El Impacto de Internet en los medios de comunicación y la industria del deporte

The results of the research project funded by the Spanish National Sports Council in 2002, the aim of which was to examine, in depth, how the consumption of sport via television and the Internet impacts on the sports economy.

Given that there is an ever-increasing presence of sport on the Internet, this research project focused on the Internet’s impact on existing relationships between some of the most significant stakeholders of the sports industry in Europe: sporting organisations, which produce the basic sports product; the media, which communicate sporting themes; commercial organisations, which promote their products through sport and the media (including sports sponsors), and; fans or consumers of the basic sports product.

Through an analysis of the structure and content of a sample of 27 organisations’ websites, and after considering the concepts and theories on Internet communication, the emergence of e-commerce and e-marketing and how they are related to the sports industry and the conveyance of sporting messages, conclusions were drawn about the extent of the Internet’s impact on the sports industry at the dawn of convergence between digital television and the Internet.