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The article focuses on the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic factors that had facilitated and accelerated the influence of mass media as a force that has helped transform spectator team sports. The mass media have simplified the imaginative reconstruction of sports events. Such reconstruction was accomplished through television shots and in the radio. It adds quality of the events and reduces the fundamental antagonism of the original format and the entertainment for the viewers.

This article focuses on the identification and understanding of the social factors that underlie the burgeoning commercialization of modern professional sports in the United States. Within this framework the transformation of baseball, football, basketball and hockey from play to professionalization is explored. The fact that historically the quest for money through sports has been present at all times does not mean that today's zealous pursuit of pecuniary reward is just an extension of the past. Professional sports, in their present mercantilistic forms, evince an aura, which is ubiquitous in the history of sports. Moreover, the ambience that surrounds athletics today conceals a fundamental transformation, which is qualitatively and quantitatively distinct. A number of factors in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that have contributed to a trans formation of play into work have been traced. This transition has evoked a fundamental conflict between the original format of "the game" and the predilection of audiences to seek the spectacular. The outcome of this strain is that professional sports have attempted to enliven the game by introducing rule changes, spectacular accoutrements, and innovative publicity promotions.