Global And Local Football

Based on long-term and detailed ethnographic research, this book uses Malta as a critical case study to explore the dynamics of contemporary football. Examining Maltese football in the context of the island's unique politics, culture and national identity, the book sheds light upon both Maltese society and on broader processes, both local and global, within the international game.

This book tackles issues of globalization in the English Premier League and unpicks what this means to fan groups around the world, drawing upon a range of sociological theories to tell the story of the local and global repertoires of action emanating from the popular protests at Liverpool and Manchester United football clubs.

These essays provide a critical investigation of football cultures, examining local and national impacts of the game's new millennial order over five continents.

In recent years, football’s status as "the world’s sport" has shown little sign of waning. From increasing participation at grassroots levels and to the highly lucrative media rights deals secured by the top elite clubs, the game appears to be thriving as it continues to excite and enthral billions of people around the globe. Nevertheless, there are a number of challenges and opportunities facing the football industry today that warrant further examination. This book brings together leading international researchers to survey the current state of the global football industry, exploring contemporary themes and issues in the marketing of football around the world. With contributions from Europe, Asia and the Americas, it discusses key topics such as football club management, the economics of the football industry, match-fixing, social media, fan experiences, the globalized marketplace, and the growing popularity of the women’s game. Offering insights for researchers, managers, and marketers who are looking to stay ahead of the game, The Global Football Industry: Marketing Perspectives is essential reading for anyone with an interest in international sport business.

Over the past decade, European football has seen tremendous changes impacting upon its international framework as well as local traditions and national institutions. Processes of Europeanization in the fields of economy and politics provided the background for transformations of the production and consumption of football on a transnational scale. In the course of such rearrangements, football tournaments like the UEFA Championship or the European Champions League turned into mega-events and media spectacles attracting ever-growing audiences. The experience of participating in these events offers some of the very few occasions for the display and embodiment of identities within a European context. This volume takes the 2008 EUROs hosted by Austria and Switzerland as a case study to analyze the political and cultural significance of the tournament from a multidisciplinary angle. What are the special features and spatial arrangements of a UEFAesque Europe, in comparison to alternative possibilities of a Europe? Situating the sport tournament between interpretations of collective European ritual and European spectacle, the key research question will ask what kind of Europe was represented in the cultural, political and economic manifestations of the 2008 EUROs. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

This edited volume addresses key debates around African football, identity construction, fan cultures, and both African and global media narratives. Using the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa as a lens, it explores how football in Africa is intimately bound up with deeper social, cultural and political currents.

Football clubs across the world continue to embody many of the collective symbols, identifications and processes of connectivity which have long been associated with the notion of ‘community’. In recent years, however, the very term ‘community’ has become the focus of renewed interest within popular discourse and amongst academics, politicians and policy makers. It has become something of a ‘buzz’ word, wheeled out as both a lament to more certain times and as an appeal to a better future: a term imbued with all the richness associated with human interaction. ‘Community’ has also been employed increasingly within football, for instrumental reasons concerned with policy and stadium redevelopment, and in broader rhetoric about clubs, their localities and fans. This book brings together a range of key debates around contemporary understandings of ‘community’ in world football. Split into four sections, it considers political and theoretical debates around football and its connection with community; different national and ethnic football communities; instrumental uses of football to bridge gaps within and between groups; future directions in the football and community debate. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer & Society.

Association football is now the global sport, consumed in various ways by millions of people across the world. Throughout its history, football has been a catalyst as much for social cohesion, unity, excitement and integration as it can be for division, exclusion and discrimination. A Sociology of Football in a Global Context examines the historical, political, economic, social and cultural complexities of the game across Europe, Africa, Asia and North and South America. It analyses the key developments and sociological debates within football through a topic-based approach that concentrates on the history of football and its global diffusion; the role of violence; the global governance of the game by FIFA; race, racism and whiteness; gender and homophobia; the changing nature of fans; the media and football’s financial revolution; the transformation of players into global celebrities; and the growth of football leagues across the world. Using a range of examples from all over the world, each chapter highlights the different social and cultural changes football has seen, most notably since the 1990s, when its relationship with the mass media and other transnational networks became more important and financially lucrative.