This article presents the views of 692 adult male Australian sports fans, collected viaan online survey from July 2024 to September 2024, regarding the role of alcoholwhen attending professional sports events in Australia. While the popular orthodoxyis that sport, alcohol, and masculinity are entwined, our data illustrates a different pic-ture. Just under three-quarters of the sample (74%) explained how consuming alcoholwas not an important part of their game-day experience, with just under half (46%)stating they consume no alcoholic drinks and just under a third (32%) stating theyconsume one or two. Focusing on the reasons behind this, we explore the contribu-tion that social practice theory can add to studies of sport-related drinking. Our anal-ysis suggests that the everyday social practices embedded in male sports fans watchingsport and drinking alcohol reflect two core themes: (1) a declining focus on drinkingalcohol and (2) changing associations between male violence and negative behaviors atgames. This addition to the research on male fans, sport, and alcohol supports widerresearch that suggests that people are increasingly choosing to reduce or removealcohol consumption from a range of social experiences, and that previous categori-zations of men's drinking at professional sports events no longer reflect contempo-rary social patterns and practices.
Despite notable progress, women in professional sports in India continue to encounter significant challenges, including limited financial viability of sports careers, inadequate visibility on social media and mainstream platforms, and persistently high dropout rates at early stages of participation. Female athletes also confront with conflicting societal expectations: they are often required to conform to traditional standards of femininity while simultaneously striving for peak athletic performance to secure scarce government jobs under sports quotas. To identify effective strategies for reducing early attrition among young female athletes, this study conducted a randomized experiment involving 508 girls actively engaged in sports across five selected Indian states. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Following a baseline survey, the first treatment group viewed a motivational video highlighting the struggles and achievements of prominent female athletes. The second treatment group viewed the same video and additionally received structured information about alternative career pathways within the broader sports ecosystem. The control group received no intervention. The end-line survey revealed that exposure to the motivational video alone had an unintended demotivating effect. In contrast, participants who received both the video and career information demonstrated a significant increase in their motivation to continue participating in sports over the next 5 years. Drawing on these findings and qualitative interviews, the study offers policy recommendations aimed at encouraging sustained sports participation among young women. Specifically, it suggests that athletes in top- and mid-tier training institutions should be systematically provided with information about secondary and allied career opportunities in sports to help them maintain long-term engagement in athletics.
Early adulthood, defined here as the mid-20s to mid-30s, is increasingly recognized as a life phase in which long-term habits and routines associated with family, work, health, and leisure are consolidated and renegotiated. In the context of wider social and economic change, significant transitions such as parenthood, partnership, career establishment, and permanent housing, considered milestones of adulthood, are increasingly occurring at this age. Yet early adulthood has received limited attention in sport and physical activity (PA) research and policy. In this commentary, we review examples of population-level PA surveys (Aotearoa NZ, Australia, Canada, and the U.K.) to show that early adults are rarely distinguished from the broader, all-encompassing adult category (18-65) or targeted in policy or intervention design. We argue that overlooking this stage leaves a conceptual and policy gap. Drawing on illustrative examples from four national policies and relevant literature, this commentary calls for researchers to recognize early adulthood as a distinctive life phase shaped by transition, reconfiguration, and consolidation. A stronger focus on this period may offer important insights into how PA behaviors are experienced, sustained, adapted, or discontinued across the life course.
How is climate change affecting young athletes? Taking inspiration from the concepts of "polluted leisure" and "climatic affective atmospheres", this article reveals how participating in sports (i.e., surfing, surf lifesaving, waka ama, kayaking, rowing) undertaken in/on rivers, oceans, and beaches damaged and destroyed by a changing climate are surfacing new affective and embodied relations with "polluted sport." The analysis of focus groups and photographic montages with 45 young athletes (54% M & amacr;ori and 50% female) reveals the agentic capacities of polluted sporting environments-logs, sewage, debris-and how new health risks, fear, anger, frustration and eco-grief were surfaced through young athletes' immersion in climatic affective atmospheres. For some, such embodied experiences prompted new modes of environmental care and action. Ultimately, this paper highlights the importance of listening to, and learning from, young people immersed in sporting environments already being impacted by climate change. Our research also reveals the importance of Indigenous ways of knowing polluted sporting environments as highly relational, agentic and intimately connected to health, well-being, healing and performance.
The rapid expansion of China's sports sector, particularly in action sports such as surfing, has created new labor opportunities for informal migrant workers. However, their professional integration remains constrained by institutional barriers and market precarity. Focusing on surfing coaches in Wanning-dubbed "China's Surfing Capital"-this study investigates how informal sports laborers navigate industry gray zones by converting embodied cultural capital (e.g., surfing skills) into institutionalized capital (e.g., certifications). Drawing on semistructured interviews and Bourdieu's field-capital theory (n = 20), the findings reveal a stratified formalization process: while surfing proficiency enables market entry, certification remains elusive due to skill-based disparities-low-skilled workers struggle with practical assessments, while high-skilled ones face theoretical exam barriers. Additionally, economic constraints (high certification costs) and social-structural obstacles (regulatory ambiguities, weak occupational networks) further entrench informality. Over time, coaches who successfully cultivate social capital transition into formal roles, whereas others exit due to unsustainable conditions. By exposing the uneven conversion of cultural capital into professional legitimacy, this study contributes to sports sociology by elucidating how informal sports labor navigates the interplay between institutional barriers and market opportunities, and demonstrates how credentialization processes reproduce stratification within emerging athletic professions.
This study examines the discursive construction of sexism in Moroccan football fandom through a digital ethnography of online posts and stadium banners. Drawing on Facebook posts and widely circulated Ultras banners, the analysis explores how gendered exclusion is produced and normalized in contemporary fan communities. Using Teun A. van Dijk's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study examines lexical choices, syntactic patterns, and rhetorical devices-such as epiphora, metaphor, and hyperbole-that portray women as biologically unfit, morally loose, or out of place in stadiums. At the meso-level, the analysis reveals shared social cognitions that position women as an out-group whose presence threatens the imagined authenticity of male fandom. At the macro-level, informed by feminist theory, the findings show how these discourses reproduce broader patriarchal norms in Moroccan society, including gendered gatekeeping of public space, moral policing of women's bodies, and the use of female kinship "sisters" as tools for male-to-male humiliation. The findings demonstrate that sexist fan discourse operates as a patterned ideological practice that contributes to the exclusion of women from Moroccan football fandom and public life.
Sport controversies increasingly unfold within institutionally moderated public forums, where fans negotiate authority, morality, and legitimacy. This study investigates BBC Sport's comment sections as sociologically significant arenas for public judgment during the Mohamed Salah-Liverpool controversy. Rather than viewing comments as peripheral audience reactions, the analysis conceptualizes them as regulated spaces in which football fans engage in moral policing, boundary-drawing, and the allocation of responsibility among multiple actors. Employing a mixed-methods design, the study analyzes 18,634 comments posted across 16 BBC Sport articles. Dictionary-assisted mapping of interpretive themes, moral vocabularies, and evaluation targets is integrated with qualitative analysis of justificatory and sanctioning practices. The findings indicate that participation is episodic and closely linked to journalistic publication cycles, which repeatedly reframe the dispute around escalation, authority, match re-entry, transfer speculation, and legacy narratives. Across these contexts, a limited set of interpretive anchors (particularly authority, discipline, and media amplification) structures public judgment and stabilizes meaning. Moral language primarily serves as a mechanism of sanction rather than as a sustained emotional expression. During escalation phases, entitlement and ego are invoked to justify character-based condemnation, whereas professionalism predominates in authority-focused contexts, reinforcing norms of hierarchy, discipline, and organizational control. Responsibility and legitimacy are distributed among players, clubs, ownership, managers, and media actors, suggesting that football controversies function as relational legitimacy struggles rather than organization-centered crises. Situated within the sociology of sport, this study demonstrates that football fandom operates as a form of everyday moral governance, where legitimacy, authority, and moral worth are publicly negotiated within institutionally sanctioned arenas. The study contributes to Sport and Social Issues debates on fandom, celebrity labor, and institutional power by illustrating how legacy sports journalism structures the conditions under which moral judgment and legitimacy contests become visible and consequential.
On September 16, 2022, Real Madrid footballer Vin & iacute;cius Jr. posted on social media to push back against racist responses to his dance goal celebrations, stating, "I won't stop dancing. Whether at the Sambodrome, at the Bernab & eacute;u or wherever." In this article, we trace the political impact of Vin & iacute;cius Jr.'s football goal celebrations that draw on racialized Afro-Brazilian dance traditions and a larger Black diasporic football politics. Next, we contend that because these racialized histories of Black diasporic music and dance traditions continue to impact how Black bodies are policed, looking to Vin & iacute;cius Jr. allows us to think through Recollet's "jumping scale" as a way for the Black body to dance beyond settler geographies. Finally, we posit that reconfiguring power means building a Black transnational football political power that is constructed through music, dance, and goal celebrations rooted in Black diasporic resistance.
In recent decades, the relationship between major sporting events (MSEs) and human rights has increasingly become a topic of debate and academic interest. Governments, politicians, and event stakeholders, including organizing bodies, frequently position MSEs as catalysts for various legacies. These include tangible outcomes such as economic growth and intangible effects like increased national pride. Proponents even argue that hosting MSEs may foster democratic developments, moderate authoritarian governance, and enhance civil liberties within host nations. While a growing body of research has examined the economic and intangible effects, the specific relationship between MSEs and improvements in civil and human rights remains underexplored. So far, mainly case studies exist. This study addresses this gap by systematically examining whether hosting an MSE improves civil liberties. By employing regression models with relevant controls, we analyze data on all Summer Olympic and FIFA World Cup host countries between 1946 and 2023 to examine the relationship between hosting and civil and political rights. After adding contextual analysis of selected historical cases to our examination, we conclude that an MSE, in general, does not lead to improvements in civil liberties. MSEs, instead, are often used to advance and showcase given political strategies and goals, whether or not they are consistent with human rights.
The menstrual cycle and its relationship to athletic performance has become a topic of high interest in sporting and academic circles. Novel sport-focused menstrual knowledges, practices, and technologies abound, offering coaches and athletes new narratives and at times untested strategies that promise to address athletes' menstrual cycles and push them to higher levels of performance. In this paper, we explore sportswomen's experiences of this changing menstrual landscape by examining the pressures that they face to navigate and manage their menstrual cycles "correctly." Drawing from Persdotter's theorization of the construction and negative effects of menstrual norms (i.e., menstrunormativity), we use qualitative methods (participant ethnography, athlete focus groups, coach interviews, and a qualitative form of strength tracking) to characterize the menstrual norms at two Olympic Weightlifting gyms in Aotearoa New Zealand. In examining the effects of these "athletic menstrunormativities" on athletes' training practices, we identify how some athletes are positioned as "menstrual monsters" by the very norms that were intended to empower them. Ultimately, this paper raises critical questions about the application of novel menstrual knowledges, technologies, and practices to contemporary women's sport.
This article examines the mediated stardom of popular tennis player Nick Kyrgios. Through a critical analysis of his representation and self-presentation across both domestic and global media, I position Kyrgios as exemplary of the post-athlete condition-where sporting and media performance increasingly converge and fuel one another. His persona has been narrated through repeatedly invoked tropes of "individual genius," "wasted talent," and the "might-have-been" contender. First, the analysis situates Kyrgios within the contemporary media-sport content economy, where categories of deviance, race, nationhood, and masculinity intersect to shape his contested public image. Secondly, drawing on Michael Herzfeld's concept of cultural intimacy, I argue that Kyrgios's stigma functions as a shared resource of complicity between athlete and fans, while simultaneously serving the institutional and commercial interests of professional tennis. This case foregrounds the shifting grammar of celebrity in global sport as a phenomenon that is both local and transnational: while Kyrgios's defiance unsettles the moral contours of Australian nationalism and tennis orthodoxy, simultaneously, it also enhances his appeal within global and virtual publics. In doing so, he operates as both a challenge to hegemonic normativity and a lucrative spectacle that diverts attention from the sport's structural inequalities. Paradoxically, the failure to fulfill one's talent can enhance or sustain, rather than diminish, an individual's symbolic and economic capital.
Since 1987, Australia has witnessed dedicated policies and investment aiming to increase the number of girls and women participating in community sport. Over four decades, gender equity policies and initiatives have been extensive; however, these have rarely sought to explicitly address intersectional forms of discrimination experienced by women and girls. There is also a lack of understanding of how community sports clubs respond to intersectional discrimination within gender equity efforts. Using a feminist intersectional lens, we consider how community clubs seek to address inequities experienced by women, girls, and gender diverse people that experience multiple forms of oppression in Victoria, Australia. Through policy analysis, observations and interviews with 13 local government employees and 42 sports club volunteers, we examined understandings, discourses, and enactment of intersectional responses to gender equity. Most sporting clubs and local government employees did not understand intersectionality, nor considered or enacted intersectional approaches to gender equity. Across "diversity and inclusion" in local sports contexts, siloed or additive approaches to addressing discrimination were most common with limited consideration of gender. We recommend sport governing bodies to engage with power in developing policies and cultures that are responsive to intersectional forms of discrimination if gender equity efforts are to move beyond only benefitting white, able bodied, cis-gendered women.
This study explores how on-field referees (REF) and Video Assistant Referees (VAR) collaboratively accomplish decision-making during in-match video review sequences in professional football. While VAR was introduced to increase accuracy and reduce error, discrepancies between the VAR's recommendation and the REF's final decision remain a persistent feature of match officiating. This paper investigates in detail these moments of agreement and disagreement, focusing on how shared decisions are sequentially organized, epistemically negotiated, and visually constructed in real time. Drawing on 107 official VAR recordings released by the Turkish Football Federation during the 2024-2025 Premier League season, the study employs an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic approach. Three episodes are analyzed in depth, one instance of agreement and two of disagreement, making available and accountable how decisions unfold through embodied actions, video-guided talk, and institutional protocols. The analysis reveals that even with shared access to identical video evidence, VAR and REF may interpret incidents differently due to divergent professional vision, distinct epistemic stances, and differing orientations to accountability. The study demonstrates that VAR reviews are not neutral, technocratic processes but complex interactional practices involving negotiated authority, contested categorizations, and moment-by-moment decision trajectories. The findings from the detailed sequential analysis challenge assumptions about the objectivity of video technology and emphasize the interactional work required to transform visual data into institutional decisions. By emphasizing the social organization of seeing, recommending, and deciding, this paper contributes to broader conversations in sport officiating, technology-mediated judgment, and the sociology of institutional interaction.
A multitude of interventions have been designed to tackle doping in sport. Despite significant advances in understanding the role of motivation, the environment, policies and education in addressing doping, there is a lack of nuanced knowledge concerning the design and implementation of these interventions. The present study adopted an intervention mapping evaluation perspective, critically evaluating a selection of 12 antidoping programs across three sports in Austria, Russia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, using a mixed-methods, sequential, explanatory design. Findings confirm that the antidoping intervention landscape is diverse and complicated, incorporating multiple strands, sites, ambitions and stakeholders. It also suggests that the drive for policy compliance led by WADA has promoted considerable isomorphism across diverse cultural and economic communities and sports. Antidoping educational interventions appear to have been informed more by the moral imperatives for clean and fair sport rather than sound theoretical bases. While the theoretical basis on which most interventions were based can operate across culturally and economically divergent contexts, this is undermined by differences in their interpretation and the context of their implementation. Several lacunae in the design and implementation of antidoping interventions are also identified and discussed.
This study examines why Team USA athletes who had been publicly engaged in activism at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games largely refrained from protest at Paris 2024. Drawing on Sidney Tarrow's framework of contentious politics, it analyses political opportunities, networks, framing, and institutional environments to explain shifting patterns of athlete expression. Using a comparative qualitative design, the study synthesizes media statements, institutional documents, and policy communications from 2020-2024 to trace changes in the political and organizational context. Findings show that the decline of activism was not driven by new repression or formal rule changes but by the erosion of public legitimacy, institutional support, and collective framing infrastructures that once legitimized protest. The analysis extends Tarrow's framework by showing how athlete activism unfolds as institutionally embedded contention, shaped less by formal access to power than by the symbolic permission and elite endorsement that determine when expression is tolerated. The study concludes that athlete activism rises and falls with the institutional and cultural environments that make dissent possible.
The purpose of this study was to provide an accurate depiction of interpersonal violence (IV) in French sports. Thus, the aim of this study was to (a) measure the prevalence of IV experienced by French athletes since joining their current club, (b) accurately describe the victim's profile based on several risk factors, (c) and investigate IV according to a specific timeframe. A total of 2,250 athletes completed the French adaptation of the IV in Sport. Our results indicate a high prevalence of IV in the sporting environment, with 59.7% of participants reporting exposure to at least one form of IV and 3.8% reporting exposition to all forms of IV, highlighting the scale of this phenomenon in French sports clubs. Type of sport was the most influential risk factor for experiencing physical violence while the level of competition appeared to increase the experience of psychological violence, neglect and sexual violence. The results point to the relevance of measuring IV in a specific context and during a specific timeframe, even when accounting for the fact that participants who reported IV were significantly more likely to abandon the questionnaire before completing it.
Research on collegiate athlete mental health is overwhelmingly Western-centric, leaving a critical gap in understanding how cultural context shapes athletes' experiences. This study addresses this gap through a cross-national comparison of the United States and South Korea. This convergent mixed-methods study integrated survey data from 400 athletes and in-depth interviews with 33 athletes, guided by the Social Ecological Model for Health Promotion. Quantitative results revealed that U.S. athletes reported significantly higher psychological distress (F [1, 395] = 4.99, p < .01), while social and institutional support were key predictors of mental health outcomes in both contexts (beta s = -.18 to .27, ps < .001), with notable gendered variations. Integrating these findings with our qualitative analysis exposes two key phenomena: a "paradox of expression," where higher reported distress in the U.S. likely reflects a cultural permission to disclose, and a "willingness-action gap," where multi-level barriers prevent help-seeking. We argue these phenomena are shaped by distinct cultural ideologies: an individualistic culture of intense self-reliance and performance pressure in the U.S. and a collectivist culture of social harmony in South Korea. Ultimately, this study challenges a simplistic "better versus worse" narrative, concluding that both systems create distinct but different cultural and structural barriers to athlete mental health, demanding systemic and culturally-tailored interventions in both contexts.
Despite the growth in women's sport, decision-making positions in sports organizations remain dominated by men. This paper examines efforts to improve gender balance in roles of leadership using two Australian governing bodies as case studies. To understand how organizations address gender disparities in leadership and high-performance coaching roles, we analyze public-facing strategies and data collected through interviews with participants working in these organizations. Our findings capture how plans and practices tend to frame gender inequity as an individual problem rather than as an institutional or structural one, reflecting core features that scholars explain as postfeminist. Specifically, initiatives primarily focus on enhancing the skills and professional experience of individual women rather than addressing institutional structures that perpetuate gendered forms of inequality. Accordingly, we argue, a policy paradox emerges in that gender equity initiatives can enshrine practices and values that prevent the realization of gender equity, because they direct attention away from institutional issues that contribute to and maintain gendered hierarchies. We conclude by reflecting on how these observations reveal a regulatory pathology, which presents additional challenges for redressing these inequities in sports organizations.
Within the sport landscape, public mental health disclosures by athletes and supporting activity by sport organizations are increasingly prevalent. Sometimes, these sport entities (e.g., athletes, organizations) have formalized partnerships with mental health companies. Although corporate sponsorships and athlete endorsements are not new topics of inquiry, the stigma around mental health in sport and the potential ethical questions around sport organizations and athletes partnering with for-profit mental health companies lends this type of partnership to a deeper discussion. In this manuscript, we-a sport marketing scholar and a sport mental health and sport sociology scholar-provide a point-counterpoint discussion to explore both sport management and sport sociology theoretical perspectives regarding the commodification of mental health services in the context of sport. Future directions to guide research on mental health sponsorships in sport are discussed.
This paper investigates the contested regulation of alcohol, standing and pyrotechnics in European men's football, utilizing Giddens' structuration theory. Specifically, we analyze how the regulation of these three practices-representing key expressions of football supporter culture inside the stadia-reveals the making of a spatio-historically significant structure that is constantly "on-the-move" and co-produced by processes of institutional control, fan agency and acts of micro-resistance. The structuring power of European football's governing body (Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)), therefore, constrains and unleashes new dimensions of supporters' agency that, again, reveal how attempts to regulate cultural practices and spaces are characterized by new sites of (non)compliance, resistance and (non)negotiated practices. The conceptual article extends our sociological knowledge on structure and agency within spaces of consumption, culture and sport.
