ABSTRACT
Scandinavia is the northwest European region which comprises Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The region contains about 20 million inhabitants, and their populations can understand each other’s standard languages almost to the extent that they could be regarded different dialects of one common language. In sport the three countries share a legacy in voluntarism and idealism, and football like most other sports has generally been related to political and normative virtues such as democracy, social and moral fostering, gender equality, and the integration of young people from the working class or immigrant groups (Andersson & Carlsson, 2009). Football is the most popular sport in these countries, whether measured by commercial or by sport-for-all criteria. Due to increasing professionalisation and commercialisation over the last two decades the sport can aptly be described as an amalgam of commercialism and voluntarism with historical roots in the development of the mixed market economy and Scandinavian welfare states (Andersson & Carlsson, 2009).
