Professional athletes’ shrinking privacy boundaries: Fans, ICTs, and athlete monitoring.

This case study considers how audience labor performed via information and communication<br>technologies (ICTs) helps sports organizations monitor professional athletes.<br>Three incidents are examined—(a) National Basketball Association (NBA)<br>player Greg Oden participating in a pickup (casual) basketball game while he was<br>rehabilitating an injured knee, (b) photographs posted on the Internet that captured<br>National Football League player Matt Leinart posing with several young women in a<br>hot tub and holding a beer bong, and (c) a video posted on YouTube that depicted<br>NBA player Josh Howard disparaging the U.S. national anthem. The case study<br>explores how ICTs enable sports organizations to capitalize on free labor provided by<br>audience members to intensify surveillance of professional athletes and how fans’<br>ability to comment on news coverage of these stories reinforces organizational control,<br>further reifying professional athletes as commodities.