Understanding globalisation: transnational marketing & sponsorship. (Guest Editors).(Brief Article)

Globalisation. It is one of today's most overstated cliches, a term whose promiscuity within popular discourse has rendered it vastly misunderstood and perhaps meaningless. Yet, it pervades the rhetoric of the new culture industries, financial and economic life in general, numerous strands of academe, government statements, and even sports broadcasts. It is perhaps no surprise, then, to find us saying that understanding globalisation is of crucial importance for those who work in, and study, the sports industry. A central component of globalisation processes is the increased cross border flow of capital, circulating through transnational monetary systems and multinational companies, and expressed in the presence of truly transnational brands. This points to the increased importance and growing significance of international/transnational organisations, institutions and movements that operate independently of individual nation states. The corporate footprints of these transnational organisations transcend the b oundaries of nation states. As such, sport marketers and sponsors have to recognise the growing influence and reach of the associations that are formed, created and maintained within the burgeoning and increasingly global sports industry and the possible impact and problems that arise through this process of globalisation.

The transnational flow of capital, as well as peoples, goods, services, images and symbols, indicative of the processes of globalisation, has caused some, within academic circles, to decry the demise of the nation at the hands of rampant globalisation. These scholars posit that the nation state is losing control of its territoriality (Sassen, 1996) and is limping on its last legs (Appadurai, 1996). Others go even further to argue that globalisation may eventually lead to the hallowing out (Jessop, 1994), the decline (Held, 1990) or even the …