ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the potential that watching football at stadia holds for health promotion. The European Healthy Stadia Network provides a variety of initiatives that are designed to encourage healthier practices at stadia. This chapter critically examines the food provided at stadia, highlighting those attributes that may result in it being healthy or unhealthy, and the measures needed to move towards healthier stadia. We also detail a number of evidence-based programmes that encourage football fans to be more physically active, which include a variety of interventions and programmes from Europe, New Zealand and Australia. The potential for stadia to increase physical activity is then discussed, providing evidence for the activity levels that are associated with attending stadia in-person. Stadia-based initiatives are not without their challenges, particularly due to the abundance of ‘unhealthy’ sponsors that are evident at many venues. Health-promotion messages at stadia can become lost within these more glamorous advertisers. Furthermore, sports fans are also highly routine in their match day behaviours and resistant to engage with non-football-related messages. Despite these challenges, the case of Forest Green Rovers, the world’s first vegan football club, provides evidence that established patterns of behaviour can be changed, promoting healthier alternatives.
