The weekend as a male entity: how Sunday newspaper sports reporting centres around male activities, interests and language (2008 and 2009)

Sport sociologists over recent years have widely agreed that sportswomen are significantly under-represented in sports media. However, the majority of studies have focused on weekday average coverage. This project investigates how sports print media operate in relation to gender at the weekend. Five British Sunday national newspapers were investigated over a two-year period (2008–2009). The quantitative data-set includes 22,954 articles and 25,717 photos which were subject to a content analysis. Of these, 172 news items were inductively analysed into themes, in order to examine in more detail how weekend reporting functions in British newspapers. Findings suggest ongoing differences in the reporting of female and male athletes, particularly in photographic representations of women in sport. Publishing news and photographs of women not related to sport is an original dimension to this investigation, and specific to weekend sports reporting. Moreover, results indicate that Sunday newspapers promote ‘the weekend’ as a male entity which revolves around viewing sports with other men. The focus on Sunday newspapers provides new insights into how sports media function on a day traditionally associated with leisure, family and ‘down time’.