Tom Evens

Ghent University | UGhent · Department of Communication Sciences

Purpose This systematic literature review examines the domain of sports sponsorship involving controversial industries. We delve into the shared patterns, differences and overarching themes prevalent across various dark consumption industries (i.e. alcohol, food and beverages high in fat, salt and sugar, gambling and tobacco). Design/methodology/a...

In the current disinformation era, where both people and generative AI systems can easily create content, concerns about the credibility of online content have come to the fore in public and policy debates. Audiences are faced with the challenge of determining which news messages are credible and which are not. It remains however unclear how audien...

Instagram has become a primary platform via which life coaches establish a relationship with potential clients and advertise their professional services. In this study, we draw from Bourdieu’s work on taste and capital to unravel how life coaches capitalize on the affordances of Instagram to generate legitimacy and credibility for their profession....

This chapter examines the shifting ownership structure of Formula One (F1) and highlights Liberty Media’s purchase of F1, with the US media conglomerate ending 40 years of governance by the British entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone. The chapter will reflect to what extent this event opens a new chapter for motor sport. First, the chapter discusses the...

This chapter concentrates on the journey of the World Rally Championship (WRC) from its amateur roots to a professional championship with its current ownership with the WRC Promoter formed by Red Bull Media House and KW25. With a focus on innovation the World Rally Championship has been able to achieve what many previously thought impossible throug...

This article investigates to what extent technological affordances are associated with people's preference for video streaming platforms over traditional television services. Such affordances refer to properties of these platforms (including personalized recommendations and easy-to-navigate interfaces) that provoke certain uses of the technology an...

To control and minimise the spread of COVID-19, various technological solutions have been proposed. In this research, we focus on digital contact tracing and automated triage for hospitals. We conducted an online survey in Flanders (N = 1708) to investigate the perceived appropriateness of these systems based on the Contextual Integrity framework,...

This study seeks to identify the impact of a commercial turning point in the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) in 1999 and the 2013 takeover by the current promoter’s media strategies. Drawing upon 21 qualitative interviews with key stakeholders in the WRC coupled with theories of institutional logics, mediatization and strategic legacy, the findi...

Faced with heavy competition of global subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) streaming services, along with increased pressure on fi nancing and distribution of domestic content, legacy media players are increasingly exploring the potential of local SVOD services as domestic alternatives to global platforms such as Netflix and Disney+, often in colla...

This article aims to unravel modes of audiovisual consumption of teenagers (13–17-year-olds) in the era of connected viewing. Based on a mixed-method design the research seeks to unpack the complex interplay between four increasingly varying articulations that each shape the overall meaning and nature of audiovisual consumption: platform, screen, c...

Review of: Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley , Stuart Cunningham and David Craig (2019) New York: New York University Press, 368 pp., ISBN 978-1-47984-689-4, p/bk, $30.00

Abstract: This article focuses on the World Rally Championship (WRC) and their media and broadcast strategy. They changed from broadcast television to a global Over-The-Top (OTT) streaming service, while still utilising regional television deals. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with key members of the WRC Promoter GmbH, WRC st...

Radio is on the brink of a digital wave brought about by the introduction of digital audio broadcasting (DAB+). Despite market success in a few European countries, there remains little evidence of industry support and consumer demand. By means of a stakeholder analysis, the article identifies the main stakeholders in the implementation of digital r...

This article studies the emergence of government-initiated civic crowdfunding platforms. Such platforms can be considered as governmental responses for bottom-up peer-to-peer support mechanisms related to urban innovation, which also allows top-down governance and governmental support systems for civic entrepreneurship. To better understand the imp...

This edited volume explores media management as engaged scholarship, building a bridge between theory and practice and discussing research collaboration between academia, policymakers and the media industry. In addition to advancing the scholarly discipline, it also questions, investigates and discusses the practical value of the research undertake...

This article examines which platform policies the European Commission has devel- oped over the last couple of years and whether its policies are taking into account the differences in platform power. We first identify the main structures of platform power. Secondly, we confront the European Commission’s policies affecting media and communication pl...

The ability of public service broadcasters (PSBs) to bring the nation together with live coverage of major sporting events is even more valuable today. In an era of multi-channel digital television and increasingly fragmented audiences, live television coverage of major sporting events remains one of the few forms of programming that can bring the...

A guide to the nature, purpose, and place of public service television within a multi-platform, multichannel ecology. Television is on the verge of both decline and rebirth. Vast technological change has brought about financial uncertainty as well as new creative possibilities for producers, distributors, and viewers. This book examines not only th...

The concluding chapter of the book focuses on change and continuity in the television industry and claims that disruptive technology is mediated by the prevailing power structures and institutional relationships in the industry. The outcome of the on-going platform war, as part of the on-going transformation of the television industry, reflects whe...

The platformisation of the television industry and the subsequent expansion of market power of such platforms has produced numerous negotiating impasses between television broadcasters and distributors. This chapter centres on this so-called retransmission swamp: Retransmission fees, which make up a substantial part of a broadcaster’s income, are o...

The opening chapter introduces a definition of platform and uses an elaboration of the concept power to examine platform power. It gives an introduction to media industries research and explains the benefits of this emerging field in media and communication studies. Finally, a detailed outline of the book is given while discussing the content of th...

The chapter describes the evolution of connected viewing, which represents a fundamental shift in the media ecosystem, putting pressuring on the power relationships within the contemporary television industry. It involves a massive shift in screen consumption and impacts the time and money viewers spend on television. The chapter discusses the func...

The platformisation of the television industry has produced a further horizontal and vertical integration of the value chain. This chapter focuses on the renewed merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in (and between) television broadcasting and distribution and discusses the implications of M&A activity for competition, industrial and media policym...

This chapter provides an historical overview of television distribution and its shift from a local utility to a global commodity. It describes the role of cable in the early days, which extended the reach of over-the-air television and was considered to serve the public interest. It shows how cable developed into pay-television systems that directl...

This chapter discusses traditional recipes that regulate the retransmission of television signals such as must-carry, copyright rules and price regulations. Policy revisions, amongst which the review of the SatCab Directive and pleas for the elaboration of the must-carry principle into a findability obligation upon distribution companies in a platf...

This chapter aims to comprehend the distribution of power in the global television value chain. It centres on the organisation of the industry, identifies the key actors in the television industry and assesses the differing financial returns as an indication of structural power. Industrial upgrading strategies and the emergence of the content-servi...

This book seeks to investigate ‘platform power’ in the multi-platform era and unravels the evolution of power structures in the TV industry as a result of platformisation. Multiple TV platforms and modes of distribution are competing–not necessarily in a zero-sum game–to control the market. In the volume, the contributors work to extend established...

Using examples from a number of different European countries, this article analyses the increasingly prominent position of traditional telecommunications companies, such as British Telecom (UK), Deutsche Telekom (Germany), France Telecom/Orange (France) and Telefonica (Spain), in the contemporary sports media rights market. The first part of the ar...

As people’s willingness to pay for digital news remains low, this article investigates whether people would be willing to share personal data as a new currency for accessing news. Increasingly, news organizations collect personal data and track cross-media consumption to build detailed knowledge about and (re)connect with digital news consumers. Th...

Various trends, both technological and economic in nature, have led to a shift in the financing and production of serial television fiction (principally television drama and episodic comedy), resulting in pressure on existing financing of TV fiction. These pressures prove especially difficult for small nations and regions, being characterized by re...

Based on seven different sports broadcasting markets (Australia, Brazil, Italy, India, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States), this article provides a comparative analysis of the regulation of television sports broadcasting. The article examines how contrasting perspectives on television and sport – economic and sociocultural – have be...

Cultural heritage institutions increasingly consider Creative Commons licences as a useful model for overcoming the barriers created by traditional copyright frameworks and for opening up archives, databases and collections for public use. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. This article therefore focuses on the use o...

This article focuses on the practice of self-tracking of physical activity data and sharing it via social networking sites. The use of wearable technology devices and the latest smartphones with built-in GPS tracking technology - capturing the speed, distance and duration of physical activities such as running and cycling - is a striking example of...

This article focuses on the recent wave of M&A activity, both vertical and horizontal in TV broadcasting and distribution industries, and discusses the implications of M&A activity for competition, industrial and media policymaking. Moreover, it aspires to set a forward-looking perspective on the regulation of M&A in the TV industry. It is argued t...

Industry architecture and business models in the broadcastingindustry are being increasingly transformed by digitization and conver-gence. While technology and policy have lowered entry barriers for new competitors in today’s media ecosystem, incumbents are deploying strategies for preserving market power and reinventing bottlenecks. Thisarticle an...

Digitization has transformed the news media industries and markets. Since the emergence of the Internet two decades ago, readers have increasingly been turning to online environments to consulting news content. This research aims to investigate the concept of a federated identity manager (FIM) as a means to protect the current business model of new...

Structural changes in TV markets are resulting in carriage disputes that have spread from the United States to Europe. A carriage dispute refers to a disagreement between a pay-TV operator and a broadcaster over the right to ‘carry’ a broadcaster’s channel. TV broadcasters are demanding ever increasing payments from pay-TV operators that complain a...

Albeit largely neglected in communication sciences research, industrial convergence has put the relation between legacy content media like TV broadcasters and distributors (cable, satellite) firmly on the policy agenda. There seems to be an increasing awareness of the gatekeeping characteristics of mainstream as well as online video distribution, a...

This article focuses on TV broadcasters adopting co-opetition strategies for launching online video services. It is claimed that the emergence of online video platforms like YouTube and Netflix is driving TV broadcasters to collaborate with their closest competitors to reduce costs and reach the necessary scale in the global marketplace. The articl...

The chapter analyses the challenges of digital technology for television audience measurement systems. First, the current state of audience measurement in Belgium is described. In the Belgian case, the traditional television audience measurement system is contested by small broadcasters and challenged by the opportunities that the emergence of digi...

Due to convergence and digital technology, the sports media experience has changed fundamentally in recent years. We can think of the rise of the (mobile) internet, combined with the digitization of (pay-)television and the popularity of social media that has given birth to online sports communities. These developments, however, pose tremendous cha...

As a considerable area of conflict in the US broadcast market, the issue of retransmission payments has gained momentum in Europe as well. By conducting case studies of two European regions, Flanders and Denmark, this article focuses on the political economy of retransmission payments in the broadcaster-to-distributor market. It is suggested that t...

This paper will analyse and explain how Smart TV, i.e. TV platforms combining traditional broadcast programming and Internet services, will drive business model convergence between linear broadcast TV and networked broadband services in Germany. Building on media convergence, two-sided market theory and business model strategy literature, this pape...

Traditional television screens have lost their monopoly on television content. With a helping hand of digitalization, the introduction of ever more screens in our lives and increasingly faster network technologies, a wide variety of alternative screens and sources of television content are trying to conquer a piece of the audiences' viewing time. T...

In several European countries, vertical integrated distribution platforms and no longer broadcasting companies play the leading role in the sports viewer market. Increasingly, sports rights are acquired exclusively by platform operators in order to occupy a strategic position in the digital television market. From a market and user perspective, how...

The live music and festival industries are undergoing globalization challenges similar to other creative industries, but the impact of global live music promoters on local markets seems to be flying under the radar of scholarly attention. To open up debate on the impact of global live music promoters on local popular music festival markets, this ar...

In this dissertation, the focus is on the (evolving) configurations of power and control in broadcaster-to-distributor markets. Technological developments, as well as changes in the institutional framework, are in the process of fundamentally transforming legacy TV business models and have transferred power to ‘gatekeepers’ which derive a dominant...

One of the most prominent changes in today’s industry is the far-reaching integration between traditional broadcast content with broadband delivery platforms. Over-the-top television (OTT) services allow companies to go directly to consumers, bypassing traditional network gatekeepers and access providers. Additionally, the intermediary role broadca...

Since its creation in the 1980s, private, free-to-air television in Europe has largely depended on advertising revenue. In spite of new as yet immature sources of income related to online and on-demand services, selling television advertising remains at the core of private television’s success and survival. However, this high dependence on the adve...

This book has highlighted how professional sport has developed into a highly valuable global industry. At the same time, however, we have also been keen to emphasise that sport (both participating and watching) continues to be a social and cultural activity valued by millions of people across the globe. The main focus of the book has been on the ro...

From around the 1960s, until the abandonment of apartheid during the early 1990s, South Africa was a pariah state. Foreign governments, multinational corporations and religious leaders all condemned apartheid. For their part, international sporting organisations, including FIFA and the IOC, instituted a sporting boycott, which resulted in the isola...

According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (2011), the sports media rights market in the Pacific region is valued at $4,285 billion, representing 17 per cent of the global media rights market. The value of broadcast rights in the Pacific region is significantly smaller than in Europe and the United States, where pay-TV operators drive up the va...

The preceding chapter established that sport is a type of popular cultural output — alongside drama, comedy, film and music — that has the power to bring about socio-cultural benefits. Building on this argument, this chapter discusses whether the market can be relied upon to deliver the benefits of engagement in culture and sport and whether it has...

Given the widespread commercialisation of contemporary professional sport, it is difficult to dispute the European Commission’s claim that ‘high level sport has become to a great extent, an economic activity’ (EC, 2007f). This point is perhaps most clearly illustrated by the escalating value and commercial significance of television sports rights (...

The Italian broadcasting market has many peculiarities. It is dominated by free-to-air terrestrial television channels and its main shortcomings can be summarised as spectrum chaos, non-enforcement of the law and market concentration (Matteucci, 2010). RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana), the Italian public service broadcaster (PSB), has a distinctive...

Over the last couple of decades, the sale of broadcast, and particularly television, rights for sporting events and competitions has become an extremely profitable activity, giving birth to a global industry worth about $30 billion (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2011). Increased competition between broadcasters has inflated rights fees for many popular s...

This chapter focuses on the social and cultural character of sport and the next discusses whether the market can be relied upon to deliver the benefits of engagement in culture and sport. By engaging with the relevant academic bibliography, as well as country and intergovernmental reports, the current and the next chapter focus on the potential soc...

In an era of multichannel digital television and increasingly fragmented audiences, live coverage of major sporting events remains one of the few forms of programming able to bring the nation together for a shared viewing experience. A small number of high-profile international events, such as the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup football tourna...

Over the last couple of decades, India has experienced a period of breathtaking economic, political and technological change. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in relation to Indian television. During the late 1980s, the state-owned monopoly broadcaster, Doordarshan (since 1997 part of Prasar Bharti — the Broadcasting Corporation of India) p...

The United Kingdom (UK) provides a particularly good example of the symbiotic relationship that exists between the sport and television industries. At no time was this more apparent than during the summer of 2012. First, in June, the Premier League agreed a record £3 billion joint deal for the sale of its live domestic television rights with BSkyB,...

Spain is a fascinating country to discuss as a case study in sports broadcasting. Unlike other major European football leagues, La Liga (Spain’s first division) is the only one of the ‘big five’ leagues in which each football club sells its own individual broadcasting rights. The end result is that those clubs with most market appeal, like Real Mad...

Together with sunny beaches and samba music, Brazil is probably most renowned for its football (‘futebol’). The national football team, most commonly referred to as the Seleção Brasileira, has won the FIFA World Cup a record five times, and has produced legendary star players such as Pelé, Zico, Sócrates and Ronaldo. In Brazil, sports are widely pr...

Over the last couple of decades, one of the most significant trends in the global audiovisual market has been the growth of sports coverage. This has gone hand in hand with the general commercialisation of sport and has developed at an ever increasing pace since the worldwide liberalisation of audiovisual markets. The expansion of sports media, tel...

Introduction 1. The Sports-Media-Business Complex 2. The Sports Broadcasting Market 3. The Social and Cultural Value of Sport 4. The Importance of Free-to-Air Sports Broadcasting 5. Competition Law and Sports Broadcasting 6. The Regulation of Access to Major Sporting Events 7: Australia 8. Brazil 9. India 10. Italy 11. South Africa 12. Spain 13. Un...