Skip to main content
Kent Academic Repository

Celebrating the social in soccer: spectators’ experiences of the forgotten (Blind) Football World Cup

de Haan, Donna, Faull, Andrea, Kohe, Geoff (2013) Celebrating the social in soccer: spectators’ experiences of the forgotten (Blind) Football World Cup. Soccer & Society, 15 (4). pp. 578-595. ISSN 1466-0970. (doi:10.1080/14660970.2013.828596) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:66756)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2013.828596

Abstract

Sporting spaces draw together distinct social assortments. Football (in various forms), for example, generates specific types of spectators and spectator behaviours. Cognizant of this work, our paper examines the 2010 World Blind Football Championships (WBFC) and its spectatorship. We conducted semi-structured interviews, orientated around perceptions of disability/disability sport, with 285 spectators. The thrust of our paper is that the event affords spectators opportunities to better understand, appreciate and engage with the experiences of athletes with a disability. We argue that the unique context of blind football competitions (characterized here as an unthreatening, convivial, often familial-like, and somewhat parochial space) resulted in positive spectator experiences. We conclude that within the framework of bridging social capital, this unique sporting space afforded the creation of relationships between the athletes (and the sport) and the spectators, two groups previously separated by social distance.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/14660970.2013.828596
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Natural Sciences > Sport and Exercise Sciences
Depositing User: Geoffery Kohe
Date Deposited: 17 Apr 2018 12:44 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:25 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/66756 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.