A economia cultural do futebol brasileiro no século XXI: comodificação, hibridez e contradições

Abstract

This article historically analyses what we are calling waves commodification of Brazilian football, focusing on the last wave that began in the early 2000s, and exploring in detail the role that the media system played in the constitution of a new cultural economy of the sector. For this analysis, we start from the criticisms offered by Dubal (2010) and Moor (2007) to the way the processes of neoliberalization and the concept of commodification are adopted in the sociology of sport to dialogue with the work of the Latin American culturalist Néstor García Canclini and his notion of hybridization, which allows us to approach this trajectory of insertion of market values in football as a process full of contradictions, conflicts and contestation. Empirically, we analyse the four traditional aspects studied in the political economy of football: a) changes in the rules of the championships; b) in legislation; c) architecture, atmosphere and stadium administration; and d) the distribution of revenues, with the broadcast rights playing a central role in the hypercommodification of the sport. Closing the paper, we analyse the contradictions and conflicts that have emerged in the last wave of commodification of Brazilian football.