Day: August 3, 2025

When fans organize to protest the actions of their teams or club owners, this is a clear example of fan activism. These groups demonstrate the power of Jenkins’s theory that fandom provides the opportunity for people to invest in media with the potential to mobilize civic or political action.

In this case, the protest was against Sevilla’s president and board. The protest was aimed at urging the board to remove president Jose Maria del Nido Carrasco and other top members of the club’s management, who the fans believe are making poor decisions for the team. The fans’ protest was successful; the club did end up firing Carrasco and several other board members.

While many scholars argue that fan activism is a fad, recent events have shown that this movement can be a powerful force in the game. Fans have brought down Jose Mourinho at Manchester United and led marches against their club’s ownership at Chelsea, as well as pushed back on plans to commercialize the game in Liverpool.

The NFL’s response to the Kaepernick controversy also illustrates how fan activism can influence the discourse around a issue. Rather than viewing the player’s position as a social justice issue, the statements by various NFL personnel emphasized the importance of patriotism. These officials were worried about the possibility of disapproval from President Trump and losing revenue, but they failed to recognize that Kaepernick’s stance on police reform was a valid social justice issue.

While sports participation has increased significantly since Title IX’s enactment, there is still an underlying issue of gender discrimination. In fact, women from marginalized sections of society see far less opportunities to participate in sports. This is a result of gender stereotypes and perceptions and lack of access to facilities and equipment, among other factors.

Gender equality is crucial in all fields, including sports. Women’s sport needs the same attention as men’s to prevent the stigma against female athletes and improve gender attitudes. This can be done by advocating for equal pay, creating social media platforms for women’s sport and supporting programs that train journalists to cover all events.

UNESCO is currently working to develop and implement measures for the prevention of discrimination and violence in sports. These will include establishing transparent and anonymous abuse reporting systems; training sports educators, coaches and other professionals on the principles of inclusion, gender equality and respect for diversity; and setting up judicial infrastructure to facilitate investigations and hold perpetrators accountable.

Another way to promote gender equality in sports is by encouraging people to support women’s sport by attending their games and watching them on TV. This can also help change societal perceptions of sports. For example, if more people watch women’s sports, they will stop thinking of men as superior athletes and realize that men and women are equally good at different sports.

Research shows a direct relationship between sports participation and support for gender equality in sport. This is consistent with the findings that the #MeToo and #SeAcabo movements have raised awareness of gender discrimination in sports. A study analyzing data from the Special Eurobarometer 525 used Fuzzy-Hybrid TOPSIS to create a synthetic indicator of Europeans’ Attitudes Toward Gender Equality in Sport (ATGEQS) and Latent Profile Analysis to cluster respondents based on their attitudes. Results show that political ideology has a significant influence on attitudes, with left-wing citizens showing more support for ATGEQS than right-wing citizens. This is in line with previous studies, which suggest that conservative religiosity and older socio-political structures have been key drivers of resistance to progressive gender equality initiatives (104).