The role of a major sport event for shaping gender-specific attitudes towards democracy

This study examines the role of the UEFA EURO 2024 in shaping women and men residents’ attitudes towards democracy. The German government adds a new perspective to the national soft power literature by considering a major sport event a tool for promoting democracy. Social role theory is used to explain gender differences in political attitudes, while the contact hypothesis helps to understand how participation in event-related activities facilitates interactions with other (unknown) people that might increase democratic values like tolerance and respect. The empirical analysis uses data from an ex-post online survey of the German adult resident population in the ten Host Cities (n = 5,596) and rest-Germany (n = 5,319). Attitudes towards democracy are captured with the importance of democracy, satisfaction with its functioning, and democratic values like tolerance of rights and respect. The results of regression analyses show that only attitudes towards international fans formed by experiences with them showed a consistent positive link with all democracy measures for both women and men. Participation in event-related activities on-site (e.g. watching games in the stadium, visiting a football village) had mainly negative or insignificant associations with the importance of democracy, especially for women. Among men, positive associations of event-related activities were found for satisfaction with democracy and both democratic values. Collectively, the findings suggest that a major sport event only partially fulfils expectations in terms of promoting democracy, while contributing to a widening of the gender gap in attitudes towards democracy.