Members of the Critical Geography Forum:
My name is Robert Campbell. I have recently joined this list and have
enjoyed the many stimulating discussions.
I am surprised to hear this story about Lacrosse, especially when it was
characterized as elitist. Lacrosse is the official sport of Canada (notice
hockey). Lacrosse comes from the North American natives, it only requires a
stick with a net on the end of it, a field, goal net and ball. There is a
"professional" league in North America, but it is not that popular (I cannot
name one team). I do know of a local league in Quebec, many Mohawk/Iroquois
people play in an attempt to revive native traditions. I would hardly
describe this sport as elitist.
This story does point to potentially more disturbing trend. That is how
sports should be / is marketed. Clearly, Sports Illustrated and likely
those who invested in Lacrosse feel that if 'elite' people play the sport,
then it will become more excepted and profitable. How and why marketing has
become so exclusionary is the way I think the question should be framed.
Sports Illustrated (SI) is a good geographic discriminator. Canada and the
US almost started a trade war over split-run magazines. Magazines like SI
want to run Canadian advertising in their Canadian editions. Since all the
content comes form the US, there is very little overhead costs to changing a
few ads to Canadian ones, so they charge discount rates for advertising
space. Thus Canadian magazines were said to be in danger because in order
to compete with US magazines for the same advertisers they have to lower
their costs in line with the US magazines (and they also have to pay for all
of the overhead costs of running the magazine).
Of course the debate in Canada is framed around the dominant neo-liberal
paradigm. Should Canada be protecting an industry at all. Many analysts
miss the unfairness of the spatial aspect: the US magazines (when sold in
Canada) have virtually no overhead cost because the US market has paid for
it, while Canadian magazines must pay for themselves in Canada.
I think there is a lot to be learned by studying the dynamics of economic
geography and the ability to discriminate based on national borders or by
postal code (the only difference is scale?).
Robert Campbell
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