Turner, Mark and Fitzpatrick, Daniel (2024). Events, turns, and critical junctures: unpacking the temporality of supporter rights and democracy in English football. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics ,
Abstract
The future of professional men’s football in England stands at a critical juncture. In the wake of a global pandemic, the national game has been beset by volatility and upheaval. In April 2021, six of the most storied clubs in England announced they would be joining a new breakaway European Super League (ESL). These proposals triggered vehement opposition from fan movements, catalysing the intervention of the UK government who established a fan-led review of football governance (FLR) to consult fans on future regulatory reform and the security and safety of supporters at major events. Emerging out of these exogenous shocks and endogenous change, the governance of English football is set to be radically transformed via the establishment of a new regulatory regime. In this article, we employ eventful sociology and historical institutionalism to operationalise the concept of critical juncture and apply this through an analysis of two temporal periods (1985-1990) and (2020-2024). In doing so, we show how the current ‘regulatory turn’ is interdependently linked to prior historical transformative events, namely the Heysel and Hillsborough stadium disasters and the subsequent neoliberal transformation of English football across the last four decades. Incorporating a more nuanced understanding of change and continuity in the governance of English football, we argue that new regulatory frameworks, despite their transformative potential, may continue to exhibit institutional legacies of the existing regime and prevailing political economy.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2024.2403389 |
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Divisions: | College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Politics, History and International Relations College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Aston Centre for Europe |
Additional Information: | Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Critical junctures,fans,football,governance,regulation,Social Sciences (miscellaneous),Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management |
Publication ISSN: | 1940-6959 |
Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2024 18:24 |
Date Deposited: | 29 Oct 2024 11:14 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
https://www.tan ... 40.2024.2403389
(Publisher URL) http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2024-09-25 |
Published Online Date: | 2024-09-25 |
Accepted Date: | 2024-08-15 |
Authors: |
Turner, Mark
Fitzpatrick, Daniel ( 0000-0002-7044-0103) |
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