The indoorisation of outdoor sports: an exploration of the rise of lifestyle sports in artificial settings

Abstract

Abstract During the last 20 years, a remarkable new type of service has been developed in the world of sports, which can be described as the indoorisation of outdoor sports. Typical outdoor sports like climbing, skiing, surfing, rowing and skydiving, which used to be exclusively practised in a natural environment of mountains, oceans, rivers and the air, are now being offered for consumption in safe, predictable and controlled indoor centres. The present article emphasises the rise of indoor lifestyle sports, such as rafting, snowboarding, skydiving and surfing. It discusses the conditions under and ways in which commercial entrepreneurs in the Netherlands have created this market, the meanings that they have ascribed to their centres and the dilemmas with which they have been confronted. It is argued that the rise of this economic market cannot be understood if it is solely interpreted as the result of economic, technological or natural developments. These economic activities were also embedded in and influenced by shared understandings and their representations in structured fields of outdoor sports, mainstream sports and leisure experience activities. A better understanding of the indoorisation of outdoor lifestyle sports can be achieved by recognising how these structures and cultures pervaded the rise of this new market. Keywords: sociologyeconomyculturelifestylesportcommercialisation Notes 1. Terms like 'alternative', 'extreme', 'lifestyle', 'action' and 'whiz' sports refer to different, but partly overlapping groups of sports that show 'family resemblances' in the Wittgensteinian sense of the term (Tomlinson, Ravenscroft, Wheaton, & Gilchrist, 2005 Tomlinson, A., Ravenscroft, N., Wheaton, B. and Gilchrist, P. 2005. Lifestyle sports and national sport policy: An agenda for research, Brighton: University of Brighton. [Google Scholar]). 2. 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What is particular to services is that production and consumption go hand in hand, while the consumption of goods takes place separately from the production thereof. This difference has consequences for the way in which processes of framing and reframing take place. The consumer of goods can reinterpret meanings by using them in a way that was not intended by the producer. The consumer can also show his or her own interpretation of a good to others in another context. As far as services are concerned, interpretations are made by both producers and consumers through their interaction with each other. Moreover, the acquisition of a service takes place at a location and cannot as easily be taken with and shown to others. The films on YouTube provide a surprising solution to this, which the indoor centres can usefully exploit (as will be discussed later in this article). Strikingly, the acquisition of services has received far less attention than the consumption of products (Korczynski, 2005 Korczynski, M. 2005. Consumption and service interactions. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(3): 289–293. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Lury thus describes the consumer culture as 'The culture of things‐in‐use' (1996 Lury, C. 1996. Consumer culture, Cambridge: Polity Press. [Google Scholar]). McCracken defines consumption more broadly, namely as 'the processes by which consumer goods and services are created, bought, and used' (our italics); nonetheless, this study also deals almost exclusively with consumer goods (1988 McCracken, G. 1988. Culture and consumption: New approaches to the symbolic character of consumer goods and activities, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]). The same applies to the overwhelming majority of publications on the topic of consumer culture. For an exception, see, for example, Shove and Pantzar's (2005 Shove, E. and Pantzar, M. 2005. Consumers, producers and practices: Understanding the invention and reinvention of Nordic walking. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(1): 43–64. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) study of Nordic walking. 12. The structure of a field can be understood as 'a state of the power relations among the agents or institutions engaged in the struggle, or, to put it another way, a state of the distribution of the specific capital which has been accumulated in the course of previous struggles and which orients subsequent strategies' (Bourdieu, 1980 Bourdieu, P. 1980. Questions de sociologie, Paris: Editions de Minuit. [Google Scholar]). 13. The complex relationship to the natural environment is an issue that we do not address in this article. It is clear that the indoor centres are major energy guzzlers. On the other hand, the use of such a centre can be viewed as a replacement of a comparable activity in the natural environment. The ambivalence behind this is possibly best expressed in a quote from a promotional film for the indoor ski jumping centre that is planned in Finland: 'We are completely independent of global warming.' 14. Prospectus of Dutch Water Dreams Bonds, June 2007. 15. Proximity is, however, not a sufficient explanation for the success of these indoor centres in itself. In Japan, there are various water parks with indoor surfing facilities situated at a stone's throw from the beach and ocean; also in thinly populated areas. 16. A case study of indoor snowboarders conducted in 2007 by two students of the Masters Program for Sport Policy and Sport Management at Utrecht University revealed that a majority of the selection team of freestyle snowboarders between the age of 8 and 18 years had not been introduced to skiing or snowboarding in winter sport resorts, but in the indoor ski centre itself.