European Sport Index: the social significance of sport in 28 European countries

Abstract

This study presents the results of a research project which aimed to operationalize and compare the social significance of sport in the 28 member states of the European Union. To this end, the European Sport Index was constructed. It contains seven indicators which depict the social significance of recreational sport, club sport, school sport, the populations’ access to sport, the socio-political and economic significance of sport, and the significance of professional sport within the observed countries. These indicators were ranked through the benchmarking method from the field of statistics. The resulting ranking of the EU member countries via the Sport Index puts Germany and France on top, while Bulgaria resides in the last place.

Keywords:

• Benchmarking method
• European sport index
• member countries of the EU
• social significance of sport

Notes

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes on contributors

Otmar Weiss, is a Professor at and the Dean of the Centre for Sport Science and University Sport at the University of Vienna. From 2001 until 2008 he served as the President of the European Association for Sociology of Sport. His research focuses on sport identities connected with social recognition, motivation, and intercultural comparisons.

Gilbert Norden, is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Vienna. His research takes place in different fields of history, the sociology of sport, and in methods of empirical social research.

Michael Nader, is a University Assistant at the Centre for Sport Science and University Sport at the University of Vienna. In his dissertation he concentrates on relations between the significance of sport and social indicators in Europe.

Florian Arnusch, graduated with a Master’s degree in Communication Science at the University of Vienna and was a study assistant at the Centre for Sport Science and University Sport at the University of Vienna from 2013 until 2015.

Notes

1 Functions of sport are described by Heinemann and Horch (1981).

2 Benchmarking = comparison of index numbers in the context of a multi-dimensional ranking.