With the beginning of the AFL and NRL winter seasons, Australia’s sporting calendar is once more moving from its quietest to its busiest period.
For many, the return of the AFL and NRL is extremely anticipated. But there’s one group whose experience could be very different: the roughly 20% of Australians who hate sport.
We are currently conducting research to higher understand why people feel the best way they do about sports and what their experiences are like living in a rustic where sports are so popular. culturally central. We’ve surveyed hundreds of Australians and are actually beginning to interview those that describe themselves as “sports haters”.
Australia is a “sports-crazy” nation.
Australia has long been described as “a nation crazy about sports”, a reasonable statement given that the Melbourne Cup drew huge crowds over 100,000 people already within the Eighties.
Australia’s sporting passion is probably most evident today within the number of skilled teams we support in a rustic of 26 million, one of the best per capita figures concentration on the earth.
In addition to our 4 separate football codes – Australian rules football, rugby league, rugby union and soccer – we have now skilled netball, basketball, cricket and tennis. In total, there are greater than 130 skilled sports teams in Australia today (for each sexes).
Australia can be hosting – and Australians are participating in – major sporting events at a rate that’s wildly disproportionate to the dimensions of our population and economy. Formula One, Australian Open, National Basketball League, National Rugby League AND Matilda all have recently broken attendance or TV rankings records.
Joel Carrett/AAP
Why people hate sports
The ubiquity of sport in our culture, nonetheless, obscures the undeniable fact that a big number of people strongly and actively dislike sport. Last tests by one of the co-authors (Heath McDonald) began to make clear this cohort, dubbed “sports haters.”
Sports haters make up around 20% of the Australian population, in line with two surveys we conducted of almost 3,500 and over 27,000 adults. Demographically, this group is far more more likely to be female, younger and more affluent than other Australians.
Their strong negative moods are reflected of their commonest word associations study participants used to explain a sport. For the AFL, these were: “boring”, “overpaid”, “dumb/dumb”, “rough”, “scandal” and “alcohol”.
While the explanations for disliking sports vary from individual to individual, research shows that there are some common themes. The first of these occurs in childhood, when negative experiences of playing sports or participating in games or matches can result in a lifelong aversion to all sports. As one of the declared sports haters said: Internet forum dedicated to men who do not like sports: :
As a baby, my brother forced me to play football consistently against my will. I feel that is where my aversion to physical sports comes from, because my silly brother took the alternative away from me.
Hate for sport also can result from social exclusion or marginalization. Sports have historically been a male-centric domain celebrating masculinity and may result in this toxic behaviorwhich can exclude many ladies and a few men.
The sport has also had to beat racism, perhaps most symbolically seen within the case of AFL player Nicky Winmar iconic protest in 1993. Moreover, disabled people still struggle with the issue barriers leading to lower participation rates in sports.
Here, electricity The Taylor Swift effect is noteworthy. The singer’s presence at National Football League games, including the Superbowl, resulted in huge jumps in television rankings. Through her association, Swift helped improve the sport psychologically available for many ladies and girls.
The cultural domination sport also fuels its opponents, many of whom are critical of the media saturation of sport and its broader social and even political priority. (T debate in Tasmania regarding the controversial AFL stadium proposal is an excellent example of this.)
From a media perspective, Australia’s particularly stringent anti-hacking laws have ensured that sport stays front and center in free-to-air television programming.
The cultural domination of sport also favors the reluctance to overshadow people’s non-sporting passions and activities, in addition to the creation of social out-groups. Journalist Jo Chandler 2010 the outline of moving to Melbourne is definitely shared by many individuals:
In the workplace, lack of alignment causes profound isolation. Team tribalism influences meetings, especially when they are supervised by male chiefs. In shameful desperation, I kept playing.
In life, it is sort of easy to avoid most foods that you may not like. However, given the ubiquity of sports, sometimes simply quitting is not an option.
Anti-Football League, a club for haters
In 1967, two Melbourne journalists, Keith Dunstan and Douglas Wilkie, founded an anti-sports club in response to growing cultural dominance. In his founding speech addressed to League Against FootballWilkie explained who the club was for:
All of us who’re fed up with the football personalities, predictions and autopsies that litter our newspapers, TV screens and attempts at alternative human conversations – from morning prayers to the last trickle of water in the tub before bed – should take part immediately.
Membership quickly reached hundreds. A branch was soon opened in Sydney, with membership nationwide reaching roughly 7,000. According to sports historian Matthew Klugman, members enjoyed being “haters”.
…they wanted to seek out common meaning of their suffering, not to extinguish it, but to enjoy it higher.
This led to some interesting rituals by which members ceremonially cremated or buried footballs. An Anti-Football Day has also been announced, happening on the eve of the Victorian Football League Grand Final.
Over the years the club has experienced periods of each prosperity and hiatus, but has since been dormant Dunstan’s death in 2013.
Eight years left within the so-called Australian “golden decade of sport” where it began 2022 Basketball Women’s World Cup in Sydney and culminates within the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, perhaps it is time for sports haters to begin a brand new support group.
If you consider yourself a sports hater and would really like to share your experience with our ongoing research, please provide your contact details Here.
