Sport's Relationship with Other Leisure Industries

This innovative and timely volume of essays critically interrogates the shared histories between sport and a variety of leisure, entertainment and cultural pursuits. Sport's Relationship with Other Leisure Industries: Historical Perspectives spans the bowling greens of early modern England to the postmodern exhibition halls of contemporary Las Vegas, and considers examples from Europe, North America and India. Utilizing a range of historical methods and sources, they describe how sport has interacted with a broad range of leisure forms, including tourism, shopping, theatre, circus, carnival and film. The collection takes into account the economic, cultural, geographic and political interactions sport has forged and poses a series of questions: about how sport has been forged in contemporary consumer capitalism; about the manner in which it has been shaped by space and place; and the ways in which entrepreneurs, sportspeople and artists have represented sporting competition. The collection will help both students and scholars conceptualise sporting networks, and will be of interest to those working in multiple fields. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in History.

Benjamin Litherland is a lecturer in media and popular culture at the University of Huddersfield. He is interested in histories of popular culture, and how those histories are maintained and remembered. Dion Georgiou recently completed a PhD at the School of History at Queen Mary University of London. He is interested in the history of cultural industries, cities and suburbs, and temporality.

Introduction: Sport's Relationship with other Leisure Industries: Historical Perspectives 1. 'For the Recreation of Gentlemen and Other Fit Persons of the Better Sort': Tennis Courts and Bowling Greens as Early Leisure Venues in Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century London and Bath 2. 'That Little Sugarloaf Island': Ailsa Craig, Romance, Reality and the Branding of Scottish Sport and Leisure, 1707-2013 3. Sport and Tourism - An Effective Cooperation: Canoeing and Mountaineering in France before the First World War 4. Cycling Nostalgia: Authenticity, Tourism and Social Critique in Tuscany 5. Professional Bodybuilding and the Business of 'Extreme' Bodies: The Mr Olympia Competition in the Context of Las Vegas's Leisure Industries 6. The Rise of 'The World's Largest Sport and Athletic Outfitter': A Study of Gamage's of Holborn, 1878-1913 7. 'Tri-ang Strong Toys': Lines Brothers and British Motor Sport in the Inter-War Period 8. Redefining the Carnivalesque: The Construction of Ritual, Revelry and Spectacle in British Leisure Practices through the Idea and Model of 'Carnival', 1870-1939 9. From Lambeth to Niagara: Imitation and Innovation among Female Natationists 10. Running Pedestrianism in Victorian Manchester 11. Sporting Entertainments, Discarded Possibilities and the Case of Football as a Variety Sport, 1905-1906 12. Spectacular Bodies: The Swimsuit, Sexuality and Hollywood 13. Cricket, Entertainment, Glamour Industry and Promotional Culture in India, 1913-2013