The fact that England has been thrown out of this season’s rugby Five Nations championship is of little moment in itself. But it exemplifies a grubby approach to modern sport. The reason England has been thrown out is not because its team is not good enough or that some or all of the players have been shown to be guilty of some significant sporting transgression. No, the reason is a row over television revenue.
Italy is now poised to take England’s place. It may be that the expulsion is just a ploy to put pressure on the English Rugby Union to agree to the way the television spoils are divided and that England will ultimately play. Even so, it still reveals the unacceptable approach to sport in the modern era.
No longer do sportspeople compete in events to which people may or may not come to watch and for which sponsors might chip in or television might seek rights if the standard is high enough and audience interest there. Sport is there for the televison, not television for the sport.
Nowadays the cart is put before the horse. Television rights become central to the spectacle. Television is sorted out and then an event is created for it.
In the case of cricket, of course, the whole game was transformed for television and we are now witnessing the ludicrous spectacle of having to play 21 games to sort out who is best of three teams. It’s amazing they have not worked out a way to have a play-off for third place.
Sponsors and television have helped sportspeople in the past with travel and modest salaries, but there is a limit. In the past 10 to 15 years we have seen huge payments to players, both for playing and for endorsing various sport products.
Gone are joys of playing for one’s country or one’s state or region.
Of course, we the audiences are mostly to blame. If we treated the worst elements of televised sport and the products that are advertised with it with more circumspection and less compulsion the money chain would be broken.