Stadiums against television : disputes over payments for sports broadcasts in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s
Abstract
Background: "Sport is everywhere, and we live in it". Czech phenomenologist Jiří Černý used this sentence in his mostly forgotten book Football is a game (1968) to stress the importance of sport and sports activities in modern culture.
At present, several studies are emerging, whether sociological, historical, anthropological, or economic, devoted to sports and sports activities. In this study I focus on the influence of sports broadcasting on the organization of top sports in the 1960s.
Objective: This work contributes to the academic discussion concerning the medialisation of nowadays sports by stressing its roots in the context of communist Czechoslovakia. Methods: This work is a historical case study.
Archive research was performed in the archives of Czech television. Results: Archival research has shown that television and the increasing number of TV license fees have gradually become a major issue for sports clubs.
The number of spectators in stadiums decreased significantly when the match was broadcasted on television. In the 1960's sports clubs started to complaint about the lower numbers of spectators in the stadiums resulting in lower admission income.
This forced the Czechoslovak television to pay certain amounts of money to the clubs for the broadcasted match. Conclusions: Medialisation of top sports, which relates to the development of communication technologies, payments for sports broadcasts and influences on the organization of sports, can be followed even in the conditions of communist Czechoslovakia.
This is represented by the development of television broadcasting in the 1960s, the rise of payments for sports broadcasts in 1965 and the spatial transformation of stadium auditoriums. Even though sport was considered amateur in Czechoslovakia, income, and finance in general still played a significant role in it