Datavisuality
Branden Buehler · University of Illinois Press eBooks · 2023
This chapter argues that sports media’s managerial fixation has been accompanied by a marked interest in quantification. To that end, the chapter highlights how sports television has become increasingly data-driven—incorporating both greater quantities of data and ever more complex data. First, the chapter summarizes what it has meant for sports television to become data-driven, in the process suggesting this datafication stems from a confluence of factors, including the sports industry’s increasing fixation with advanced statistical measures, technological changes within the sports television industry, and sports broadcasters’ attempts both to keep pace with the sports industry and to separate themselves from a growing field of competitors. Second, the chapter examines the epistemological and ideological consequences of sports television’s move toward quantification—arguing, for instance, that datavisuality risks reinforcing pernicious big data mythology asserting the superiority of big data tools and techniques.