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Purpose – To explore the contested nature of masculinity through an examination of contemporary promotional culture associated with a predominantly masculine commodity – beer. More specifically, the analysis focuses on the representations of masculinity in two New Zealand beer advertisements spanning a 25-year period.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter is divided into four sections: (1) a brief overview of the contemporary crisis of masculinity; (2) the role of the media and promotional culture in representing and reproducing crises of masculinity; (3) The Holy Trinity: Sport, Beer and Masculinity and (4) analysis of two promotional campaigns for New Zealand beer brand Speight's. Here, the original series ad from 1992 is compared and contrasted with the 2019 instalment using Strate's (1992) framework which conceptualizes beer advertisements as ‘manuals of masculinity’, in order to track potential changes over time.

Findings – The results highlight the enduring value of Strate's (1992) framework of beer advertisements as manuals of masculinity. In addition, the results reveal that while the representation of masculinity in Speight's beer advertising has changed over time, key themes related to exclusive male spaces, physical labour and the core value of ‘mateship’ remain.

Research limitations/implications – Within the context of globalization, promotional culture operating at both the global and local level can cultivate images of masculinity that represent and reproduce the existing gender order, but it can also confront and disrupt it.

Sport match-fixing has emerged as a complex global problem. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it critically reviews how match-fixing is typified as a policy problem. Second, it advances an analysis of the legal framework and regulatory system for sports betting as a causal source for “routinized” match-fixing.

This study extracts and synthesises (cross-national) materials from policies, media releases and scholarly works on the subject of match-fixing and sports betting. The analysis is framed by the contrasts between rational choice and sociological institutionalist approaches.

Match-fixing is typically attributed to: criminal organisations and illegal sports betting; vulnerable individuals; and failure of governance on the part of sports organisations. Each cause holds assumptions of utility-maximising actors and it is argued that due consideration be given to the fundamental risks inherent in legal sports betting regimes.

Match-fixing in sport is a recurrent social problem, transcending national boundaries and involving a wide range of actors and, sporting disciplines and levels of competition. Within such an environment, it may matter little how strong the incentive structures and education programmes are, when betting on human beings is both normatively and cognitively advanced as a value and institutionally permitted as a practice.

This paper argues that legal betting regimes paradoxically contribute to routinised match-fixing because: for betting customers there is no qualitative, ethical difference between legal and illegal operators; and legalisation serves to normalise and legitimate the view of athletes as objects for betting (like cards or dice).

This study examines the strategies used, and the challenges faced, by global sport company adidas as it established a major sponsorship deal with the New Zealand Rugby Football Union. In particular the study focuses on how adidas 'localised' into the New Zealand market, how they used the All Blacks as part of their global marketing campaign and, the resistance they encountered based on claims they were exploiting the Maori haka.

The message to international marketers has long been “think global, act local”, but the complexity of the issue has rarely been explored empirically. This analysis examines the notion of disjuncture herein defined as points of ambiguity, incongruity and conf lict that emerge when global sport-advertising campaigns are released within local cultural settings. The purpose of the paper is to move beyond the “think global, act local” adage by examining the politics and contradictions associated with local regulatory control of global sport advertisements in a specific national context, namely New Zealand.

This paper critically analyzes the International Olympic Committee's 2000 global marketing campaign titled “Celebrate Humanity”. Released prior to the 2000 Summer Games, this campaign capitalized on recent cultural trends by focusing on multicultural inclusivity and the idea that sport could contribute to world peace. Using this campaign as our case study, we demonstrate the possibilities for both local consumption and interpretation of a global campaign within the specific cultural context of the United States.

Although the commodification of black bodies amid state violence and widespread racism is nothing new, considering the histories of Hollywood, jazz, minstrelsy, or even athletes enslaved on plantations (Rhoden, 2006), the hyper commodification of the contemporary black athlete, alongside expansive processes of globalization, growth in the profitability of black bodies, and their importance within colorblind discourse, demonstrates the importance of commodification within our new racist moment. Likewise, the shrinking opportunities afforded to African American youth, alongside clear messages about the path to desired black masculinity (Neal, 2005; Watkins, 1998; West, 1994), push black youth into a sports world where the possibility of striking it rich leads to a “win at all costs” attitude. Robin Kelley argues that African American youth participate in sports or engage in other cultural practices as an attempt to resist or negotiate the inherent contradictions of post-industrial American capitalism (Kelley, 1998). Patricia Hill Collins describes this process in the following terms: “Recognizing that black culture was a marketable commodity, they put it up for sale, selling an essentialized black culture that white youth could emulate yet never own. These message was clear – ‘the world may be against us, but we are here and we intend to get paid’” (Collins, 2006, p. 298). Celia Lury concurs, noting that heightened levels of commodification embody a shift from a racial logic defined by scientific racism to one centering on cultural difference. She argues that commodity racism “has contributed to shifts in how racism operates, specifically to the shift from a racism tied to biological understandings of ‘race’ in which identity is fixed or naturalized to a racism in which ‘race’ is a cultural category in which racial identity is represented as a matter of style, and is the subject of choice” (Lury, 1996, p. 169; as quoted in Spencer, 2004, p. 123). In the context of new racism, as manifested in heightened levels of commodification of Othered bodies, racial identity is simply a choice, but a cultural marker that can be celebrated and sold, policed, or demonized with little questions about racial implications (Spencer, 2004, pp. 123–125). Blackness, thus, becomes little more than a culture style, something that can be sold on Ebay and tried on at the ball or some something that needs to be policed or driven out-of-existence. Race is conceptualized “as a matter of style, something that can be put on or taken off at will” (Willis as quoted in Spencer, 2004, p. 123). Collins notes further that the process of commodification is not simply about selling “an essentialized black culture,” but rather a particular construction of blackness that has proven beneficial to white owners. “Athletes and criminals alike are profitable, not for the vast majority of African American men, but for people who own the teams, control the media, provide food, clothing and telephone services, and who consume seemingly endless images of pimps, hustlers, rapists, and felons” (2006, p. 311). bell hooks, who describes this process as “eating the other,” sees profit and ideology as crucial to understanding the commodification of black bodies. “When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races…affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the other” (Hooks, 1992, p. 23). She, along with Collins, emphasizes the importance of sex and sexuality, within this processes of commodification, arguing that commodification of black male (and female) bodies emanates from and reproduces longstanding mythologies regarding black sexual power.