Cricket in Consumer Culture: Notes on the 2007 Cricket World Cup

Abstract

This article reflects on the position of the game of cricket in the development of sport as an emergent feature of 21st-century capitalist consumer culture. Its focus is on the International Cricket Council Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007 (CWC 2007). It suggests that detailed analysis of sports megaevents, such as the cricket and association football World Cup competitions and the Summer Olympics, enables consideration of several overlapping and intersecting issues of contemporary social scientific interest. Consideration of the CWC 2007 staged in the Caribbean reveals several of the underlying tensions that emerge when a sports megaevent is staged outside the advanced urban centers of the northern hemisphere, exposes the relations that continue to operate between international sports organizations and local organizing committees, and provides the chance to reflect on the role of the media in the culture of consumption that surrounds such events. The article aims to show the importance of approaching the study of sport and sports megaevents in consumer culture with emphasis placed on the production of consumption as much as on the meanings or pleasures of consumption.