Twelfth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Australian rules footballer Dustin Martin has become one of Australian sport’s most marketable commodities. From a supposedly poor, white rural family, Martin was initially portrayed as a footballing outlier. A former bike gang member’s son, Martin’s early career was tainted with scandal and indiscretions. The heavily tattooed Martin was viewed as football’s wild child with a checkered past; a high school drop-out from rural struggle-town, lacking social skills and elite athlete behaviours. This changed in 2017 when Martin won the coveted Brownlow and Norm Smith medals, and was pivotal in Richmond’s premiership success. As the season progressed, a marked shift occurred in media representations of Martin. He was no longer football’s reclusive problem child, but its tattooed prince, celebrated for his on-field exploits, off-field quasi-New Age lifestyle, and loyalty to his deported father. This paper contends that the transformation was a deliberate marketing ploy to reinvent Martin as a respectable footballing role-model and to commodified his ‘rough-around-the-edges’ image. He has since promoted fashion labels and become more media-friendly about his upbringing, family background and father’s deportation. He has been instrumental in Richmond’s on-field success, and his distinctive tattooed presence has generated business for the Australian Football League. Richmond’s merchandise and membership services, and produced much media ‘oxygen.’ Drawing on strategies used to market soccer’s David Beckham, Martin’s management has exploited his football talents to create the Dusty brand. So often portrayed as the ‘White Trash’ outlier from the edge of town, Martin has been successfully reinvented as footy’s tattooed prince.