Selling the Revolution

This chapter explores how sport advertising has reacted to the emergence of radical politics within sport, and within society more broadly, guided by the following questions: How and through what mechanisms have sporting brands attempted to accommodate the shift toward radical politics? How have sporting advertisers responded to a political culture in which more and more consumers have identified the emptiness of corporate virtue-signaling? Operating within the “contested racial terrain” of sporting representation, what versions of “radicalism” are sold to the public through sport advertising? The analysis argues that sport advertising engages with radical politics within the realm of signification, but not with substance.

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Business · Emptiness · Epistemology · Political radicalism · Political science · Politics · Realm · Representation (politics) · Sociology · Virtue · Law · Philosophy · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society