Tag: sport spectatorship

What we know about sport fandom and spectatorship is primarily based on the perceptions and experiences of white, middle-class, educated men. Thus, one aim of the special issue is to diversify and broaden our understanding of sport fan and spectator experiences. A second aim is to highlight sports fans’ and sports organizations’ strategies and actions to improve equity, inclusion, diversity, and justice. We want to shed light on fans’ actions to denounce and challenge exclusionary practices in sport and to create more inclusive spaces.

Spectator sports represents one of society’s most universal leisure activities. While event attendance and media consumption have received a great deal of attention from scholars, there is a growing understanding that sports fans interact, both physically and digitally, with their favorite teams in numerous other ways. The aim of this Research Topic is to explore fan behaviors in many different areas, involving sports media and the (ever changing) digital environment.

The purpose of this article collection is to shed light on the wider utility of sport spectatorship to achieve social and psychological outcomes in different countries, contexts, and populations. We strongly encourage novel and innovative approaches to researching this topic – notably conceptual and/or methodological aspects that are inclusive and accepting of the ontology and epistemology of the community within which the research is conducted.