In the 21st century sport is an integral part of an increasingly global
sport–media–tourism complex that is vastly uneven within and between societies.
While resistance to the global expansion and consolidation of media- and
event-driven sport is possible, and indeed at times successful, it is clear that the
international organisation and presentation of sport serves the interests of global,
national and local elites—the cosmopolitans. Sports spectators and participants,
on the other hand, are increasingly removed from the sporting product, whether
by spatial relocation driven by the need for newly constructed sporting spaces
for major events, relocation of teams to larger cities, increasing continentalisation
of competitions, or new mediated sport forms.