Leveraging sportainment for sport’s long-term viability: a multidimensional inquiry through three conceptual frameworks
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose This conceptual paper aims to investigate how the growing synergy between sport and entertainment reshapes the sport ecosystem and how sportainment can be strategically leveraged to ensure sport’s long-term viability. It addresses the following research question: How can sportainment be strategically leveraged to ensure the long-term economic, social and ethical viability of sport in an era of hyper-commercialization and digital spectacle? Design/methodology/approach Drawing on a narrative review methodology, the paper synthesizes interdisciplinary perspectives to examine the rise of the sportainment ecosystem. Anchored in Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction, it analyses how cycles of innovation have disrupted traditional sport structures. Viability is framed not merely as commercial or financial success but as a multidimensional construct encompassing economic performance, social legitimacy and ethical responsibility. Findings Sportainment is magnified by the society of the spectacle and the logic of affective engagement. The paper warns against the risks of inauthentic spectacle and proposes three original conceptual frameworks: (1) the transformation of sport into hybrid spectacle; (2) the integration of entertainment, finance and gameplay in constructing brand equity and (3) the continuum from authentic sport to deep-fake sportainment. These models collectively theorize sportainment as a system of symbolic governance. Originality/value This paper offers a multidimensional conceptual inquiry and positions sportainment as a performative infrastructure shaping cultural value, emotional resonance and stakeholder trust. It provides theoretical and practical guidance for safeguarding sport’s long-term viability while resisting symbolic manipulation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.060 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.020 | 0.018 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.013 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".