Through an examination of sports ads on television, this article attempts to analyse the process of commodification that sport in India has undergone with the advent of television in the 1980s and the economic liberalisation in 1991, which forms the context for the formation of the sport–media complex in the country. It identifies consumerism, exchange value and commodity fetishism as the key elements of commodification and analyses the ads through these categories in order to eventually establish the changes in the ideas and values about sport, which have occurred as a result of the production of sport for mass consumption.
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