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The rise of sports club media in Scotland: Implications for ethics teaching

Published onOct 28, 2024
The rise of sports club media in Scotland: Implications for ethics teaching

Scottish football has an intrinsic tie into national identity, whether it be the Tartan Army (fans of the national team), the struggles of the national team or the highs and lows of the country’s clubs in European competitions. Coupled to this has been the crucial role of both print journalism and broadcasting in the coverage of the game. In this new post-pandemic era, in-house club media and fan-run content creators have come to dominate across video, social and audio outputs creating more Scottish football content but also creating new ethical dilemmas for those in journalism education.

Key words: sports club media, Scottish football, journalism education, ethics, public relations

Introduction

Experts have argued over what is sports journalism for decades (McGuire et.al. 2015) with some seeing it as a form of promotion while others debate its merits and role in the era of digitalisation (Rojas-Torrijos and Nölleke 2023). McEnnis (2018) suggests that sports journalism is very costly to news organisations and outlines how PR and communications managers have taken over the roles previously taken by journalists in the coverage of the sport.

What has become clear in Scotland in the years since I moved here in 2016 has been a significant rise in the role of in-house club media, with all 78 clubs in the top tiers of Scottish football now having on board media assistants, social media producers and digital media content creators. In some cases, the competitions themselves have introduced media officer roles, including the Lowland League.

At the time of writing in mid-2024 there are nine full-time sports journalism roles available in Scotland, a nation where approximately 183,000 students graduate each summer, of which almost 1,000 come from media related courses (Scottish government 2023). While the challenges surrounding traditional media employers, newspapers, radio stations and TV outlets remain, there are almost a dozen sports club media roles available at football teams including the Premier League sides Hearts and Motherwell.

The broadcast influence

Boyle and Haynes (2009) outline how, despite significant coverage of sport in Scotland, sports journalism was still often referred to as trivial and unimportant in the early 2000s. Yet the Scottish football media landscape was distinctly altered by the entry of Irish broadcaster Setanta Sports in 2004 (Mackay 2006) and their subsequent extension of a broadcast deal worth tens of millions of pounds. Media academics, including Morrow (2004), explored the financial challenges facing Scottish football before the broadcast offer and how the Setanta money provided a much-needed cash injection as well as putting Scottish football on a bigger media map. With increased coverage came the need for more media and technical broadcast roles in Scotland and, in turn, club media was created, including Celtic and Rangers TV.

However, the economic collapse of Setanta and financial downturn of 2008 led it to losing more than a million euro in 2011 (Flanagan 2013) and the brief half-decade surge of media exposure for Scottish football began to burst, leading to lay-offs at national media titles and the temporary ceasing of broadcasting for club media including Celtic TV (Welsh 2009).

Sky, BT Sports, BBC and Viaplay have all played intermittent roles providing traditional broadcast coverage of Scottish football over the subsequent 15 years despite uncertainties surrounding costs and financial stability (Pilcher 2023).

The pandemic shift

COVID-19 took fans out of stadiums across the UK and, into this void, Scottish clubs increased their own media coverage as an opportunity to engage fans from home. Parry et al. (2021) describes how the football link to fans during COVID-19 in the UK provided social links and helped maintain communities of sports fans who would otherwise have felt isolated. In Scotland, bespoke documentaries and interactive fan media including podcasts and vlogs appeared and Premier League teams Rangers and Motherwell went on to feature prominently at the 2021 and 2022 Football Business Awards where their social media, digital content teams and online marketing employees were either winners or shortlisted for major national awards (Thomson 2021).

Coupled to this was fan-led content with audio and podcast creation dominating. At the time of writing there are now more than 50 bespoke Scottish football podcasts. Go Radio in Scotland went on air in the middle of the first lockdown of COVID-19 in 2020 with Scottish football-focused radio and podcast series that fed into an already engaged digital football fan base (Mahood 2020). PodBible (2021) refers to how the pandemic led to a 166 per cent increase in listeners for football podcasts in the UK and highlights the case studies of Glasgow and Edinburgh with audiences aligning to their recent national team success culminating in progression to Euro 2024 this summer.

Emerging trends

Along with the increased role of in-house club media since the pandemic there have emerged new streaming partners and influencers. While traditional broadcast streamers including QTV sports having dominated Scottish sports media coverage, football teams themselves have provided more rounded and robust coverage of games not available through established TV channels. These include pre-season friendlies and access to training camp content, distributed through their own paywall-protected, digital media pathways.

Another shift has come with the dominance of YouTubers in Scottish football including Blair McNally and Sam North (Grimley 2024; Hanvidge 2024). North and McNally between them have more than a quarter of a million followers/subscribers across TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. One of North’s most popular videos focuses on Glasgow Rangers garnering almost 500,000 views with McNally’s lower league content bringing in almost a quarter of a million views for a feature on Ayrshire side Auchinleck Talbot. As traditional journalistic outlets struggle with staffing challenges and budgets including Reach, ITV, Mail Sport, Newsquest and others (Tobbitt 2024), new in-house club media roles and influencer opportunities are growing in Scottish football.

Ethical debate

Considering this shift to in-house club media coupled with the emergence of Scottish football influencers, the question many of us face in journalism education is what do we teach and to whom across HNC, HND, BA and MA courses? When evaluating comparable sized class groups of pre-COVID and post-COVID graduating classes of BA Sports Journalism at the University of the West of Scotland there has been a shift away from traditional sports and news journalist roles to a greater number of graduates gaining employment at sports clubs, primarily SPL football teams.

2018/2019 Graduates of BA Sports Journalism at UWS

Employed in Journalism Field in 2024

Employed in Sports Journalism Field in 2024

Employed in Club Media Field in 2024

Employed in Non- Journalism Roles in 2024

11

4

2

2

3

2023/2024 Graduates of BA Sports Journalism at UWS

Employed in Journalism Field in 2024

Employed in Sports Journalism Field in 2024

Employed in Club Media Field in 2024

Employed in Non- Journalism Roles in 2024

10

1

1

5

3

Intakes at college level, including Glasgow City College, have also seen more demand for sports journalism-focused courses post-pandemic and this, in turn, has been mirrored at post-graduate level with Edinburgh Napier launching Scotland’s only Sports Journalism MA in June 2023.

It is clear, that graduates in Scotland are driven by where the jobs market currently lies – and that is with sports clubs. Therefore, if educators are to prepare students for graduate roles should they be focused more on the balanced ethical NCTJ law-certified journalist pathway or align more to PR/Communications routes that inform sports club media assistant roles?

From both a journalistic and media educator standpoint, it is paramount to focus on an ethically rounded pedagogy that encourages a critical approach and incorporates media law and professional practice so providing transferrable skills for either entry level reporter roles and/or social media assistant opportunities at sports teams.

Having a strong grounding in interviewing skills, ability to research, edit audio and video and engage social media audiences while writing match reports and undertaking commentating workshops allows for those who want to be journalists to be prepared for those roles. The same skillset is also applicable to those creating media outputs for sports club media.

At a 2024 Scottish Cup press conference for Ayr United ahead of playing Glasgow Rangers I counted five sports journalists and nine club or association media representatives. This raises a larger ethical question as to whether more journalists are needed to focus on balanced reporting or whether a strong journalistic grounding for those working in club media compared to those from a marketing or PR degree would help keep coverage fair and equitable.

Sports club media employees are answerable to a corporate entity that aims to present their outlet in a positive manner while journalists should be focused on accurate, balanced reporting and what audiences, readers and viewers need to know. Through rigorous journalism education that outlines the importance of objectivity where possible, coupled with an awareness of the importance of ethical and informed editorial decision making, we can, as educators, keep Scottish football well covered while encouraging informed debate amongst fans.

Given the rise in influencers, YouTubers and vloggers, universities and colleges in Ireland and the UK are now offering courses and degrees which focus solely on creating a new generation of Twitchers, TikTokers, YouTubers and even potentially Love Island contestants (Bacon 2023; Coady 2019; Jenne 2023).

For those whose aim is to create marketable and sellable, brand-aligned social media, bespoke sports journalism courses may not suit. However, for those who want to be football podcasters, sports vloggers, then gaining a grounding in sports journalism, exploring ethical dilemmas in the game and learning to see both the reporter side and the fan side of a team’s success or failure remain essential.

Case for ethical and balanced traditional journalism courses

Journalism education in the UK at university level began in the 1970s; more formal media training in HE has existed in the US since the start of the last century. Karen Fowler-Watt (2023) debates at length the role of journalism education in the digital age and explores the validity of sports journalism often referred to as the ‘toy department’ (Fowler- Watt 2023). She highlights the ways in which journalism education can encourage students’ confidence and media literacy: these are transferrable and timely skills that help create rounded working professionals regardless of the platform or media outlet they choose to work for. Another area where Fowler-Watt (2023) sees university journalism education as providing merits is in its use of associate and guest lecturers who bring expertise into the classroom from varying specialisms including ethics, mobile journalism and trauma training. Indeed, while sports journalism graduates are not always employed as journalists or even as in-house club media professionals, they certainly acquire some form of employment. This contrasts with the findings of a 2023 report (Sloan 2023) which suggested that other UK humanities-based graduates (including those in the social sciences) struggle for employment with less than half not in any form of full- time employment upon graduation. The same report showed that in comparison to other creative industries courses including photography and performing arts, media studies provided a more robust pathway into jobs and employability.

Howard Tumber (2019) explores the history of journalism education and suggests that it prepares students for unpredictability in the workplace and equips a workforce to be versatile. These traits are now timelier and more relevant than ever in a period of significant instability with job losses, cutbacks and economic challenges in the UK. However, he also wonders who are the key stakeholders in journalism education: journalists, journalism scholars or journalism educators? He feels that as a subject area it is becoming de-professionalised and with the lack of traditional roles and increase in PR/Communications opportunities, especially in sports, the subject area is evolving influenced primarily by digitalisation.

This, in turn, presents the argument that if new and different types of journalism and media jobs are emerging should the curricula correspond or mirror the needs of a changing market or stick to the principles of teaching objectivity, ethics, politics, media law etc and other core subject areas? Tumber (ibid) believes that for journalism education to remain sustainable it needs to lean on other subject areas to help reinforce its pedagogy and support students through what will more than likely be an unstable career path. He refers to business, law and computing as all being able to play a role in journalism education. These subject areas, in turn, would also inform and support sports club media roles which are aligned mostly to corporate entities and often form just one part of a business owners’ portfolio. In Scotland, Celtic are partially owned by an Irish billionaire who has varied interests in companies including aviation, banking and mining (Allen 2000).

The key concern here is whether a journalism or media studies degree is in danger of being diluted to incorporate too many other subject areas. If sports journalism graduates are taking on sports reporting positions, such as PR officers, social media producers or digital media assistants then another question arises: are they being prepared adequately for these non-traditional journalism roles and is there a value in including club media not just as a work experience stint embedded into a module but as a stand-alone module itself? This allows students who want to work as traditional journalists to gain a greater understanding of the role of gatekeepers for sporting bodies and football organisations and provides a more focused form of teaching for students keen on exploring those roles upon graduation.

This leads one to contemplate whether journalism degrees should be replaced by PR and Communications BA and MA courses that are specifically focused on sports club media and non-profit public relations, for instance. Stirling University offers a PR course both on its Scottish campus and internationally via an EU-based partner institution. Having taught on the degree, what I found interesting was how this was not aimed at former journalists wanting to retrain or repurpose their previous media education but was rather a focused pathway towards vocational employment for students interested in solely communications officer- type positions, many from a diverse international background including Nigeria, Pakistan and India. This, therefore, demonstrates the interest and demand in courses that are removed from pure and traditional journalism education as a whole and focused on public relations and gatekeeping opportunities, that are often better paid and more readily available.

Argument for communications and PR-focused teaching

Chmiel and Moise (2024) outline in detail the value of PR studies at university level even suggesting that it is now more relevant than ever due to the world’s global economy. They cite its value as an industry in the billions of pounds to the UK coupled with being a sector that employs almost 100,000 people in Britain. A further area of how PR studies informs the global economy is cited by Gregory (2020) detailing the international reach of billion dollar brands who draw on PR agencies listing amongst others Gillette, Pampers and Olay which sell in markets worldwide. While sports journalism is often derided for lacking in hard news angles, PR studies has been labelled as being ‘for party girls’. Chmiel and Moise (2024) suggest PR studies is currently suffering an identity crisis, unsure of where it fits in the academy: some scholars feel it aligns directly to media and journalism studies while others see it sitting alongside sociology or in business schools. Three institutions in Scotland offer PR-specific courses, Edinburgh Napier, Stirling and Queen Margaret: all three see their course as fitting in with different learning pathways including mass communications and digital marketing.

Yet those who do secure football and sports club jobs upon graduation tend to come from more traditional journalism BA degrees and enter these pathways via work placements and portfolio careers upon leaving Glasgow Caledonian, Napier or the University of the West of Scotland which has offered – since the early 2000s – the first BA in sports journalism in Scotland and one of the first in Europe. Meadows and Meadows (2014) argue that the theoretical framework of PR-focused education and practice is based around agenda setting and framing while leaning heavily on sociology. Chmiel and Moise (2024) draw on data that shows there are almost 30 degrees in PR available across the UK, none of which, upon closer examination, contain sports in the title, and highlight further their research concerns about whether, as a subject area, PR can sustain itself due to the many financial challenges in the British HE sectors in 2023 and 2024 including greater focus on recruitment, graduate destinations and employability.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding PR education, Watson (2023) highlights the value of PR Studies as helping with both writing and communication, yet still criticising the subject area for historically having lacked enough educated, relevant and qualified lecturers and professors on degree courses. Watson further explains that the lack of a gold standard of curriculum for PR has impacted on how it is taught both in the UK and US, with BA and MA courses often incorporating PR pathways. This choice of course could provide the kind of skillset required for entry-level football club roles in Scotland and across the UK including videographers, social media producers, podcast hosts, side line reporters, social media journalists and digital marketing assistants.

The rise of bespoke sports journalism and football journalism degrees, for instance at the University of Derby, equips students for sports media roles at clubs but also covers marketing and advertising. These types of courses are also more likely to attract international students so helping knowledge exchange across footballing and sporting cultures.

As universities across the UK face an array of financial challenges (Griffiths and Wheeler 2024), greater focus will come on what courses are sustainable, and which new offerings can attract more paying students both domestically and internationally. If traditional journalism and media courses are not attracting enough candidates then it is understandable that educators may have to pivot to areas where there is a clear demand such as in sports clubs, production companies and fan-led and created media.

Merits of ethical teaching in media education post-pandemic

In previous studies I explored changing journalistic roles: pre-pandemic this followed the rapid emergence of mobile journalism (Mahon 2021a) During the pandemic, as an educator, I looked at how one could deal with practical teaching responsibilities despite significant lockdown restrictions (Mahon 2021b). And since the pandemic (Mahon 2024), I have looked at how international students were impacted by isolation and other COVID challenges. What has been clear from this body of both doctoral and post-doctoral work is the greater need for informed ethical teaching that prepares graduates for an unstable world that has included Brexit, Trumpism, wars in Europe and the Middle East and, in the sports field, the rise of racism, social media abuse and financial mismanagement. In addition, there have been scandals surrounding the Olympics (Toney 2024) and FIFA (Bensinger 2020), concerns over legacy child abuse in English football (Woodward 2020), the employing of convicted rapists in Scottish football (Fisher 2024) and doping issues (O’Leary 2013) across other sports.

Tilak (2020: 450) puts forward a case for ethics in media teaching based on its role in making society ‘aware of various, legal, political, social, economic, educational activities around the world’. Research from Laughey (2008) and Tilak (2020) further explains the vital role media professionals play in helping society understand suitable behaviours and reiterating the key role of ethics teaching in Media Studies to shape the belief systems of media professionals.

A balanced robust Journalism or Media Studies degree teaches students about the role of regulatory bodies such as Ofcom and IPSO, media standards, ethical concerns when reporting, copyright issues, audience trends and court reporting; it also teaches students to protect sources, while informing them as future media practitioners of their rights and those of others. These codes of ethics are upheld and supported by the NUJ, the BBC and other organisations and remain core throughout British journalism education.

Tilak (2020: 456) believes ethics teaching can be used by journalists to evade stereotypes and prejudices but in a sports club media environment, in-house club media tend to promote stereotypes surrounding footballing culture, their club’s history while also upholding their employer’s corporate, profit-oriented priorities. Cases for ethical and balanced sports media content can be made and are seen in smaller sports teams in Scotland including hockey and basketball with ice hockey also seeing a resurgence.

A further question here could be that if established media organisations are not giving coverage to sports, then is it the duty of the sports themselves to create coverage and media content to promote their existence and is this justified? This is especially important in disability sport, to encourage participation and inclusion post-pandemic. Through creating academic and pedagogical partnerships with wheelchair rugby sevens teams in Easterhouse outside Glasgow, neurodivergent tennis players in Scotstoun and covering wheelchair curling and wheelchair basketball as an ITV reporter over the last 24 months, I have seen the value of any form of digital media creation for these sports. Research by Urbañski et al. (2022) explores the reduction in training opportunities for athletes with disabilities and wheelchair users during the COVID-19 pandemic They also point to how Polish athletes were supported by third-sector sports organisations during this time especially with digital networking and social inclusion to prevent depression and anxiety. The PR/Communications and in-house club media roles associated with these sports in Scotland are often held by volunteers tasked with maintaining all social media channels, leading on recruitment, creating advertising campaigns and mobile streaming sporting competitions.

This creates further ethical discussions about the use of digital platforms to enhance sports club standings for online audiences, with those organisations with larger revenue streams and budgets, including top tier football teams able to out-compete lower league competition.

Sports media and ethics in the digital age

As we continue to chart a path influenced by ChatGPT, Deepfakes coupled with AI-created imagery and video content (see Mahon 2021a), the value of ethics in education will become all the more relevant. Pavlik (2023) even outlines some of the benefits of AI including relieving journalists of heavy workloads and repetitive tasks. And he suggests AI skills should be taught in Journalism and Media Studies courses along with highlighting the many risks involved which include breaches of privacy, legal concerns and how software that is used to analyse large amounts of data in a positive manner can also be misused to create bias.

Sports media has also become more data driven in recent years, with statistics dominating player performance, a team’s potential successes – and with data visualisation now a prevalent way for both journalists and sports club employees to convey messages about new transfers and player attributes. But a report by Perreault and Bell (2020), analysing the comments of 47 digital sports journalists in the US, suggests that sports journalists identify as different to bloggers, vloggers, fan media and in-house club media.

Future trends

A further area of ethical concern for media educators has been the shift by media employers to hire non-journalism graduates for well- paid on-air positions. This has occurred in Ireland and across the UK. The most notable example from Ireland was the recruitment of podcasters to national radio and TV slots, including The Two Johnnies, by the state broadcaster, RTE, and the subsequent replacement of established broadcast journalists by a high-profile YouTuber with an acting background, Doireann Garrihy (O’Reilly 2024).

The BBC has put both Jamie Lang and Stacey Dooley into high profile national broadcaster roles – both having backgrounds as contestants in reality style TV shows and without journalism or media qualifications (McLoughlin 2024; Hattensome 2019). While Sky Sports and talkSPORT are continuing this trend of offering platforms for YouTubers, it raises the question of what ethics should journalism educators be teaching?

Should BA and MA degrees in journalism debate the merits and value of influencers in sports media such as Fabrizio Romano who began his digital and social media career while still at high school (Nutman and Donaldson 2023).

The use of former celebrity athletes such as Gary Lineker, Rio Ferdinand and, in Scotland, Chris Sutton and Kris Boyd, as presenters and sports journalists highlights the continuing ‘de-professionalisation’ of the industry. (Hirst 2024).

in addition, former popstars – such as Michelle McManus and Emma Bunton, all without formal university education in media or journalism and devoid of media law or media ethics teaching – have taken up prominent roles in radio broadcasting.

Conclusion

McEnnis (2018) charts the early rise of digital channels at sports clubs and suggests that, as a result, while sports journalists will gain credibility through the number of events they attend, the larger clubs may lean on non-journalistic roles to engage their fanbases.

The number of sports journalism students now taking up their first jobs in club media demonstrates the shift in Scotland towards these roles which often offer more stability and better wages while allowing recent graduates the chance to utilise their versatile and transferable skills, which university and college courses have helped them develop.

However, as more content is created by AI, more high-profile media roles go to non-journalism school graduates and social media stars are recruited by broadcasters, the direction of media education could shift further. So, the primary question remains: do journalism educators stick with their traditional programmes (tied to notions of objectivity and press freedom) or embrace PR/Communication courses that are more aligned to business and marketing curricula? After spending almost, a decade in HE and almost two decades in broadcast and digital journalism, I believe the trend to employ influencers may pass, especially if it leads to Ofcom complaints and other legal problems. Therefore, there is still a place for traditional journalism education. Coupled to this is the evidence from the two cohorts of sports journalism graduates at UWS that the employability levels of sports journalism graduates, regardless of who their employer is, demonstrate a value to the more robust undergraduate approaches.

Recommendations

To foster a greater understanding of non-journalistic roles for media graduates, sports club employers could be invited on campus along with alumni who work in these fields both as visiting lecturers and industry experts. Journalism schools could also arrange ‘news days’ in a partnership with local sports teams with students taking on the roles of, say, digital newsroom reporters or content creators for a lower league football team or minority sports club.

Students could also examine critically the different ways of covering the same sporting event (such as the Cup Final) – by broadcasters, print news reporters, amateur podcasters, fan media, club media and YouTubers.

Tracking and long-term monitoring of graduate destinations can also help guide and shape how journalism teaching can evolve as students gravitate towards different or emerging employment pathways. This can be done via a survey or LinkedIn alumni group.

Finally, while journalism education has seen shifts in uptake over the last decades, many students I have taught across three Scottish universities have told me they grew up wanting to be sports journalists, wanting to cover the world’s biggest events, wanting to be there at the pivotal moments in a team’s history. And they realised the best way to achieve those ambitions was to study the subject either at college or university. Therefore, our duty remains to give them the most rounded, up-to-date and ethically informed course of study as possible despite the storms on the horizon.

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Conflict of Interest

The author has received no funding for this research and has no conflicts of interest.

Note on the contributor

Dr James Mahon is a 34-year-old Romanian-born Irish broadcast storyteller and educator who has worked for regional, national and international outlets. Mahon is currently based in Scotland with ITV Border and ITN Productions where he is a freelance on-screen journalist. Over eight years in higher education Mahon has been a BA Journalism course leader, module coordinator, post-doctoral researcher, external examiner and is currently a senior fellow of the HEA while lecturing at the University of the West of Scotland and has previously worked for Stirling University and the University of Glasgow delivering on post-graduate journalism courses.

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