The Achievements of Sports Modalities in Sports Journalism and the Supremacy of Soccer: A Case Study of the Portuguese Daily Sports Press

Abstract

Sports are experienced with an exacerbated passion, a phenomenon with a clear expression in sports journalism, which seems to justify the existence of three daily sports newspapers – A Bola, O Jogo and Record – in Portugal, a country where, according to the last Bareme Imprensa (2022), there are around 5.7 million readers of newspapers and magazines. In the sports context, there is one sport that stands out from the others, soccer. Therefore, in this sport, the focus is on the so-called “big three” soccer teams: Futebol Clube do Porto, Sporting Clube de Portugal and Sport Lisboa e Benfica, whose matches, regardless of whether they take place within the scope of national or international competitions, are dissected by the sports press. In the scope of this research, we proposed to evaluate the prominence that the achievements of different sports, other than men's soccer, had in the front pages of the three Portuguese sports newspapers throughout the year 2021. We concluded that even in the face of unparalleled achievements, and in periods outside national soccer competition, other sports do not get the same prominence as soccer, which confirms the trend of “soccerization” of the sports journalism space.