The media landscape today is undoubtedly more dynamic, varied, diverse and vibrant than at any other time in history. The amount and range of content continually being produced and disseminated through various platforms, channels and devices mean that consumers can engage with sports-related content anywhere at any time. While the advent of the Internet spawned an evolving age of media convergence and, indeed, a growing industry, the past 15 years have seen new players enter and consolidate their place in the media industry. This change has had a significant impact on old conventions of sports– media relations, as well as altering consumer trends, habits and preferences.

The impacts and consequences of the evolving sports media landscape will be discussed in greater depth later in this chapter. Still, to fully understand how different the sports media industry is today compared to the pre-digital era, it is first necessary to understand accurately who has entered the online sports media world.

Traditional Media Organisations

While traditional media organisations are not new to the sports media landscape, they do currently operate in vastly different ways. One of the most significant impacts of the advent of digital media is the notion of media convergence. No longer is it viable for a media organisation of any kind to only produce one type of media. Newspapers, for example, now create a range of media that's housed on digital and social platforms and consumed in both traditional and electronic ways. Australia's most-read newspaper, the Herald Sun, for example, has both a television studio and radio studio in its city offices (Connolly 2019). Accompanying their morning newspaper is a website consisting of text-based stories, live blogs, video and infographics. Their sports department also creates an Australian Football League (AFL)-themed podcast, titled Superfooty, which can be streamed via their website or streaming app (Connolly, 2019).

General Manager of Media, Marketing and Communications at the North Melbourne Football Club, Heath O’Loughlin, remarked how this simply wouldn't have happened 20 years ago. ‘We are getting requests from newspapers for access to our players to do video and podcasts. You wouldn't have ever envisaged that in the past’ (personal communication 2019).