Using Habermas to crack the European football championships

This paper considers the political and economic contexts of the development of the modern European Championships into the status of a global sporting mega event. The paper has two aims. One is to show how this development has led to an uncoupling of the event from its social moorings by virtue of the economic imperatives that now embrace the event. A second aim is to pursue this development through the conceptual lens developed by Habermas, which rarely receive any attention within the sociology of sport outside of their usefulness in moral arguments and ethical considerations related to the sporting conduct of athletes. Here, the aim is to sketch out the potential of Habermas' conceptual oeuvre for illuminating macro-sociological issues pertaining to the contested representations of football mega events.