The Power of the Local in Sports Broadcasting: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Rugby Commentary

This article explores how local pressures intersect to produce differing broadcasts in 2 cultural contexts. This is achieved via a cross-cultural analysis of a decade of televised rugby union matches between France and New Zealand and interviews with leading commentators in both countries. The authors argue that although the overarching commercial imperative to capture audiences might be the same in both countries, and despite global tendencies toward homogenized presentation of sports events, there are local differences in expectations about which kinds of audiences should be captured, and these lead to different practices and emphases in the live broadcasts. The authors suggest that in each country, broadcasts are the result of a complex set of pressures that interact to produce broadcasts with “local” flavor and characteristics.