Over the years, it has been argued that the commercialization of professional sports has corrupted and dehumanized the culture of sports as the industry focuses more on monetary profits than on enrichment as well as development of the athletes.

But commercialization of sports is not new. The beginnings of commercialization goes way back to the first century CE when spectators gathered at the Colosseum to watch the fight of gladiators. Gladiatorial managers ran establishments of fighters and hired them out to promoters. The hiring fee was between 10 and 20 percent of the gladiator’s value, and the cull cost was paid if he was killed (Vamplew 2021).

In both the historical and philosophical contexts, sport has long been identified as “a moral, aesthetic, and dramatic phenomenon as well as a medium of individual self-fulfillment,” valorizing as “an important medium enabling social actors to ‘practice’ and ‘learn’ a sense of fair play, justice, conflict and dispute resolution, sublimating egoistic desires to group needs, as well as generating sociability, solidarity and communal effort” (Sewart 1987).

But is it really wrong to commercialize and commodify sports?

In our capitalist society, money is one of the most essential elements for sports to thrive. Without ample financial resources, teams cannot recruit and train competent athletes; also, without these resources, appropriate facilities cannot be built. Financial drought, therefore, becomes the seed of a vicious cycle, which demotivates and discourages players to perform with their best abilities.

It is true that there are some elements of professional sports that have become too entertaining and lost the soul of sportsmanship. The Super Bowl halftime show, for instance, receives almost the same spotlight as the game itself every year; sometimes, the frenzy of spectatorship of the halftime show obscures the thrill of experiencing the sport. Nevertheless, it is such spectatorship that generates revenues and profits, which then help sports business thrive.

Commercialization of sports is not an option but a necessity.

Works cited

Sewart, John. The Commodification of Sport. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.837.3721&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Vamplew, Wray. The Beginnings of Commercialism in Sport. https://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/sport-matters/2021/05/20/the-beginnings-of-commercialism-in-sport-or-was-it-always-there/