More than I expected for an academic title. Interesting, engaging, and palatable for folks who have been out of school for a while.

The professionalization of sport in our capitalist society has lead team owners, coaches, players, and even parents to internalize the logics of capital accumulation: profit at all costs and before any other concerns. We see this in sexual abuse scandals covered up for years, domestic abusers continuing to play and be paid because they're produce wins, athletes suffering from drug addiction and injuries whose consequences include early death, and even increased competition and stress among parents of amateur players who see sports as the only chance for their children to achieve upward social mobility.

In addition to this, capitalist sport brings economic suffering, environmental harm, and the destruction of homes and communities through the theater that is performed every time an international sporting event like the Olympics is held.

These problems and more are inherent to capitalist sport, and while there are individual changes and regulations that can be enacted, through uphill battles, to ease some of them, truly solving these violent consequences requires a socialist vision that brings sport back to its roots as a part of physical fitness, healthy community engagement that strengthens social bonds, and human flourishing and fulfillment.

This book was right up my alley, although outside my usual sights. Marxist analysis of a piece of society like sport has given me a deeper understanding of the ways in which capitalism seeps into every aspect of our life, even those aspects we usually consider to be leisure. My biggest criticism was the lack of a section related to the rise of sports gambling, although I think the problems there are pretty obvious. Thank you to University of North Carolina Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley.