An Analysis of Media Coverage of a Soccer Game
Introduction
This paper analyzes three different media sources of a live broadcast of a professional soccer match played between two English teams, West Bromwich Albion (WBA) and Crystal Palace (CP). The match took place on WBA’s home turf in the English midlands on Saturday, February 27, 2016. The visiting team, CP, is based in South London. The match was important for both teams, as neither has had a recent win and each is struggling to capture a place in the league playoffs.
I chose to watch an English soccer match for two reasons: 1) I know enough about the rules of the sport to follow the action, but not enough to have a firm opinion of my own regarding what constitutes superior play, and 2) I had no stake in the outcome, as I don’t follow soccer, much less English soccer teams, in the way I do other, US-based sports. Thus, I had no personal biases to influence my perceptions of the reportage or the comments from fans and the Premier League officials on Twitter.
Fisher’s Narrative Approach
All three of the media showed evidence of Fisher’s storytelling approach to narrative (Billings, et. al., XX). The match was clearly framed as a performance, and this was reflected in the imagery and language used by fans on Twitter, as well as by professional commentators online at a site called Goal.com and on the NBC television broadcast. On television, many of the players’ moves were characterized as “a superior performance” and there were references to certain players being “in the spotlight” or “following the playbook.”
Heroes and Villains
The most prominent storytelling feature was the identification of lead characters and the assignment of roles to each. Television coverage focused on presenting Chris Brunt of WBA and Connor Wickham of CP as hero figures. These players were lauded with metaphors that evoked images of noble warriors or knights, doing good deeds (setting another team member up for shots) and heroic feats (scoring goals).
During the two-hour broadcast, TV commentators mentioned several times that WBA’s Chris Brunt had been injured last week when a fan—one of WBA’s own, in fact—had thrown a coin at him, apparently in anger because WBA had lost the match. It happened at an away game, just as Brunt approached the small crowd of fans who had traveled to watch him play. “I spotted a little girl in the front row and I wanted to give her my shirt,” the announcer quoted Brunt as saying. The coin hit Brunt in the eye and it was feared that his sight may have been damaged. As it happens, he was fine, but WBA made the most of the occasion by starting a campaign to collect coins during subsequent matches, to be donated to a charity of Brunt’s choice. Much was made of the little girl, the charity angle, and the fact that Brunt emerged unscathed. This last point was conveyed to viewers in a tone that conferred a miracle-like quality to Brunt’s condition, as though he’d made a narrow escape from blindness. Shortly after the coin incident was discussed, Brunt collided with another player and was carried off the field on a stretcher. This served to elicit additional comments from the announcers about Brunt’s hardiness, his larger than life achievements, and what his loss at this moment was to his team.
The online coverage of the match never mentioned the coin incident and did not highlight the collection buckets that were circulating in the stands. In general, while online commentators did position Brunt and several others as heroes, the coverage was more technical, with ongoing analysis about specific moves made by the players. Online commentators also spent more time explaining the rationale behind the game’s rules and the various strategies that were being followed by the coaches. They noted Brunt’s collision when it happened, as well as his departure from the game, but matter-of-factly, without hyperbole.
The online coverage also included a running description of the match in a text box down the side of the screen. This written commentary included more information and facts about the gameplay and the techniques being used by the various players. From this, I deduced that the Goal.com audience must be a more serious, technically focused group that finds value in deeper analysis of the athletics involved, as opposed to the personal stories behind each player.
On Twitter, I followed the hashtag #WBACRY so that I could see tweets from the official league accounts, as well as from fans of both clubs. There was far more emotion expressed in the Twitter posts, with passionate pleas to the coaches to put in, or pull, a particular player, as well as cheers and jeers for players and teams.
Tweeters were able to comment on one another’s posts, so the social media technology provided a dimension of communication that the other two media lacked. There was an ongoing debate among several people about Craig Wickham of CP, regarding his ability to deliver a goal to tie the match during the last few minutes of play. Wickham was very much regarded as a hero by the fans, and his performance in the match lived up to this view. After being down 3 to 0, Wickham managed to score two goals for CP and was close to getting a third to tie the match, but ran out of time. This was regarded as bad luck rather than any failing on Wickham’s part.
Also of note on Twitter was the fact that some of those posting were in the stands at the match, watching it live and tweeting their perspectives on the athletes’ performance. These multiple sources of reporting and analysis made it very interesting to monitor the Twitter stream, and I found myself referring to it more and more, and to the online commentators less and less. Had I been more familiar with the fine points of the game, I might have turned down the TV’s audio and just watched the picture while reading the live tweets. It would have been a fun way to experience the match—and without being interrupted by commercial advertisements.
Another point that distinguished Twitter is that fans were also uploading video and still photographs. These were of two types. People who were in the stands watching the match live sent photos they had taken on their phones, while tweeters who were not at the match uploaded internet memes and edited images that proclaimed their feelings about their team and their favorite players. The television and online coverage showed virtually no visuals of people in the stands, but fans’ live pictures showed how the audience reacted to important features of gameplay. It was fascinating to see how people were dressed; many had painted faces or carried elaborate signs and banners with messages for a player or a sentiment about a team. None of that was evident online or on television, and it added to my enjoyment of the match.
The television commentators characterized another WBA player, Saido Berehino, as a villain redeemed. When Berehino scored a goal, the announcer tempered his praise by reminding viewers that last summer the player had tried to defect from WBA to a team in Tottenham. Apparently, when the switch was blocked, the player injudiciously tweeted that he would “never play for [WBA owner] Jeremy Peace again.” That relegated him to the bench until recently, when he broke his silence and offered a public apology to Peace and the team. The announcers pronounced that it was poor sportsmanship for Berehino to publish that tweet, but since he has “admitted his mistake” and taken the time to “get his head on straight” all would now be well.
All three media identified as villains the head coaches of both teams, Tony Pullis of WBA and Alan Pardew of CP. Interestingly, the harshest criticism of the coaches came not from members of the opposing team, but from avid fans of the team that each man coached. This was evident on Twitter, with fans characterizing the coaches as “stupid” or “clueless.” Television and the online coverage also presented the coaches in a less than favorable light, although more civilly. Again, the online criticism was technical. It focused on failures related to specific soccer strategies, rather than on the personal lives or temperament of the men. Television commentators positioned Pardew as a hothead, pointing out that he was “absolutely furious” that CP had narrowly missed scoring. Although there was no visual for this, commentators told the audience that Pardew had made special efforts to lift his foot high enough to kick over all of the teams’ water bottles, which were evidently sitting along a shelf in the team’s dugout. As for Pullis, the NBC announcers made sure that viewers were aware of a grudge he supposedly carried against the owners of the CP team, which had fired Pullis as coach right before they brought on Pardew. WBA’s eventual win was characterized as Pullis’s revenge against his former bosses at CP.
A revealing comment came from the TV announcer right after he delivered detailed accounts of the personal shortcomings of both coaches. He said that he “loved” hearing the coaches yell at their players during a game. Then, right before going to commercial, he enthused, “Don’t go anywhere, folks. What a game we’ve got now!”
Other Media Theories
That remark, as well as the circus-like nature of the audio—excited voices of the commentators, exaggerated word choices, ambient crowd noise, and sense of urgency—provides support for the political-economic theories of media promulgated by scholars like Noam Chomsky (McQuail, 97). Certainly it seems obvious that one of the main functions of televised sports coverage is to deliver an audience to advertisers, as well as to the owners of the teams, turning the audience into a commodity rather than just selling the sports event itself. The television coverage also illustrates several other propositions of political-economic theory: There is focus on the largest markets and a reduction of independent media sources, illustrated by NBC’s monopoly on television broadcast rights.
Somewhat surprising was the total absence of women in any of the television or online coverage. All of the players were men, as well as all of the announcers. On Twitter, there was just one woman who tweeted about the match. She seemed to be in her early 20s and well-informed about the sport and the players, yet no other tweeters engaged with her to discuss the match. This brings to mind feminist theories of sport, which holds that sporting events generally reproduce male privilege and serve as sites for “masculinist hegemony,” intended or not (Birrell, 61). One male tweeter did post a photo that included women, however it depicted several provocatively dressed young women hanging on the arms of the middle-aged, paunchy Alan Pardew. This supports Birrell’s contention that sport “tells a gendered story” that reinforces stereotypes (61).
Fidelity
According to L’Etang (124) the more powerful the source, the more powerful it is in shaping media interpretations and content. Arguably, NBC—an international, broadcast conglomerate that has exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics—carries far more weight than an online sports streaming site or a group of fans on Twitter. Thus, it’s not surprising that the television narrative sets the standard for sports coverage. The other outlets I monitored did have their own takes on the match, with some alterations that likely appeal to narrower audiences. However, they followed NBC’s basic plot, carving out special niches for themselves in an example of long tail theory, where the culture and the economy are seen as shifting from a focus on a few, mass markets to a great many small, more specialized ones (Anderson, 32).
I did notice some differences between American sports events that NBC and other commercial media carry and this English event. The main difference was that the television director never showed any shots of the live audience. I can’t think of a time when a live, professional sporting event here in the US didn’t pan the audience, show players in the dugout, coaches pacing on the sidelines, mascots cavorting around, and similar ancillary activities. The omission seemed strange indeed and was particularly apparent when contrasted with the high level of fan interaction and uploaded visuals on Twitter. Overall, however, the fidelity among all three outlets was high, with each telling the same basic story.
Works Cited
Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. New York: Hyperion, 2006. Print.
“Barclays’ Premier League Soccer.” NBC Network. 27 Feb. 2016. Television.
Billings, Andrew C., Michael L. Butterworth, and Paul D. Turman. Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2014. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.
Birrell, Susan. “Feminist Theories for Sport.” Handbook of Sports Studies. Eds. Jay Coakley and Eric Dunning. Los Angeles: Sage, 2000. Web. 27 Feb. 2016
L’Etang, Jacquie. Public Relations Concepts, Practice and Critique. Los Angeles: Sage, 2008.
Print.
McQuail, Denis. McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. 6th ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2010. Print.
Moss, J. “West Bromwich Albion vs. Crystal Palace.” goal.com. 27 Feb. 2016. Web. <http:// www.goal.com/en/match/west-bromwich-albion-vs-crystal-palace/2043415/live- commentary/main-events?ICID=MP_LC_2>
Twitter. “Live Feed for #WBACRY” 27 Feb. 2016. Web.
