Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- A guide to prices, 1870–1914
- Part I An overview
- Part II The development of professional gate-money sport
- 3 Popular recreation before the Industrial Revolution
- 4 Sporting activities and economic change, 1750-1830
- 5 The precursors of commercialised sport, 1830–75
- 6 The rise of professional gate-money sport, 1875–1914
- 7 From sports spectator to sports consumer
- Part III Sport in the market place: the economics of professional sport
- Part IV Playing for pay: professional sport as an occupation
- Part V Unsporting behaviour
- Part VI A second overview
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - From sports spectator to sports consumer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- A guide to prices, 1870–1914
- Part I An overview
- Part II The development of professional gate-money sport
- 3 Popular recreation before the Industrial Revolution
- 4 Sporting activities and economic change, 1750-1830
- 5 The precursors of commercialised sport, 1830–75
- 6 The rise of professional gate-money sport, 1875–1914
- 7 From sports spectator to sports consumer
- Part III Sport in the market place: the economics of professional sport
- Part IV Playing for pay: professional sport as an occupation
- Part V Unsporting behaviour
- Part VI A second overview
- Appendices
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In the course of two centuries or so the British economy had been transformed and with it the nature of popular sport. In the pre-industrialised economy working hours were determined primarily by the agrarian calendar, but, although this meant that there was ample time for recreation, energy scarcity rendered participant sport both an irregular and a minority activity. For the majority, sport was something to watch rather than to play, but their poverty prevented them from being paying spectators. Then, although agricultural improvements increased the supply of energy, most of this was expended initially on the extra work effort demanded by the agrarian, and especially the industrial, revolutions. New work patterns also reduced the amount of discretionary free time available to the working class. Additionally, employers sought to discredit traditional sports as being adverse to productivity; and both urbanisation and enclosure reduced the space available for playing games. Nevertheless, traditional sports persisted into the nineteenth century mainly because neither urbanisation nor structural change within the economy had reached levels at which they could not be accommodated. By the mid nineteenth century, rising incomes and improvements in transport technology were laying the foundations for future developments, and in later decades substantial gains in working-class spending power, growing urbanisation, and the concentration of free time into Saturday afternoons, encouraged entrepreneurs to market gate-money sport on a regular basis. Indeed, although further increased supplies of energy facilitated greater sports participation, mass spectator sport became a growth point in the late Victorian economy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Pay Up and Play the GameProfessional Sport in Britain, 1875–1914, pp. 73 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988