Soccer, Broadcasting, and Narrative

Abstract

Soccer broadcasts have been explored in a number of interesting ways, uncovering racial difference, gendered stereotypes, domestic viewing experiences, nationalistic discourse, and national styles of production. What is lacking, however, is how the viewer comprehends space and time in the live broadcast. Such literatures neglect the hybrid nature of televised soccer as a combination of visual and verbal communication. Understanding and experiencing a televised soccer match is a formulation of visual principles and verbal understanding of temporality within the narrative of a live broadcast. These principles are materialized through the screen and develop an unconscious understanding of movement, spatiality, and temporality differing from a cinematic unconscious through the cutting and sequencing of footage and border moments—screen wipe, frames, cuts—which work in combination with commentary to establish a microgeography of the screen. Viewers of televised soccer, therefore, establish a comprehension of time and space which is distinctive and differs from reportage.