2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup: Media, Fandom, and Soccer’s Biggest Stage

This book examines the most prolific international women’s football tournament—the FIFA Women’s World Cup—through media fandom and how mediated women’s soccer can improve on a global scale. Women’s soccer has exploded in terms of media exposure television audiences and live spectatorship. This book explores those macro-level issues while also digging into micro-level topics such as Megan Rapinoe’s celebrations and political activism VAR reviews LGBTQ imagery and cultural obstacles for women’s football in Central-Eastern Europe and Nigeria. Using an interdisciplinary approach scholars look at issues through the lenses of feminist theory cultural studies rhetorical criticism political economy performative sport fandom autoethnography and more. Thus the book is important reading for students researchers and media practitioners with interests in women’s soccer gender in sports media coverage of women’s sport and sport fandom.