Contenu du sommaire : La fabrique des SPORTS

Immediately after World War One, Roger Caillois in Les jeux et les hommes, defined the elements that characterize how people played games: while professionals play and train hard and respect rules, amateurs play for free, and share emotions and dreams as a form of fiction. There is a distinction between sports as a professional activity and sports as a pleasure, indeed as a passion. In sports such as football, cycling or basketball, there is a puzzling division of labour between two different social groups: the professionals are physically involved and have to respect the rules, but their goals are very practical (money) and their involvement in the fictional world of teams, flags etc. is limited at best. The opposite is true for the followers and fans. What is it that enables the latter to « participate without being on the field », to feel the pleasure of playing without really playing? The author identifies two levels of mediation: on the one hand, the unique moment in the individual biographies of most male kids and teen-agers when a team is chosen, generally for life; on the other, the recurring rite of following the contests, via various communication technologies and media. This is why the development of the media, throughout the XXth Century, deeply influenced the forms of participation and even the rules of the game - as the author shows by comparing the representation of sports in the press, radio, television, and in subsequent media.

The America's Cup and New York City (1893-1903): the orchestration of a media event for the city and the world. The history of the America Cup is studied here in the context of the visual and social history of New York City at the end of the XIXth century. I argue that the Cup is not only a maritime and elitist event, but also a spectacle organized for urban masses, including an impressive "floating audience". In Europe, betting enthusiasts assembled to the news in real time, or almost, as large bets depended on the outcome. I argue that the competition between the New York Yacht Club and Thomas Lipton helps explain the strategies involved in fashioning a media spectacle or New York and the wider world. Do the media strategies adopted at the time still influence current practice?

From the beginning of the 20th century the French press monitored closely the technical and sporting feats of aviators-from "the aeroplane" to beyond. Daily newspapers seized on the sensational features of the nascent aviation industry to promote their own image and boost sales. They even become the main spurs to this momentum by creating sensational contests. Such "aviation fever" reflects a noteworthy acculturation achievement by a news press which literally invented staged aerial feats and new media strategies. This article sheds a light on an aspect of modern culture that intersects between the quickening pace in the development of sports, technical and industrial mobility, and the press as a mass media.

The Italian press was "sports-obsessed" during the fascist regime. Both the specialist sports press and general interest print media used sport a to help fashion a consensus and spread the values of the Mussolini regime. A paradox emerged: the sports press nurtured the development of spectator sports and the nascent sports industry by harking on rivalries between Italy's difference regions, but the sports press, however great the "elective affinities" between journalists and fascism, often moved away from the canons and tenets of the blackshirt concept of sports.

The history of the America Cup is studied here in the context of the visual and social history of New York City at the end of the XIXth century. I argue that the Cup is not only a maritime and elitist event, but also a spectacle organized for urban masses, including an impressive "floating audience". In Europe, betting enthusiasts assembled to the news in real time, or almost, as large bets depended on the outcome. I argue that the competition between the New York Yacht Club and Thomas Lipton helps explain the strategies involved in fashioning a media spectacle or New York and the wider world. Do the media strategies adopted at the time still influence current practice?

This paper examines the role of the press in two sports scandals : the wide scale of doping during the “Tour de France 98”, and the illegal employment of African soccer players, aged under-18, by French football clubs. Based on the textual corpora analyzed using the Prospero Software program, we studied how the news media covered these issues, and compared them with the means used by the other actors involved. This led us to study the relationships between the journalists and the latter,and the consequences this had on judgments journalists made about Doping and the existence of a kind of ‘slave trade' in young soccer players. Our paper highlights the interest of asking journalists how they proceed in conducting their investigation (Dewey, 1993).

As one of the best-known heirs of the tradition of the sports press in France, L?
Equipe is both a go-between and the producer of both a spectator-sport and an industry: in order to boost its editorial contents and to increase its profits during slow-news periods (middle of the week, beginning of the summer). To reach a wider readership, L'Equipe launches or develops international sports events (the "Tour de France" cycle-race, the European cup of the football clubs); in the 1960s this strategy widenened to include non-professional sports such as alpine skiing. But the international federations, while taking advantage of the economic benefits that resulted, ignore the initial contribution of L?Equipe.

The article presents the commonly held assumption that Rugby became a national sport at the end of the 1950s-60s, partly as a result of being televised. The authors stress that demographic and political factors explain its spectacular development during this period. Television did however transform what had become a new spectator sport. And contributed to the promotion of star players The artrivle concludes by focussing on the modes of collective reception of the international matches and the new forms of sociability that resulted.

For many years, media coverage has contributed to the fame of sportspersons outside sporting circles. But a second wave of saturation media coverage, that started in the United States in the sixties, has dramatically changed the sports industry itself; the increased wages and fame of some athletes, transforming their status and position in society, is one result. This means that sports competitors have to perform in two ways: their sporting performance, stricto sensu, which gives access to one form of fame ; their personal performance in front of the media is a tool in managing the capital thus accrued.