Business Journal (King, 2018)

 Antonio Gramsci - Ruling Class – hegemony
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1BNM-4SOME
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Social Class and
Sports Participation Patterns

 Social class and class relations influence who plays, watches, and
consumes information about sports.
 Generally, the higher the social class, the greater the involvement
and influence.
 Sports participation occurs in the context of class-related lifestyles.
 reflects patterns of sponsorship
 access to participation opportunities
 Social class is related strongly to participation among all categories
of people
 Example in Hong Kong
 Hong Kong Golf Club
 Membership
 Public use
 Homemaking, Child Rearing, and 10
Earning a Living: Class and Gender
Relations in Women’s Lives
 Gender role in marriage
 family cook, shopper, chauffeur, housekeeper, and homework
supervisor.
 Parents (esp. women) in middle- and lower-income families
 constrained by homemaking and child rearing responsibilities
 unable to pay for child care, domestic help, and sports participation
fees
 lack time, transportation to and from sport facilities, access to gyms and
playing fields in their neighborhoods, and the sense of physical safety
 Higher-income families seldom have household responsibilities
 parents drive them to practices, lessons, and games;
 make sure they are well-fed;
 have the equipments they need
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Man: Class and Gender Relations in
Men’s Lives

 Sport as a site to establish a masculine identity

 15- and 16-year-old French Canadian boys in the Montreal area
 Upper Class
 connected their sports participation with masculinity because playing sports, they
said, taught them leadership skills, and being a leader was central to their
definition of masculinity

 Middle Class
 playing sports provided them with opportunities to be with peers and gain
acceptance in male groups, which fit their ideas of what they needed to do to
establish identities as young men

 Working Class
 playing sports enabled them to display toughness and develop the rugged
personas that matched their ideas of manhood. In this sense, social class
influenced the ways that sports and sport experiences were integrated into the
lives of these young men.
 Class Relations in Action: Changing12
Patterns in Sport Participation
Opportunities in US
 Publicly funded youth sports programs have been reduced or eliminated
 Varsity teams in low-income school districts are being eliminated
 Fewer young people from low-income neighborhoods have
opportunities to play sports
 Middle- and upper-income areas threatened by financial problem
 Maintained by “participation fees” paid by athletes’ parents
 Vote to raise more public funds or use private funds to build new fields
and facilities, hire coaches, and run high-profile tournaments that often
attract college coaches who recruit athletes by giving them scholarships
 Economic equalities
 Corporation sponsor only the sports that promote their brand and
products
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Class Relations in Action: The
Cost of Attending Sport Events
 Possible to attend some sports events
for free
 High school and many college
games and meets in US - affordable
for most people
 Tickets for minor league sports are
reasonably priced
 Ticket price increased more than
rate of inflation
 Fan Cost Index - strives to calculate
the cost of taking a family to the
game, including the cost of tickets,
parking, and refreshments
 National Football League teams in
2022 (in U.S. dollar)
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Global Inequalities in Sports

 number of people living in extreme poverty has declined over the

past two decades
 the gap between the richest and poorest people worldwide is
growing wi
 close to 3.5 billion people, about 46 percent of the world
population, lives on less than $5.50 per day as they struggle to
maintain stability in their lives
 40 percent of all people in the world have few resources to use on
anything beyond basic survival
 seldom have the resources needed to organize and play sports
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Inequality in Olympic Games

 Impact of global inequality in sports

 Prior to the 2020 Olympic Games in Toky
 78 of the approximately 204 nations that have participated in the
Olympics have never won a medal
 62 countries have won 5 or fewer medals in Olympic history
 The United States, on the other hand, with its combination of wealth and
population size, have won 2,827 medals—over 1069 more than any other
nation.
 Other exceptions are individual athletes who have wealthy
corporate sponsors
 Training technologies expenses - The resulting analyses of these
data and input from other specialists
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Inequality in Para Olympic
Games

 Traveling to the Paralympics is especially costly for Paralympians

because they often must bring with them prostheses, wheelchairs,
and a person to help them navigate unanticipated barriers.
 Host cities and nations require to make special efforts to make sure
that their athletes confront as few barriers as possible.
 Athletes from nations with relatively low GDP are extremely unlikely
to have access to the training and support required to qualify for
and travel to the Paralympics
 In countries where poverty rates are high, people with physical or
intellectual impairments have little or no opportunity to participate
and train in sports.
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Economic and Career
Opportunities in sports
 Sports as a sphere in which people from low-income and poor backgrounds
can experience upward social mobility
 Social mobility - a term used by sociologists to refer to changes in
wealth, education, and occupation over a person’s lifetime or from
one generation to the next in families; downward or upward
directions
 On a general level, career and mobility opportunities exist in sports and sport
organizations
 The number of paid career opportunities in sports is limited, and the
playing careers of most professional athletes are short term.
 Professional opportunities for women are growing but remain limited on
and off the field relative to men.
 Professional opportunities for ethnic minorities are growing but remain
limited on and off the field relative to whites with European heritage.
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Careers among former athletes

 athletes may have a slight advantage over comparable peers

 increases opportunities for a young person to complete academic
degrees, develop job-related skills, and/or extend one’s knowledge
about the world outside of sports.
 increases support from significant others for overall growth and
development, not just sport development.
 provides opportunities to develop social networks that are connected
with career possibilities outside of sports and sports organizations.
 expands experiences, identities, and abilities unrelated to sports.
 limitation during athlete career - coach
 often want to separate athletes from experiences and relationships
unrelated to their sport.
 define dedication in terms of focusing exclusively on improving sport
performance and winning competitions.
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Summary

 Social class and class relations are integrally involved in sports

 Organized sports depend on resources, and those who
provide them do so in ways that support their interests by
establishing economic arrangements that work to their
advantage
 Class relations also are tied to patterns of sport team
ownership, event sponsorship, and media coverage of sports
 Sport participation patterns worldwide are connected with
social class and the distribution of material resources.
 Sports participation patterns also are connected with the
intersection of class, gender, race, and ethnicity in people’s
lives.
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Summary

 patterns of watching sports also are connected with social

class and class relations.
 opportunities for careers that hold the hope of upward social
mobility exist for some people in sports
 sports are clearly tied to patterns of class, class relations, and
social inequality in society. Money and economic power do
matter, and they matter in ways that often reproduce existing
patterns of social class and life chances.
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• CHOOSE A SPORT TO
INVESTIGATE
REVEAL ANY SOCIAL CLASS,
Social Class to •
MONEY AND POWER ISSUES
be discussed IN THAT SPORT
• EXPLAIN THE PHENOMENON
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Hong Kong Sport
https://www.cstb.gov.hk/en/policies/sports-and-recreation/sports-policy.html

 Government
 Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau
 Sport Commission
 Community Sports Committee (CSC)
 Elite Sports Committee (ESC)
 Major Sports Events Committee (MSEC)
 Leisure and Cultural Services Department
 Sports Federation & Olympic Committee
 Paralympic Committee
 Hong Kong Sports Institutes (Elite Tier A, B)
 National Sports Associations
 Others – Kai Tak Sports Park (KTSP)
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