The global professionalisation of women’s football has gathered momentum in the twenty first century, and professional women footballers are now more prevalent and evident in cultures around the world. Despite increased professionalisation and record-breaking viewing and participation figures for women’s football, there are persistent challenges for women in the game. Professional football is now a viable career opportunity for women globally; however, as Women’s Football in a Global, ...

As women’s sport continues to grow and develop there is an increasing need to critically examine the conditions in which women as athletes operate. The Professionalisation of Women’s Sport discusses the processes of professionalisation in women’s sports as distinct from, and different to, that seen in men’s sport, identifying different challenges that face the growth of women’s elite sport.Within this collection, the complex and often fragmented nature of women’s involveme...

Health Communication and Sport: Connections, Applications, and Opportunities aggregates sport and health communication into a collective resource that advances scholarly inquiry at the intersection of these two fields. Through bringing together a collaborative of scholars and practitioners who are doing work in areas ranging from mental health, to media, to youth sports, and social media, this volume evaluates health communication issues in sport contexts and inspires work that will answer...

Global sporting events involve the creation, management and mediation of cultural meanings for consumption by massive media audiences. The apotheosis of this cultural form is the Olympic Games. This challenging and provocative new book explores the Olympic spectacle, from the multi-media bidding process and the branding and imaging of the Games, to security, surveillance and control of the Olympic product across all of its levels.The book argues that the process of commercializatio...

The Olympics: The Basics is an accessible, contemporary introduction to the Olympic movement and Games. Chapters explain how the Olympics transcend sports, engaging us with a range of contemporary philosophical, social, cultural and political matters, including:peace development and diplomacymanagement and economicscorruption, terror and activismthe rise of human enhancementethics and environmentalism.This book e...

The English Premier League (EPL) is one of the world’s most valuable and high-profile sports leagues, with millions of fans around the globe. The 2016/17 season marked the 25th anniversary of the EPL, providing a unique opportunity to reflect on how it has contributed, both positively and negatively, to key developments in football – and in sport and culture more broadly – at local, national and global levels.Drawing on central themes in the social scientific study of sport, such a...

This innovative and timely volume moves beyond existing operational and pragmatic approaches to events studies by exploring sports events as social, cultural, political and mediatised phenomena. As the study of this area is developing there is now a need for critical and theoretically informed debate regarding conceptualisation, significance and roles.This edited collection explores the core themes of consumption, media technologies, representation, identities and culture to offer ...

The Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games is an authoritative and comprehensive account of the world’s greatest sporting and cultural event. It tells the complete story of the 2012 Games from inception, through the successful bidding process and the planning and preparation phase, to delivery, the post-Games period and legacy. Written by a world-class team of international Olympic scholars, the book offers analysis of the full social, cultural, political, histor...

Contemporary sport is shaped by wider society. Today those managing sport must be aware of the broader social and cultural context within which it exists if their effectiveness is to be established and their careers defined. This book is the first of its kind to contextualise the wider social and cultural environment of sport management and explain the key issues and practical implications of this for those working, or intending to find employment, in the field.Written by a team of...

This book critically examines the ways in which sports contribute to, or inhibit, social well-being, the directions these changes take and the conditions necessary for sport to have beneficial outcomes. The themes addressed in the book demonstrate the diversity and versatility of the social impacts sport can potentially achieve as well as the variable benefits of sport in different social contexts. The contributions are focused around four major themes:- Sport development and socia...

Sport has become a global business. There is no corner of the Earth that isn't reached by coverage of global sporting mega-events such as the Olympics or the World Cup, events managed by international governing bodies such as the IOC and FIFA that operate like major international businesses. Companies such as Nike now design, produce, distribute and market their products across every continent, while an increasingly important part of every country's sport market is now international in ter...

Global Sport Business: The Community Impact of Commercial Sport involves a range of pressing issues that come with the arrival of sport as a commodity in the world economy. It can be argued that, throughout the past two centuries, sport has always been recognized as both a frivolous pursuit of spending leisure time with friends and family, and as an activity that has substantial commercial value to be mined by entrepreneurs. However, only during the most recent wave of globalizati...