Indoorising the outdoors: Lifestyle sports revisited

Since the early nineties, lifestyle sports such as surfing, snowboarding and skydiving are on a large scale offered in artificial sport environments. In snow domes, on artificial white water courses, in climbing halls and in wind tunnels, these alternative outdoor sports are accessible for a broad audience in a safe, efficient and controlled environment. This development is labeled as “The indoorisation of outdoor sports”. \n \nIn an exploration of this indoorisation development, it is argued that lifestyle sports have become collective postmodern consumption goods. The free, independent and creative lifestyle sport participants are now accompanied by children and elderly, by in-experienced and novice sport participants, and by business teams and bachelor stags who want to experience a lifestyle sport. Commercial entrepreneurs, the producers of these sports in artificial environments, do their best to attract an as large as possible audience to their sport venues. As a result, outdoor sports as well as mainstream sports and leisure experience activities have influenced the sports that are offered and consumed by the participants. \n \nIn five substudies, I have examined the meanings that consumers as well as producers ascribe to these indoorised lifestyle sports. The aim of the study was to explore the diversity of actors, meanings and interpretations in the cultural field of indoor lifestyle sports. I applied an economic sociological approach to study this market, a mixed method approach, and a broad focus on consumers and producers to strengthen the exploration. \n \nThe perspectives of the consumers as well as the producers in this recently emerged sportbusiness are embedded in an economic sociological approach. I argue that such an approach is highly useful for the understanding of how meanings are created, changed and influenced through social interactions. In my economic sociological approach, the processes of consumption and production are interpreted through meaningful social and cultural connections, shared understandings and their representations. I have adopted Ritzer’s theory of McDonaldization and Consumer Culture Theory to examine the social and cultural meanings that actors ascribe to the commodified sport experiences and settings. \n \nThe different research disciplines I have brought in to explore and explain the development of artificial environments for lifestyle sports have enabled me to provide insight into sociological, organisational and management as well as marketing, communication and economic aspects of sport consumption. With the combination of insights from (sociological) sport studies with economic approaches of consumption within consumer culture, I have revealed how contemporary sport consumption can be examined as a cultural field. \n \nIt is shown that artificial environments for lifestyle sports can radically change the ‘traditional’ world of lifestyle sports. I argue that artificial sport settings have become an integral part of the lifestyle sport cultures, and that this development should be embraced in lifestyle sport studies. Whereas other studies consider artificial settings as ‘outside the subculture’ and not being integrated in lifestyle sport cultures, this study underlines the artificial environments as resulting from and potentially strongly influencing the culture of lifestyle sports