RMIT UNIVERSITY School of Media and Communication COMM2411 Communication and Social Relations ASSESSMENT TASK 3 Name: James Dean Student Number: S3281694 Tutorial: Friday, 11.30am, Dr Buck Rosenberg Assignment Task 3 – Published Version – Discipline: Media Etihad (Docklands) Stadium Docklands Stadium (also known as Etihad Stadium for sponsorship reasons) was officially opened on March 9th, 2000 as a multipurpose stadium to host numerous sporting and entertainment events. Construction began in 1998 on the $450 million stadium after a decade of seeking funding. Community input was also huge in the development of Docklands Stadium as Melbournians wanted to have to say into what it would become. Docklands Stadium also supports the notion of Melbourne being a sporting hub with Docklands just one of many sporting facilities around the city. Others include The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), Rod Laver Arena and Olympic Park. Docklands stadium and Media go hand in hand for a number of reasons. Sports being a massive part of Australian culture, media uses sport as a massive support in their industry. We can see this with the many number of media outlets and media sources who use sport. The most obvious example is television which broadcast sport everyday with some channels dedicating 24 hours a day to sport (ONEHD, FoxSports, Channel Seven, ect). Other forms of media that use sport as a medium include radio, print, internet, mobile phones, iPods, advertising and multi-media. With Melbourne being branded “the sporting capital of the world”, it„s easy to see why media and Melbournians would embrace sport, in particular Etihad Stadium. The primary sport played at Etihad Stadium is Australian Rules Football (AFL), media broadcast this sport very extensively. As Robert Pascoe explains in his book, The Winter Game, “creation of teams such as Carlton and Collingwood bring people from that certain urban area would create some of the fiercest rivalries in the sporting world” (Pascoe. R 2006, ‘Origins’ in The Winter Game, Ed, R. Pascoe, The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, pp. 45-52), this rivalry involves the community and their participation, and the media as a business broadcast this rivalry increase their ratings and profit. Although not restricted to AFL, another Melbournian sporting rivalries include Melbourne Victory vs. Melbourne Heart in the A-League Australian Culture and more specially, Melbourne culture, not only focus on AFL, but also enjoy watching and attending sports at Etihad Stadium like Football (soccer) and Rugby. Media broadcasts all these sports because it‟s easy to see why Australian‟s love their sport and the sporting culture that comes with it. A key argument to why sport is so popular is because it represents masculinity and a young man‟s entrance into adulthood. Rae Light says “playing physical sport was his way to „symbolism his entrance to adulthood‟, much like a female doing a debutante ball” (Light. R, 2000, ‘Continuity and Chane’ in Sporting Tradition: Journal of the Australian Society for Sports History, Ed. J.O’Hara, University of
New South Wales, pp.87-105). It is these views that makes the public, and more specifically Melbournians, such massive sporting fans, and makes them come to Etihad stadium to watch sport and view the sport from the various media forms, which again, increases rating and profits. Etihad Stadium and media work specifically well together because Etihad Stadium would want all the publicity they can get, with their own sponsorship and administration getting all the public attention they want through the media, which broadcasts it around the world. Something that provides the media with evidence that sports provide huge audience numbers is the Australian Television Audience Measurement (OZTAM) which shows that during the first round of 2010 AFL season between Richmond and Carlton, played at Etihad Stadium, broadcasted on channel 10, they had a viewing audience of 535,000, with 382,000 of those viewers coming from Melbourne. (http://www.talkingfooty.com/tv_ratings_2010.php). Again relating media to Etihad Stadium and itâ€&#x;s love for it, the largest crowd in A-League history was between Melbourne Victory and Sydney FC, when 50,333 people turned up to Etihad stadium to view the match. Words: 628