The Uefa European Football Championships: Politics, Media Spectacle and Social Change

This book explores social and political issues and trends emerging around the UEFA European Football Championships. It presents a contemporary sociology of the European Championships which, despite its significance as a mega-event, has been largely overshadowed by the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup in existing literature.

At a time when both sport mega-events and Europe are undergoing dramatic transformations, this book explores a range of case studies and important topics such as changing consumption patterns, new types of sport media, social media, environmental policies and emergency politics, public opposition and co-hosting. It also situates the European Championships within wider European projects and discourses of European identities, integration and enlargement. Drawing on data from recent and historical European Championships, and looking ahead to the next tournament in Germany in 2024, this book serves to open up new debates within the sociology of sport and the study of mega-events.

It is a timely and ground-breaking text which will resonate with students, academics and readers who are interested in football, the sociology of sport, megaevents, digital sociology, European politics and culture or sports business.

Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen is Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Politics with Sociology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. His research fields are in the political sociology of sport and his research on mega-events, security, globalization, risk, and fandom has been published in internationally leading journals including the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Journal of Consumer Culture, Leisure Studies and Journal of Sport and Social Issues.

Renan Petersen-Wagner is Senior Lecturer in Sport Business and Marketing at Leeds Beckett University, UK. His research interests are within the broad field of media studies in sport, but particularly concerned with the current platformisation of society. Renan’s research on fandom, cosmopolitanism, mediatisation, the Global South, and disability sport has been published in journals including Current Sociology, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, and Sport in Society.