The World Formula One Championship and North America : the development of a globalized industrial sports complex?

• Main Author: Capparelli, R. Cary
• Published: Birkbeck (University of London) 2016
• Subjects: 796.72
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.715327

This research seeks to recognize the World Formula One Championship as a global industrial sports complex through both its direct and indirect connections with North America. The study analyses the visibly linked and imperceptible separate commercial, cultural, political, and technological inputs from data retrieved from several accepted disciplines that can be prejudiced based on the sport’s respective nationalism. The study examines the entangled but corresponding economic and social engines that constitute the global framework of the World Formula One Championship. It does this by examining those commercial, cultural, political, and technological dimensions that form this autonomous industrial sports complex. This thesis presents research that scrutinizes how the World Formula One Championship cannot be understood as strictly a European enterprise and discovers intricate global relationships, particularly North American contributions, which are often disregarded, despite its historical existence on the continent and the more recent presence of the sport in the United States. These connections include a vast array of shared relationships that reveals how the World Formula One Championship is a globalized and evolving industrial sports complex of its own significance. Competition from other major league sports, lack of media coverage, and a small, isolated audience has caused the World Formula One Championship to be misunderstood in much of North America. The verified associations that materialize in this study demonstrate its importance and influence as an all-encompassing business and worldwide sport, in fact, one of three Mega Sports.