2025/10/24 by Hunter Fujak, Stephen Frawley, Daryl Adair · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Sport and Mega-Event Impacts #Sports, Gender, and Society #Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/01490400.2025.2577850
openalex publication_date 2025/10/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Despite sport’s perceived ubiquity, little is known empirically about the prevalence of fandom as a cultural practice. This study addresses this gap through latent class analysis of attitudinal sport preferences, adopting Australia as a distinctive upper-bound case to test sport fandom’s universality. The 12-segment model upon 27,412 respondents estimates 23% of the population as apathetic toward sport, of whom women (68%) are over-represented, consistent with leisure-constraints research. Contrary to cultural archetypes, only 5% of the population are classified as sport fanatics. Fanatics exhibited broad repertoires of sports interest, rather than specialized focus. Findings extend scholarship by mapping the full distribution of sport interest utilizing a large-scale sample, showing that casual and selectively engaged segments are widespread and theoretically significant. The study positions the prevalence of casual fandom as a key lens for future research on participation and consumption.