Snackable, Spreadable, User-Generated Spectacles: Theorizing a “Dream Marriage” Between Sports and Digital Media

This article identifies an emerging category of digitally mediated sports content both evocative of and distinct from the televised sports tradition. I contrast digital media attributes and principles against the conventional broadcasting model, urging scholars to investigate sports that have never significantly benefited from a symbiotic relationship with television. Using powerlifting and its impressive Instagram presence as a case study, I interrogate how sports pursue and adapt to digital media visibility, establishing arranged “dream marriages” (Real, 2014) with different mediums. I also speculate about a broader range of digitally rendered physical activities. While the appearance and structure of digitally mediated sports differ from the traditional television framework, I argue that this ascendant model nonetheless possesses a potent capacity to “enhance the imaginary” (Morse, 1983) of sporting activity, plays an increasingly relevant role across the sports/media complex, and merits ongoing consideration amid the future of networked media sport.